the cheese with the sparkles

Whenever my mom visits I like to make use of her time in town and drag her around to places. Let's call it: sightseeing.

Any time I pass an interesting looking boutique, or cheese shop, or delicious restaurant I add that to the Mom List. The Must Take Mom List. The I Don't Want To Go There Alone So I Will Wait Until Mom Is In Town List. Ya know, that list? And yes, I am married which means I know have a permanent drag along buddy for all of these places, but Frederick would much rather park his booty on the beach than spend his days sightseeing shopping around Charleston. Interestingly enough, that's exactly what my mother would rather be doing, too, but that's neither here nor there. 

Point is, I get ruh-eel excited when Mom comes in to town. You can imagine my excitement last week when my mom was here for a whole four days. One, two, three, four! Think of the cheese we can buy at the cheese shop! Think of all the adorable clothes I can purchase after not having to go into the big, bad scary new boutique alone for the first time! I was a tad excited. That's all you need to know.

We start any Mom trip with a visit to Goat, Sheep, Cow (or add on pig, frog, lamb if your name is Freddie). If you ever come to Charleston (which you should), then please just pop into this store and tell 'em Emily sent you (which they probably will pretend to have no idea who this wonderful Emily person is). Because this store is so cutesies. And the people are so nice. And they let you sample the delicious cheese. And they even remembered my mom's name was Mary Caroline and not Mary and well, I thought my mom was about to kiss the man on the lips and buy a $90 wheel of cheese x2 just for that. 

Actually, tell 'em Mary Caroline sent ya for the cheese with sparkles. Sparkly cheese--that's my mother's professional cheese connoisseur way of talking about aged Gouda. 

Then we usually walk from the cheese shop to a restaurant downtown. When it's just me and Freddie we park and walk and walk and walk and then do not come back to the car until the very end of the day. When it's me and my family, we park and walk and walk and then they ask me why we are walking so far and I assure them it's not that far and then 45 minutes later they ask why we're still walking and well, I guess their ATL living selves are not accustomed to the pedestrian friendly town of Chuck just yet. 

Please tell me that by now I've gotten some kind of award for best run-on sentences. 

After eating is as good a time as any to hit up all those uh-maze looking boutiques I always pass alone. Which more likely than not are all tres expensive and I wonder why I wanted to go in them anyways? Don't worry, I made out like a bandit this past trip and came away with a cute little pink lace bandeau. Hello, so needed that. Life is hard when one doesn't live with one's sister and can't borrow one's sister's clothing all the time. 

Now that it's not hot as you know what o'clock I agree to head to the beach. Ahhh, the beach. The breezy beach. If I didn't hate sand so dang much I just might love the beach more than anything. But that sand, though...

The Mom Must Do List always ends with sparklers. Always. She likes sparkly cheese and sparklers--the woman is easy to please. But who can say no to sparklers and a view of the bridge? No one, that's who. 

The. End.

Now who's ready for a cheesy, breezy Charleston visit?