Tater Catfish Stevens Was Here!

Today has been great even though I woke up at three in the morning because of a nearby lightning strike. I immediately woke up Tony so he could help me unplug everything from the wall sockets so none of our electronics would blow up and accidentally catch our trailer on fire. Within two minutes everything was unplugged, so we went back to bed as the thunderstorm boomed and lit up the night sky.

This morning while Tone did his chores outside I walked six miles with Leslie Sansone and then Hazel, my trusty vacuum cleaner and I gave the trailer a thorough cleaning, because our dear friends Denise and Mark Stevens from Austin were coming to visit us and I didn't want them to think that it looked like we lived here!

We met Denise and Mark through our mutual friend, Brian Alstott years ago. They are the couple who adopted Hank from us and Hank's story is in my new book.

Denise and Mark arrived here around eleven-thirty just as I was about to clean up our lunch dishes, so I happily blew off cleaning up the kitchen. After howdies and hugs outside by their truck they introduced us to their darling dog Tater Catfish Stevens! OMG! Tater was absolutely too cute and he stole T.'s and my hearts instantly. Then Denise gave me some beautiful flowers and then we went into Outer Space with our dogs. T. C. was a perfect guest-dog as he let our old dogs take turns sniffing his butt before they welcomed him and then went and laid down on their pillows.

While we caught up with each others news Tone and I took turns holding "The Tater" as he slept peacefully in our arms. "I love Tater," I said. "He is just like a little baby, but cuter." Denise and Mark, his proud adoptive parents totally agreed with me.

At one point during our fun conversation I looked down at my wrist and quickly realized that I had put on my off-white turtleneck on the wrong side out and started laughing at myself. "Y'all are going to have to excuse me for a minute," I said. "This morning right before y'all got here I took a bath and I have just realized that I put my turtleneck on wrong side out!" Everyone started laughing as I left Outer Space and went inside the trailer to correct my wardrobe malfunction. Then I returned to Outer Space.

"Y'all, I can't believe that I put my t-neck on wrong side out. I've never done that before. I guess that I'm definitely getting old." I said with a laugh as I sat down in my chair.

"I can't wait to tell Kinky and Ben about this!" Tony teased. Then Mark and Denise started telling us about going to the Saxon Pub in Austin and listening to some really cool Jazz musicians when our dogs outside started barking, because a car was driving in, so Tony took off to go see who was here.

A few minutes later when he returned to Outer Space Tone was wearing a big grin on his face. "June, Ellen and Eileen are here and Eileen just told me that she wants to adopt Rita Coolidge in two weeks!" I was so thrilled with Tony's news about Rita! Then we told Denise and Mark about our cute puppies, Rita and her sister Emmylou Harris who found her fantastic forever home last week.

Around four o'clock Mark and Denise told us that it was time for them to head back to Austin and I was sick because I didn't want them to leave because we were having so much fun.

I want to do a shout out to Ellen and June our super volunteers. Our plan worked! Thanks for working on Eileen like you said you would! Y'all Rock and so does Eileen! And Mark, Denise and Tater Catfish Stevens—we love y'all and please come back and visit us sooner than later!

Y'all have a great evening!