I slept in til 11:00 am and felt terribly guilty about it. I also woke up and realized that I had purchased no presents for anyone this entire Christmas season. Oh I’m sorry I take that back. I got my nephew a $50 gift card for Best Buy and a “The Office” calendar for my other nephew. I haven’t mailed either of these things to either of them. Do I feel guilty about this? Not really. They all know that I operate on my own calendar. I do nice things for people all year long and I spend tons of money on my nieces and nephews all the fucking time. I fly those sons of bitches all over the country and pay for dinners for my friends whenever the bill comes and it gets awkward. I do want to point out that I have a specific family that I “sponsor” every year at Christmas and Mother’s Day. This woman helped my sister immensely during her heart surgery and has now been stricken with many many cancers and illnesses. I wish only the best for this woman and I wish for her health and happiness and each year I anonymously send gift cards to her. I receive a wonderful thank you card from each of her children each time addressed to “The Christmas Angel” and it always brings me to tears. So, really, Saint Nick, I am pretty fucking saintly myself.

We ended up at Toucan’s Ale House again. Classic. Day drinking is the best. I got the fried green beans after all. Quite nasty if I do say so myself.

We took a trip out to the house they have on the river … it’s called the Satilla River and it’s supposedly the 2nd cleanest river in Georgia. Whatever the hell that means. Jake was very anxious to get there, and again, if I had a clue I would post a video of him howling in the truck on the way there. There is also good footage of us driving through 4 feet of water to get there.

They have water mocasions as you can see

They had warned me about the cute yellow lab mutt stray dog that lives out there. He apparently showed up about 2 months ago with a collar … most likely someone just dropped him off and left him. They have been feeding him when they go there and buying dog food so that the crackhead neighbors can feed him daily as well. As it turns out, the neighbor hasn’t really been living up to his end of the deal.  My sister has named him Badger.

I have this same glass ball thingy at my place and makes for perfect reflection photos

Their place is pretty awesome… They have a house on stilts and an entire bar/lounge underneath the 1500 square foot house. Last year the place flooded and the water was up to here: (My sister is showing you the waterline here!)

We chilled out and drank some beers and told some stories….

And of course the Pink Monkey was there

As you can see Jake and Badger were having a blast.

This is Nikki and her new husky (I have 10 years worth of photos of her and her old husky Puma just like this)

We closed up shop and put a bowl of food out for Badger. We tried to drive away as he ate his food but he gobbled it super fast and ran after us. My brother-in-law told us that this was normal and that he would run for a while but would stop at a certain point. We got to that point and he kept running. I began crying. He was running as fast as his little malnourished body could take him and I fucking lost it. We pulled over and I went into the middle of the road to stop the oncoming traffic so I could grab him. Nikki was in the car calling the local Humane Society and we discovered that it was closed for the day. The dog was smelly and stinky and my brother-in-law was not interested in having this mutt at his house for the next couple of days. My sister and I decided that we would bring him back to the house at the edge of the dirt road because they had several adult dogs and 2 or 3 small 6 week old puppies. They could at least hold onto him for 30 minutes until we could drive away safely and then they would come back and get him in a day or two when there was a vet open or the Humane Society was open. She agreed and we hopped in the truck. As we pulled away he broke away from her and I refused to look back once I saw him running after us.

I am sitting here tonight on Christmas Eve hoping that Badger has found his way back to the cabin and found his bowl of water we left him and has nestled into his bed at the top of the stairs.

If  that dog is not there when we go back in 2 days I am not sure what is going to happen.