3.26.2009 Ruffin

After a day of recovering from a great show at Redux, Taylor, Bob, Kentridge and I headed to Ruffin on Monday to visit with Bob’s mother. This is our first visit to Ruffin since arriving in Charleston at the beginning of the month. Grandma Gara was excited for us all to meet her new companion, Buddy, a mixed-breed rescued puppy, with short, stubby legs, and a beautiful golden coat.  He leaps at Kentridge’s snout with a playful intent only to be met by a cautionary growl. In the past few days the two have become pals and Kentridge has grown accustomed to Buddy nipping at his heels everywhere he goes.

After being gone for an entire year, it is a son’s duty to take care of the years worth of handyman favors to be done around the house. The afternoon task of putting new sub-floor under a toilet quickly unfolds into repairing a spewing propane leak, and rewiring faulty electrical wires throughout the entire house. Bob put on his suit that he usually reserves for Taladega and crawled under the house and into the mud. On the bright side, Bob is glad to have stumbled across these problems before anything happened to Grandma Gara, and he can spend the next year away feeling confident that the house will not blow up. Despite packing everything up in a bus and driving clear across the country, we all love our folks and want to keep them from going up in flames.

Tuesday, March 24th, Bob and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. It was a very easy going day of thrift store shopping ending with double chocolate cake. After eight years of hard work, we can still make each other laugh.

Bob, Kentridge, and I head back to Charleston today, however we will leave Taylor behind for a little more quality time in Ruffin. Tomorrow is another day and the start of another project; hopefully the rain will hold out.