Since we are in the middle of selling and moving from our present house, I came up with the brilliant idea that it would make more sense to go ahead and move Holly’s furniture to Oxford now rather than move it to storage and then move it again. Naturally, that involved a rental moving truck and several teenage boys.

Fortunately, both were easy to find. With the rental truck safely in the driveway, my son Matthew managed to round up a few friends to help load up the furniture.

I’m not sure after I worked them to death if they are still considering themselves his friends or not, but they did a great job.

Since my family is moving to a rental house for a little while, we (make that me) decided we could first move all the living room furniture to storage and then load Holly’s furniture for the trip northward.

The boys hung in there, even when I lay down on the new mattress set smack in the middle of the lawn and let Holly take over on the slave driving, I did notice she was fairly proficient at cracking the whip.

Saturday with everything packed up we headed to Oxford. Holly drove my car and I drove the rental truck.

Emily opted to ride in the truck with me and quickly reminded me that she was a child of the 1990s.

She was fascinated with the little handle that rolled the window up and down! She lost fascination with the truck when we were coming out of gas station later on and mama couldn’t &uot;click the door open.&uot; She actually had to stand there for a minute or two until I could open the door with the key. And, no, she did not want to hear my story about how my first several cars worked that way or the story about walking to school in the snow, she was finished with the uncool truck.

Thank goodness it had a radio and air conditioning or I’m pretty sure I would have been riding alone.

We had guys on the other end of the trip to unload and place furniture and we managed to get it all in place.

By the time we left Monday dishes were washed, beds were made and all we lack is going back hanging and a few pictures. I swear it was harder doing this than it was taking her to the dorm last year.

I guess because I know this means that she probably won’t be home during the summers now and before coming home meant a break from the dorm. Now she has a great place to live and hangout on the weekends, thank goodness for holidays. I guess I could always try my dad’s trick, the one where you tell the college kid, &uot;if you want money this month I have to place it in your hand.&uot;

On another note the Carriage House restaurant was mentioned in this months Southern Living magazine in an article about Mississippi’s Best Biscuits, as if we needed confirmation on this fact. Congratulations to Dot and her staff on the write-up. However as one of my friends said, &uot;do they really need to tell everybody about the biscuits, I’m not sure I want to share them.&uot;

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Christina Hall

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