The TRUE Story of the Becky You Thought You Knew

Truth #1: She will make you smart.

A few months ago, my cohort in private practice/business owner hijinks, Ms. Becky, suggested that we participate in our national speech organization's online CEU conference on running a private practice (or, "Grad School Didn't Teach You About Business").  Only her caveat was that we needed to go away - out of town - to do this since heaven knows that we wouldn't be able to focus and learn while at home with the precious tots and dear hubbers around to drive us to distraction.  While I (sadly) wouldn't have considered this on my own, clearly my girl is brills, and off to Abingdon, VA we trotted.

 Bless her sweet soul, she found a great hotel for us and the room was quiet and perfect.  We just settled back on our cozy beds, pulled out the trusty laptops, tuned in to the conference, and proceeded to spend several hours tuning into Facebook, reading favorite blogs, texting listening to and learning from several scintillating sessions.  And no, ma'am.  There is no way that we even remotely made fun of other [nerdy, suck-up] speech pathologists that were tuning in to the live chat session we attended. 

 Truth #2: She will make you have fun.

Clearly, there is no way we could have gained all 30 possible CEU hours in one weekend without going completely insane, and while I am almost down that trail, I do like to leave just a little normal for the hubs.  So after a good night's rest and several sessions under our collective belt on Saturday morning, we took the afternoon to play. 

 Ms. Becky re-introduced me to a pastime I have explored (ha!  pun intended!) in the past, but haven't done in quite some time: geocaching.  Ms. Becky knows how to do all kinds of magical things with her phone, and this is one of them.  I'll be a monkey's uncle if there wasn't a geocache located in our hotel's parking lot...and evidently there were 9,999 more located in the Abingdon area.  And if we were going to find them, we needed fortification.  In the form of chocolate.  Which lead us to the building in the picture above.

If you look closely (or click it to enlarge), can you see the name?  Candyland?  Is it bad if I wondered if it was a porn shop before we went in? 

Truth #3: She will make you visit questionably-named shoppes

 So, no, actually it is indeed candy.  And the shoppe is run by about the cutest little older lady who had been reading her Bible before we came in.  She gave us several samples and loaded us up with our choices (for the families, obviously), all the while telling us how she only makes the fudge, but that the rest of the candy is "top of the line."

 Truth #4: She will make you stick your hand in all kinds of places you wouldn't have thought you would stick it.

This is a PG blog, folks.  Keep it wholesome there. Oh, did we geocache all over Abingdon!  It was so much fun.  Have you done this before?  It's like treasure hunting.  Sometimes all you find are little tiny geocaches.  The one at the hotel was in a film container.  And you can see how tiny the one below is:

 Inside was only a miniscule roll of paper to sign.  Super cute.  Can you find the geocache in the picture below??

 Lo and behold, you just think that the picture below is a moody train tracks scene, but oh my heavenly days, no!  There is a geocache hidden somewhere in this picture!

Truth #5: She will make you fit.

One of my favorite things we did that weekend was run together.  Now, my Becky Girl is a dedicated, fantastic runner. Me, on the other hand?  I'm only a dabbler.  Run for a month.  Take eight months off.  That's my style.  But my Ms. Becky encouraged me to give it a little whirlsie.  There is a beautiful trail through Abingdon called the Virginia Creeper.  While many people use it for biking, it's also used quite a bit for walking or running, too. We decided to try a run five minutes - walk two minutes pace.  Yes, I know that sounds slow, but in the words of my Great Encourager (that's Becky, by the way), "at least we're moving!"  We were able to log in about four miles that day. And that whole doggone time, she was so positive and encouraging and cheering me on. 

Truth #6: She will not hold your hair back for you when you urp.

So, perhaps going from non-running to running four miles was not my best idea, but it felt totally do-able.  However, around mile three, my stomach started to revolt.  I was just sure if I walked a bit the nausea would go away and we could PUMP it for the last mile.  Unfortunately, my stomach had other plans, and off to the side of the trail I went.  And away walked my Ms. Becky.  Girl does NOT do throw-up.  And truthfully, who of us really does want to do that.  It's all good.  I was done with running, but we did make it back to the car in one piece.

 Truth #7: She will allow you to participate in illegal activities.

Never fear: I did get some revenge the next day.  We (I?) decided to take the curvy mountain roads for scenic pleasure on the way home, and alas, it did not do so well for Ms. Becky.  She is a non-puker, though, so no urping was to be had, but unfortunately, she was not feeling up to a little side stop on our way home.  I have passed this house for years and have been dying to go up to it, but it's never been a great time. While Becky sat and chilled and gathered her stomach, I trotted right by the private property signs, through the Christmas trees, and up the hill to this fantastic old house. 

I took tons of pictures, but I ended up being too chicken pants to go inside by myself.  It's completely different from this house that I loved, but it's still so incredible.  Who in the world would build such a huge house waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere land a hundred years or so ago in Allegheny county? I think it might need a little work before I can move in.

Truth #8: She is a great travel companion and one of my favorite friends in the world.

We had such a great time, and there is no one with whom I would rather listen to boring lectures.  I *think* we learned some new things about running a private speech therapy practice. But what I really learned is what a treasure I have in this friendship.