Blog EVERY day???

What was I thinking? Promise to blog every day in December? CRAZY! That's me. Guess what? Between being sick and traveling during Christmas, it didn't happen. It was a nice goal, though.

New Profile Picture

I think I would like to use this picture for my profile. What's that you say, who is this skinny girl? It's me during my senior year at Carolina.......thanks to Susan Thomason Haywood for posting her BSU pictures on facebook :-)

Lucky Rabbit's Foot?

Why is carrying a rabbit's foot considered lucky? It sure wasn't lucky for the rabbit. Just wondering........

Welcome Hobie

Here is a picture of my niece's dog, Hobie. She gets to take him home after Christmas. I can't wait for the doggie stories to begin.

O Christmas Tree

Here's the tree. It looks pretty good.

Tinsel and Woes

The only thing worse to me than putting up the Christmas tree is taking down the Christmas tree. Don't have any time to be blogging, but still I must keep up my "blog every day this month" promise, so here it is. My husband loves Christmas and everything about it. I would like to celebrate it maybe in March? Too much to do, too much to eat, just too much. Of course the true meaning of Christmas is the reason we celebrate, but the rest of the stuff is just a pain in the hiney. One thing I remember about my childhood is the stupid aluminum tree we had. UGLY. Then I find out that my husband LOVES those trees. I saw one in an antique shop window last week and so I thought, hey, throw some blue balls on that thing, plug up the color wheel and he will be happy, happy, happy. So, I pull in and guess how much they want for that monstrosity? $175!!!!! Yes, you read that correctly, one hundred and seventy-five dollars. That includes a free color wheel....so here I am today decorating my fake green tree as always...

Zoning Out

Everyone that knows me can agree that I am just a little neurotic. I have to have things just so, including the blinds, doors, and car seats. Apparently as I get older, I get a little more mellow (notice I wrote, "a little"). The other day I had a complete breakdown in my control routine. We had been out running errands and when we pulled back into the driveway and got out of the car, I heard Minnie barking in the back yard. I looked at Nick in total panic. "Why is Minnie in the back yard?!" We always leave the dogs in the house or the garage when we are not home. Not only had I left the dogs in the yard, I had left the back door standing wide open (the storm door was not even locked). I admit that I did this because when we left the house, Nick was standing at the front door waiting for me to get my shoes on and let the dogs in. I got my shoes, grabbed my purse and said, "I'm ready, let's go." And off we went for at least an hour and a half.... good thing we don't have children!

Silly Story for Friday

The other day my nephew's friend's mother told a great story on her youngest son. Her older son was getting a lesson on body parts with his 2 year old brother listening in. Later that night the 2 year old escaped from his bath naked, or nekked as we like to say. He ran through the house yelling at the top of his lungs, "boys have a penie, girls have a dinosaur!"

Good Advice

If you're wearing someone else's shoes, you're gonna get blisters.

SNOW

It's snowing!!! Okay, so they are tiny and sparsely gathered, but it is snow!!! Yeah, I love snow!

Math Problems

October 29th
Today I am the substitute for a high school math teacher. As an English teacher by degree, I consider myself to be the polar opposite of a math teacher. As I look around this classroom my theory becomes abundantly clear. Every poster or announcement is placed on the wall with calculated precision. Each morsel of information is presented clearly and without excessive verbiage. No extraneous articles live in this classroom. Even the teacher’s desk is a sparsely utilitarian table with no drawers or cubby holes. Is this neatly ordered environment an outward manifestation of the mathematical mind? My workspaces are rarely neat and orderly. Certainly, at the end of the day, I like to leave my desk with neat piles of paperwork or stacked books awaiting readers; however, in the midst of my workday you’ll find loose papers with illegible scribbles, opened books and magazines, open packs of crackers and half empty Pepsi bottles. I fill my favorite environments with warm embellishments, pillows and throws, flowers, whimsical pictures, cut out cartoon and newspaper clippings.

I earned good grades in math, but that doesn’t mean I understood what I was doing or more importantly, why? I always joke that I could never complete mathematical word problems in the time allotted because I was more concerned with the details of the story than the distance between two points and the time of arrival. “If Johnny left station on train A at noon…” What I really wanted to know was what were they serving in the dining car and why was Johnny going to Peoria in the first place? Not the method for a numerical answer, but definitely the basis for a good short story.

At the end of this day, I determined that the substitute for Geometry should be someone who had actually thought about angles and degrees in the last thirty years. Thankfully, my students have been proficient in peer instruction. From now on, I will limit my mathematical problems to determining the ratio of sugar to water in my sweet iced tea.

My Politically Incorrect Statement

“Give a man to fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” Author Unknown

I believe that people who work hard should be rewarded. Sometimes we all need a little help and I am not against situational charity. I am, however, against enabling people to adopt charity as a lifestyle. I myself have been the recipient of governmental charity. I wanted to attend college and even though I had no financial assets, I was able to apply for financial aid. Through a combination of work study, grants, and student loans I was able to attend a state supported university. My father passed away while I was in college and I received survivor benefits from Social Security until I graduated. I am very grateful for this assistance; however, once I graduated, my future was up to me.

All of us should be appalled at the idea to “share the wealth”. I am a responsible citizen and I understand the need to pay taxes in order to support my community, state, and nation. Certain financial needs of our nation must be met by our tax dollars; however, in my opinion, that does not include supporting citizens who will not work. In order to “share the wealth”, a disproportionate amount of people are forced to “share the load”. My standard of living is compromised because of people who don’t contribute. Let’s just say that I can be a little selfish about sharing, but that is my right. When I participate in charities, they should be the ones of my choosing, not those the government dictates. I believe if you don’t work, you don’t eat. While I acknowledge that some people are sick or disabled, far too many people employ a myriad of excuses to remain at the mercy of government assistance or charity handouts.

One idea that contributes to this problem is the “I want ________” syndrome. The chasm between needs and wants spans a distance the width of the Grand Canyon. Popular culture and the celebrity loving generations seduce people into coveting a lifestyle far beyond the reality of their financial balance sheets. I love to read the Sunday paper. The colorful ads are quite breathtaking. Many times I have found myself out shopping with the goal to purchase something I saw on Sunday. For several months I was housebound and unable to shop. I discovered that I didn’t usually need the items featured in those ads. I consider myself to be of above average intelligence and yet, I have easily fallen for these marketing ploys. What manner of defense does someone who is uneducated and easily manipulated have? Surely, they have been forced into foreclosure and credit card default because they were unable to resist the song of the material girl siren. Should I pay the penalties for those people? The socialist mindset says “yes”. The answer lies perhaps in tighter regulations on credit cards policies, lenders, banks, but not a higher tax rate for those of us who have not defaulted on our obligations.

The adage, “live within your means” sounds trite and old fashioned, but truly offers the best advice for our country today.

A Weighty Issue

Some of you are probably thinking that my blog entries are too long. I know, writing for me is a lot like eating popcorn, I can’t stop until the bowl is empty. One of my college professors told me I should try to write more like Hemingway and less like Dickens, but you know what? I really don’t like Hemingway all that much. Most of the time, I want to know more, not less, so if you can only skim my articles, that’s okay, or try my foodie blog, those posts are shorter. : -)

I wish I were thinner. I know we all think that, but every year, at every milestone, I think, “next year will be better.” The problem is that in two years I will be 50, and I am still trying to accomplish that which I started before age 30…..

My family is divided on the issue of weight, oh what the heck, let’s just call it what it is, fat! My mother is a little bitty thing and was obviously selfish with those genes. My father was tall and broad, but not fat, in fact as a young man, he was very skinny (think Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld); however, I got my body genes from my father’s mother. She died five years before I was born, but in her pictures she is short and wide with a built in shelf, just like me. My oldest brother was skinny when he was young and most of the time now, he is just a little pudgy. He is one of those people who can stop eating ice cream for a month and lose weight. My other brother is like me. He was once very athletic, but after starting an office job, developed a weight problem. And like me, right now he is on the “up” side. We have both tried every reasonable diet and a few unreasonable ones, yet we always come back to the same point, needing to lose more weight. We were talking the other day and I made the comment that I thought I would have an easier time recovering from an alcohol addiction than a food addiction. He agreed, having spent several months avoiding alcohol, but still not losing more than 15 or 20 pounds in the process. He said not drinking was way easier than trying to eat less food.

I wasn’t always fat. In fact, when I was sixteen I weighed 125 and at 5’5” that was the perfect weight for my frame. I can’t remember my exact age, but I remember the conversation well. Our family doctor told me that I was fat. I may have been a little pudgy around the middle, and of course the girls had made their debut in the 5th grade, making me top heavy, but he had no reason to call me fat. My already shredded self image was completely destroyed. I made my mother buy clothes that were too big for me, especially tops, and I refused to tuck my shirts into my pants because I was too fat. I started skipping lunch at school, eating Nabs or nothing at all. I was setting a dangerous pattern for my health. Throughout college, my weight fluctuated 1o to 15 pounds, and I started my adulthood around 140, a little heavy, but not even enough to worry about, that is if you were a normal person. I was so obsessed with losing those 15 pounds that my weight was up and down constantly. I was either starving myself to death or I was eating whatever I wanted, there was no happy medium for me. Once I started working in an office, my weight started to creep upward, so I continued that good/bad cycle for years.

I would like to someday resolve this issue, but I don’t know how. At this point, I have so much weight to lose (sitting around in a hospital or rehab for weeks and months didn’t help either) that I don’t know if I will ever lose anything significant. I am searching for something, the right thing to help me. I’ve prayed many times for God to take this addiction away from me. I don’t know if He is saying, “no”, or “not now”, but I am anxiously awaiting a resolution. I often wonder how things would have been different for me if that doctor had never called me fat.

Mountain Memories

A three room house with no indoor plumbing, newsprint for wallpaper, and a coal burning pot belly stove come to my mind’s eye when I think of West Virginia. My grandmother’s house stood about midway up the mountain of a valley called Derrick’s Creek; Derrick for my great grandmother’s family. Nothing of this secluded valley resembled my home in the flat, sandy soil of eastern North Carolina. The winding roads had been carved through solid rock and often yielded to rock slides and crumbling or nonexistent shoulders. Bridges appeared from nowhere, spanning over white water rapids and rocky beaches. My normally keen sense of direction was disabled and I found myself unable to distinguish north, south, east, or west. The sun played hide and seek with the mountain peaks. Often this shy ball of light appeared late in the morning over the walnut trees and the dark night held no street lights or even porch lights; only moon and stars, and the dark shadows of the hills. Our well timed visits avoided the heavy rains and snow at all costs. True to the name, a creek flowed from farther up the mountain and around my grandmother’s house. A bridge, really nothing more than five or six boards nailed together, made for a small path to drive across. Any significant rainfall flooded the creek deeming the bridge “uncross able”. Sometimes we parked up at the paved road and walked the cart path up to the house. First you passed the crib. I’ve never understood shy this rickety old shed was called a crib. At this point, the only babies belonged to mouse or snake mothers who made their nests amidst the discarded household and farm paraphernalia. Once you crossed the bridge, the coal pile lay on the right and on the left an unpainted out house sat against the creek bank. I only used this under the direst of circumstances. The small house sat in a clearing of walnut and sugar maple trees. The creek meandered around the side and front of the house sculpting out a flat field that once grew corn, beans, and turnips. A stonewalled well sat to the right of the house and the fruit cellar hid beneath a huge rock that must have been too large to move from the yard. A little white and brown terrier named Trixie would announce our arrival. Once inside, the sweet smell of vanilla wafers and snuff permeated the furniture and linens. I never saw the pot belly stove burning because we only visited in the summer. To visit the hidden valley in winter would be to risk becoming snowbound. Electricity and running water to the kitchen sink modernized the old cottage filled with feather beds, wardrobes for closets, and bare light bulb fixtures. My memories of this house and the chamber pot under the bed dictate my pronunciation of the word pecan: pucahn, not peecaan.

My ancestors were from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands. I don’t know what enticed them to settle in this wild, rocky terrain. I myself would have been tempted to stay close to the ocean, but they traveled on from the east coast into the high mountains of western Virginia. Perhaps they were searching for an environment that reminded them of the lands they had abandoned back in the old country. Overall, I did not spend much time in West Virginia. We went every summer for a week or two at the most; however, the effect of these high hills has been significant. I call this my hillbilly gene. One of my legs is shorter than the other; my mother says this is for walking along side the mountains on the uneven pathways. I love the old timey bluegrass music with the sad crying fiddles and tinny banjos, and every so often I must answer the call of the mountains for a visit. One day I would like to visit the site of my grandmother’s little house. Some time after she passed away, the families of Derrick’s Creek sold to a company that developed a golf course and modern neighborhood. Only the name retains the heritage of the Derricks, Wilkinsons, Workmans, and Kings, but wherever we are we carry the hillbilly gene and the memory of the families of Derrick’s Creek.

For Verna Evel Wilkinson King

I remember mountains, wildflowers in the summer

Vanilla wafers and a thick old dusty Bible

Chilly nights and hot sticky days

I remember an old walnut tree, strong and unyielding, the rose bush full of sharp weapons, wounding those who dared to steal the blooms

And Grandma

Happy tears streamed down the wrinkles of her aged beauty as she reached out to hug me and slap my back

I loved her then, the long grayed braids that wrapped her head, the brown weathered hands, worn with pain and hard work, the lined brow, her dark knowing eyes

What lies ahead in this world is dark and scary, but she was always strong and unafraid, as firm as the mountain on which she lived

I look back and search for that strength she possessed, I need it now

I cannot find it, if only I were like her, like that old tree that stood in her yard, decades, old, enduring life with its unending, howling winds

Yet her memory stays within my soul and lives forever

Death cannot separate the memories from the living

The strong face without fear the obstacles and trials thrust upon them

They will receive rest and glory at their finish

I smile to think of her glory

Even though I often feel unworthy, I accept her legacy of strength and stubborn determination and pledge to be strong

Like Grandma.

November 11, 1977

Save more ta tas

You asked for it, here it is: http://www.savethetatas.com for all kinds of stickers and other fun stuff!

Waves of Mercy

My father loved the beach. I didn’t growing up, but I was in denial. I’ve never wanted to be like my father. He was harsh, cold, sometimes even violent, and we lived in fear of his mood swings and alcohol induced rage. I am a lot like him, you see, and I don’t like it one bit. Inside of me there is something dark and unnamed that reminds me of him; the tendency for moodiness, reticence for affection, selfishness. Of course, he had another side that his family rarely saw. He could be the life of the party. He was funny and liked to pull pranks on his friends. He loved his grandchildren, but his children had too many times felt the sting of his heavy hand and ugliness of his temper to feel truly loved. Our trips to the beach for me were too much about him. I was unable to embrace that vast, roaring ocean as my own. Then he died. Life changed for all of us. In a way we were relieved that we could go on without his controlling eye, but when he left, he took every part of him: the ugly and the funny. I’ve often said you can’t argue with a dead man, even so, I began my long and unfulfilling journey seeking his approval and love. I never found it. I did, however, find the beach.

I discovered a place, courtesy of my brother that holds no ghosts for me. I first went to Salter Path the summer before my senior year of college, several months after my father’s death. At first I didn’t know if I would make it onto Emerald Isle because I have a fear of bridges. When I turned my car right off of Hwy 24 and saw that behemoth bridge that crosses the Intracostal Waterway, my heart stopped, but my mother urged me on and I made it over. How I laugh at that memory. I still don’t like bridges, but now I reserve that fear for the real bridges like those in Charleston or the Chesapeake Bay. In spite of the approach to the island, my first glimpse of the sound and the ocean never fails to take my breath away. One day, my ashes will float on the gentle, rippling waves of Bogue Sound.

My first trip to the beach was most undoubtedly in utero since I was born in August, near the end of the summer. We lived about two hours from the beach and day trips were not unusual. I have seen pictures of my parents and extended family members wearing bathing suits and sitting on picnic tables somewhere between here and the coast. From a very early age I can remember the pull of the waves on my short legs and the feel of tiny shells and sand in my swimsuit. The sea, sun, and sand meld into a magical medicine for my soul. When someone suggests that I go to my “happy place”, I instantly hear the crash of the waves and feel the tickle of beach sand beneath my feet. When I can’t sleep at night, I imagine the soothing rock of the ocean, floating weightlessly in the waves, until rest comes. Most importantly, in embracing my love for the beach, I have forgiven my father. I couldn’t for a long time. I had a lot of my own demons to exorcise and forgiveness stuck in my throat like a peanut butter sandwich. I want to say that with age comes wisdom, but writing that makes me want to roll my eyes! I have learned that we all have our hard things to bear, and while sometimes I think I’ve had more than my share (don’t we all think that?), I have crossed over to the side of understanding the value of those experiences, good and bad. God in His infinite wisdom gave us the promise of mercy that is fresh with each new day, just like the tides. We must show each other that same mercy. Have you ever left something on the beach, maybe a towel or a tee shirt? You thought it was safe high up on the sand, only to find it washed away when you came back for it? I love the beach early in the morning when the sand is hard packed and smooth with no footprints or half eroding sandcastles. Who knows what treasures await after the tide has cleared away the debris and leftovers of a busy summer day. And the winter: my favorite season for a respite at the shore! And so my love affair with the salt air and endless sea continues…..

Save the Ta Tas

I saw a bumper sticker the the other day that made me laugh so hard I snorted Pepsi through my nose. It was a pink ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness and under the ribbon it read, "Save the Ta Tas".

Biker Chicks Unite

I had a great bike when I was a child. It was a Huffy with a blue glittery banana seat with a sissy bar, and blue and white streamers from the handles. Sometimes I used a white wicker basket to bring bread home from the store. Riding a bike was hard on my street. I grew up on a red dirt road. The road grader would scrape the street and make a ridge on either side. Getting over that ridge on a bicycle was like jumping a storm ditch. If I wasn’t really careful my wheels would get stuck and I would end up in a twisted heap in the sand. I spent a lot of my childhood with my legs covered in pinkish red globs of Metholade. I don’t really know what was in that stuff, but my mother put it on every scrape, cut, or bruise.

For a while my father worked at the DuPpont plant in Wilmington, so we would spend the summer at Wilmington Beach (between Carolina Beach and Kure Beach). He had bought a small lot about three blocks from the ocean and put a two bedroom house trailer on it. I hated going to that trailer. Most kids would have loved it, but not me. My brothers are so much older than me that it was a lot like being an only child. I really had nothing to do. We seldom went down to the ocean because my mother and I didn’t know how to swim. Reading comic books and riding my bike were my only entertainment. I loved riding my bike there because the streets were paved.

For some reason my mother believes that I was not good at riding a bike. I guess she thinks this because of the frequent wipe outs I had in the sand. Sometimes in conversation my mother (randomly) will say, “you never could ride a bike.” This cracks Nick up, so when I’m feeling a little high and mighty, he likes to repeat her mantra. That brings me down to earth in a flash. I wonder whatever happened to that bike?

I'm Royalty Now!

I went to the dentist yesterday for the first step of my coronation. I was so surprised when Dr. Jacobyansky called me last night to make sure that my temporary crown was feeling okay. What great service! If you need a dentist I highly recommend Cross Creek Dental.

Therapy Playground?

I never intended my blog to be a platform for griping, but I have to give a jeer to a business I saw on Friday. This is apparently an addition to the nursing home near Wingate Drive (Cumberland Rd.) The name of the business is Therapy Playground. Anyone who has ever had any type of physical therapy should be offended, because nothing about it involves play, pleasure, or anything remotely recreational. Yes, therapy is good and positive in that it can restore someone to health, but to consider it a playground greatly insults me.

GRITS

This entry is dedicated to my good friend Lena and all the other GRITS in my life. For those of you who don’t know, that stands for Girls Raised In The South! Lena and I were once as thick as thieves as they say, although I don’t think we ever “stole” anything, well maybe the laundry cart at Caraway, but that was really Howard, not us. We spent many hours lamenting over the lack of “real men” in Raleigh and why everything we loved to eat was not on the Weight Watchers plan (pre points). Thank God we finally found our men, but I am still a professional weight watcher. How many Snickers bars can I eat and still claim to be on a diet???

Lena is one of the few people I know that loves all kinds of music from bluegrass to Handel, and we covered it all. I still don’t know how those guys got that baby grand in your upstairs apartment! I cherish all those hours we spent singing all our favorite songs. One day we’re gonna do that again, I promise.

We had some great road trips: the beach trip where you got your feet sunburned (you know better!), the catatonic rides on the parkway, and the endless miles we logged without actually leaving Wake County! In fact, we had fun wherever we were. Who can forget my legendary “Sister Act” party? You make a great lounge singer!

Time moves on, but the feelings in our hearts remain, so even though I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age, you are never far from my thoughts. Thanks for putting a song in my heart. Love ya, miss ya, bye.

Carolina in my Mind

Last week I happened to drive through the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the day the class of 2012 was due to arrive. The early morning sun sparkled on the freshly scrubbed campus streets and dorm windows. The student store stood with overstuffed shelves waiting patiently for the first of the wide eyed faces eager to purchase notebooks, pens, and tee shirts. I was carried back to my first small tentative steps across those brick walkways. Thirty years have passed since my brother dropped me off at the bottom of the hill of Hinton James dorm. After unloading my things he treated me to lunch at Roy Rogers where I had the first of many double “R” bar burgers. Parents with their station wagons and trailers were crowding the drop off circle making parking difficult, so we said our goodbye as quickly as pulling off a band-aid. The sting was no less sharp. I watched through watery eyes as his car disappeared in to the curve of Manning Drive.

My journey to Chapel Hill had started at least a year prior to my arrival. Those steps were sure and swift, a contrast to the tip toes of my first days on campus. Modern young women find our stories hard to believe. I have never thought of myself as a liberated woman, yet I have struggled to maintain my identity as an individual in a world of female stereotypes. The demarcation between traditionalist and feminist was blurry in the seventies. I wanted to be a journalist, but most of all; I wanted to leave my father’s house as quickly as possible. My father thought I should get a job as a clerk at the local Winn Dixie. He felt education was wasted on girls because they should focus on finding husbands and raising children, and he forbade me to pursue college. Self preservation and indignation rose up in a stormy duet surging me to defiance. I would find a way to leave his town, his house, his tyranny. I made my own way, without any help from him. In retrospect, I don’t know from where that strength of character came, but come it did, and I found myself alone, sitting in a tiny dorm room waiting for my roommate and my life to begin.

Was it yesterday or thirty years ago? Every step that I have taken since depended on those first steps toward independence and adulthood. My life is forever tinted “Carolina Blue”.

August 19, 2008
CARPE DIEM
I have no children, nor am I a student, yet today in Target, I was mysteriously drawn to the rows of school supplies. In a flash I had placed a brand new, spiral bound notebook in my cart. So now, I have a red notebook with one hundred sheets of clean, unmarred paper, college ruled at that. I remember the notebooks from my adolescense. Balloon letters announcing my BFF or favorite band decorated the back cover, but somewhere deep inside on one of the cardboard dividers would be the name of my secret crush, usually a name like Chipper or Butch. Who knows where they are now?
An empty notebook holds the tender hopes of a new school year, a chance to make better choices. When the school year is over and the notebook filled, we have a different view. We’ve completed a course, grown a little, sometimes a lot, and we’ve filled the empty pages with life. This notebook will be no different. I have plans for the pages and the days they represent. Some days, like today, I will be serious and moody. Other days, I’ll use the pages to plan vacations and parties, making lists of clothes to pack and recipes to cook.
I need the promises of fresh days that clean pages bring. Recently, a friend of ours killed himself. We have been tangled in inane but necessary details, moving numbly through paperwork, police investigations, and funeral services. Everyday we look at each other and ask “why?”. Sometimes in the afternoon of August 8th, Jeff Cartee chose to leave this world. None of us will ever know why on this side of heaven. He was a great guy, funny, a prankster. Someone who loved life, but recently he had had some health issues—debilitating headaches so severe he was forced to leave his chaplain post and return to civilian duty. At 7:15 am on the morning he died, he sent an email containing his resume to our director of missions. He was considering a pastoral position, but later that day something happened that so overwhelmed him that he simply gave up on life. My heart aches with the heaviness of despair and hopelessness he must have felt. When I see him in heaven, and I will see him, I want to look into his face and say, “Jeff, what were you thinking? We love you, we miss you. Why couldn’t we help?”
So today as I begin to fill the crisp pages of my new red notebook, I am determined to fill my life with people and actions that count. We often never know the physical pain or mental anguish that challenges our friends and family. We must use each day to demonstrate love, to live our lives as if this were our last day on earth. Carpe diem, sieze the day!
Thanks for the memories, Jeff, I’ll see you on the other side!