It's been a bit of a whirlwind this past week. 
The Friday after we said our goodbyes to her we decided to go on a bit of a road trip to hopefully keep us occupied. Not the road trip that we had originally planned, but a shorter one just to get out of the house.
As I said the other day, we have never lived in this house without Jovi, so there are far too many memories everywhere just staring us in the face. When we got back from our road trip we found the nice bouquet of flowers you see above. It was sent by my wife's family and it's beautiful. I can't help but notice there might be a few orchids in there.
I think anyway.
You'll probably laugh when I tell you the road trip we took ended up being to a meat market. I don't know why, but one day this post showed up on my Facebook feed talking about this place called Man Bear Meat in the small northern town of Grayling, MI.
It intrigued me enough that I started following the page and before long I was dead set on visiting the place. The specialty bratwurst, sausages, and side dishes this guy was making looked amazing. I knew it wasn't a traditional storefront, but I never would have expected what it ended up being.
I actually tried to find it on a previous trip, but I wasn't able to since I didn't have GPS at the time and I wasn't sure what to look for.
I think
You can't see it in the photo above, but on the far left door there is a sign that says "open".
I got out of the car and told
It's a quite small space and the guy was standing right there, so I didn't want to take too many photos. The one above is the best I could do when it comes to the inside of the place. It's basically just two large coolers full of meat on the side and then some shelves on the other wall with spices and things like that.
The guy actually seemed really nice and if I had been in a bit different headspace I might have spent some time chatting with him. As it was though, I kind of just wanted to get in, buy some meat and get out. I ended up buying three different flavors of bratwurst (sold in four packs), a length of Kielbasa, and some homemade pasta salad. Grand total: $58 USD.
While I hoped the road trip would take our minds off of the loss, it really just gave us lots more time to think about it since we were stuck in the car. Plus, on the way home I realized we were taking the same route I took when I picked Jovi up the first time from the animal control office. That tore me up pretty good.
We've been blessed with some summerlike weather in Michigan the past several days. With temps in the 70's and the sun shining bright, it was a given that I needed to do some grilling. In the photo above you can see a Chicken Fajita Brat, a Morel Mushroom and Swiss Cheese Brat, and some homemade Kielbasa all from Man Bear Meat.
It was all delicious. I couldn't help but be a little sad though as Jovi was my grilling buddy. She used to out with me anytime I would go to check on the grill, so that was a bit bittersweet.
Saturday morning I drove over to my parents just to let them know that I was alive and I was doing okay. I had one small breakdown while I was there, but I just stepped into the other room while the grief passed over me. We got my mom the lily you see above for Easter. I purposely picked one that didn't have any flowers yet so she could see all the flowers as they came out. I was happy to see it was blooming quite nicely.
My mom sent us a message the other day letting us know that every single bloom was finally out on the lily and it was beautiful. That brought a smile to my face which was nice since I haven't had much reason to do that lately.
Saturday I grilled again, Nashville Hot style chicken sandwiches. I know it looks like it is burnt in some places, but that is actually just the pickle juice, brown sugar, paprika, chili powder and cayenne pepper marinade that we let the chicken sit in before we grilled it.
They were delicious an the heat had me crying for a different reason that I had been all weekend!
As I was outside grilling, I walked over to our small raised bed garden and I noticed the garlic I had planted two years ago was coming up again. I didn't harvest any last year because I kind of screwed things up. This year I plan on just leaving it alone and waiting to see what I can get. It does look like I need to do a bit of weed pulling!
Life is moving on as you would expect it should. I only cried once yesterday, so that is a vast improvement over where I had been. We still miss Jovi and we always will, but the wounds are starting to heal even quicker than I might have expected. I almost feel a bit guilty about that, but I know she was suffering, and now she isn't so that helps.
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
