A 6-week Thanksgiving Season

I wrote this a month ago on Canadian Thanksgiving, and just found it in my drafts. Fortunately, despite the stores already decked for Giftmas shopping season, it's still very applicable here!

In honor (or should I say honour? I never even spelled it that way when I lived in Canada!) of Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, I would like to stop and say that I am thankful for:

• my fuzzy blankie, in which I am curled up right now (both when I originally wrote this, and right now!)
• our new hammock and the perfect trees to hang it between
• everything about fall - the turning leaves, cooler weather, pumpkins, cozy sweaters and scarves, my crockpot, and the fact that eggnog will be on store shelves any minute now (and now it's here! I have some in the fridge!)
• my job at a school for dyslexic children, and the opportunity to pick up the phone and offer hope and help each day to families who don't know where to start
• my health, and the fact that I can get on my bike or go for a run or pretty much anything I want to do (not that I always want to do those things, but at least the fact that I can...!)
• the ability to fall asleep easily and sleep well at night (and in the afternoon, and in the car, and in the dentist's chair...)
• maps and google earth, on which I can spend hours without even realizing it
• fascination for the world around me
• the ability to feel at home and among friends most everywhere I go
• the Asian markets down the street and creativity in the kitchen

And I've added some more this morning as I re-read this and got "in the spirit" again:

• my family and B.'s family, who have welcomed me as their own right from day one
• the ability to laugh at myself
• a 13+ year marriage that is only getting better and better
• New Zealand accents, because they're so much fun to imitate (it's our latest go-to for quick entertainment - no matter where we are and who's around. It's becoming a problem.)
• that I don't have to speak with a New Zealand accent all the time, 'cause it's actually really hard work
• weddings and other excuses for people to set aside their worries and fears and celebrate life and goodness and hope

Random Thoughts

Been a while. Trying to catch up after the week missed following the storms, and realizing that I probably won't catch up. Just have to pick the most important items on the to-do lists and hit those hard.

A random list of comments and observations, to match the scatteredness of my thoughts today:

1. At home in Canada we called peonies "PEE-uh-nies". In the South, people say "pee-OH-nies".

2. Yesterday I planted 4 varieties of tomatoes (Romas, an heirloom variety similar to Romas, an heirloom yellow pear tomato, and a bigger red and yellow heirloom called "Mr. Stripey" because I wanted heirloom tomatoes and liked the way they looked on the package). I also put in 4 varieties of peppers (sweet green bells, cute little red mini-bells, hot banana peppers, and jalapenoes), and some yellow crookneck squash. Also added Thai basil and boxwood basil to my already-planted sweet basil and can't stop thinking about it. I replaced the rosemary plant that I killed by putting it outside too early and freezing it to death. I'm very excited about getting the garden in two months earlier than last year, which means that we will have loads of fresh yummy stuff to eat this summer.

3. I got bit by a spider while planting everything, which raised much alarm amongst Southern family members on facebook, who were convinced I was going to swell up and die if I didn't immediately post a photo for their scrutiny, but it was not a poisonous spider and I'm still here to tell about it.

4. I really just wanted to talk about the garden getting planted, not go down a rabbit trail about spider bite deaths and dismemberments. One good friend was kind enough to just "like" the status update the way I intended it, and spare me the lecture. Hi Charity!

5. I got a piano. Now I have to practice so I can have skype piano concerts for my dad. He used to sit and listen to me play for hours when I was growing up. I think we both miss it.

6. I think I'm going to raid the school library over the summer and read all the great kids' books that have come out since I was 10 and reading fiendishly, staying up all night with a towel shoved under my door so my parents couldn't see the light coming through the crack and make me go to sleep. When they did make me turn the light off, I used to use the glowing red digits of my alarm clock as a reading light. No wonder I need corrective lenses.

7. Had a visit from an old friend last week on her way down to Texas, and may get to see her again this week on her way back up. We were friends in Minneapolis, but she's living and working in eastern Kentucky now. She's the first friend from the Minneapolis era who's been down here since we moved, so that was really exciting. I love the kind of friendships that pick up right where they left off and though you've been in different places doing different things, you've followed a similar enough trajectory that you have more than enough to talk about. It's kind of therapeutic.

8. I'm feeling compelled to make this list into an even 10, for reasons unbeknownst to me, so here's hoping this helps.

9. The neighbor is mowing his lawn and running over rocks or roots or something loud and chunky. It can't be good for the mower blades. Remind me to tell you some neighbor stories sometime.

10. Think I might go for a run before it gets too dark and before I get too hungry. It won't be dark for a while yet, but if I eat first, I'll have to wait for it to settle, and before I know it, it's time to set the alarm clock for work in the morning. Sigh. "I've got the Sunday afternoon bluuuuuuuuues, baby, take it away..."

I think this week will be busy but fun. Hope you have a great week too!

One Week Later: Remembering Tornado Day 2011

You know who your real friends are when something like this happens. They're the ones who try to contact you and make sure you're all right.

Apparently there were 215 reported tornado touchdowns in the Southeast, and 150 of these were in Alabama. In one day. They're still debating how many were "confirmed" vs. "reported" - that is, how many towns were hit by the same tornado as other towns, vs. separate funnels. Either way, it's interesting to see people from other places commenting later, after just seeing photos and footage, saying that they didn't realize how serious the damage and loss was here. We all think, "Oh, yeah, tornadoes. We have those all the time and it's usually nothing." That's what we were thinking too, until we were in the middle of it.

It started at 5 am with the sirens going off. Since I work at a school, I got a call at 6 am saying that we were delaying the start of school until 10 am, after the first band of bad weather passed through. There was more on the radar for late afternoon, so we figured we'd probably end up dismissing early as well. We ended up having to dismiss much earlier than we'd originally thought - 12:15. Only by that time, right as parents were arriving to pick up their kids, the sirens were wailing again, rain was coming down in sheets, and the sky was as black as night.

We are not allowed to dismiss children from schools while tornado sirens are going off, so any parents who arrived at that time had to come inside to the vaults in the interior of the building where the kids and staff were huddled. That band of storms passed through and we had a short break, during which we managed to get all of the kids and staff sent home except for one. A teacher was transporting a student who lived near her, far to the west of us, where the storms were coming from, so they decided to stay at school until it was all over. The rest of us made it home by 2:30 or 3:00, depending where we were headed, and in either case, it was just in time.

For the next 6 hours, it was like a tornado assembly line, starting in the west and coming eastward relentlessly. By the time one reached our area, there were two in line behind it, about 20 or 30 miles apart, following the same well-worn path. The same thing was happening in other areas around us as well.

It was actually pretty scary, when you had weather guys with twenty years of experience saying things like, "I've NEVER seen ANYTHING like this!" At first we were watching it on tv, but suddenly everyone's power went out in several counties at once. Not even the news station had power, and the local doppler radars and neighborhood sirens weren't even working anymore. People didn't know when or where the next one was going to hit.

We hunkered down in the basement with a battery-operated camping lantern and radio. Fortunately we'd grabbed a bag of barbecue chips and a couple of oranges from the counter on the way down there, as that became our dinner.

The news people were on the radio taking calls and relaying news from anyone who could still call in and report what they were seeing, or what they heard from friends watching the news in other states. We were hearing reports from towns in every direction around us. Whole neighborhoods and even small towns were being wiped off the map. People were showing up at hospitals with pickup trucks full of people with wounds from flying debris. Traffic was backed up for miles on the interstate west of us, unable to get past overturned semi trucks, sitting ducks crouching in their cars praying to escape the next round. And then it was dark. The storms continued a little over an hour yet beyond dark, revealed only by called-in commentary on the radio. Then they subsided, but only those with a radio knew that it was safe to come out of hiding.

We learned that a major power plant had been hit. They said giant transmission towers were twisted like tin foil, uprooted with their concrete bases in the air, and that 90 massive cables headed out of the main plant had snapped. Hundreds of thousands like us were without power and would be for anywhere from 3-5 days. People started panicking. With businesses shut down, where would they get food, ice, gas? Callers flooded the lines, asking where they could find a place to get oxygen tanks and plug in their machines for necessary medical treatments like dialysis. Many fled to towns over an hour away with power, and hundreds of cars flocked every open gas station and grocery store. Shelves were cleared of food, generators, and other supplies and draining gas reservoirs within hours.

Since we were fortunate enough to have a tank full of gas and a house to go back to, we were just dealing with the power outage. Of course we'd just gone grocery shopping the day before. We left the fridge and freezer shut and headed down to a town 70 miles south of us, where B.'s parents live. We charged our cell phones in the car and I spent the majority of that day on the phone trying to reach all of our staff and student families. I managed to get in touch with all but a few. There were some very close calls, but other than some trees down, our people and their families and homes are all okay. We stayed a night there, waiting for another shipment of generators to arrive at a local dealer, then headed back up to plug our fridge back in. Being the camping type, we were well equipped with gear already, so we were in pretty good shape. We did a lot of grilling and cooking on the Coleman camp stove.

There were news reports of looting at night, even a report of a looter being shot to death by a convenience store owner that first night we were away. They had to enforce a dusk-dawn curfew for any areas without power. It was like Mad Max, staying home after dark and hearing all the generators running, but it really did curb the looting problem. But I must say, hearing about the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden on a battery operated radio in the dark in that context made it seem like quite an apocalyptic event.

There was also a lot of incredible help and support from all over the place. The disaster response teams' daily press conference, heard over our little radio, directed would-be volunteers to a couple of big downtown churches and community centers, and there was such a great response that they were having to turn people away in some of the hardest hit areas. We were encouraged to hear about a couple from Wisconsin who cut their Florida vacation short to head back up through Alabama and help out for a couple of days. Then convoys of power trucks came down from Nashville to help Alabama Power get things back up and running. Stores and gas stations got generators running and made the necessities available. The crazy lines subsided as people realized they weren't going to starve. Brian Williams came home early from London to report on the news here instead of the royal wedding. President Obama came to Alabama for the first time since he's been in office, visiting our hardest hit places, declaring many counties federal emergency areas and promising funds to make up for the loss and help with the rebuilding. The sun came out, but not too harshly, and the weather cooperated with relief efforts and the lack of air conditioning. More and more there were signs of sanity and help on the way.

Our power came back on in the middle of Sunday night, just over 4 days after it went out, and has continued to pop up in more and more places since then. Curfews have been lifted. Schools are still closed until tomorrow (Thursday), a whole week later. I went in and got the internet and phones back up and running this afternoon, and the maintenance crew was working on the air conditioning. We should be good to go in the morning, but the kids are going to be so excited that they probably won't get a whole lot done beyond sharing their stories with each other!

There's a facebook page where people are posting photos and documents found in their yards after the tornadoes, and B. found a picture of his great aunt in there! What are the odds of that? Someone found it in Athens. As far as we know the family is all safe, so we're trying to figure out who the photo belonged to, maybe one of her friends in Decatur? That's 15-20 miles away, but people were finding stuff from down here up in Tennessee, so it's believable.

Easter Afternoon Stroll in the Botanical Gardens

This is a bit belated. I started on it Easter Sunday, then had issues uploading photos, then this happened, so here it finally is.

Anyway, it seemed like an Easter thing to do, don a flowery sundress and meander through the myriad outdoor "rooms" of the local botanical gardens.

My first and favorite destination is the Aquatic Garden, with its koi pond and giant amazon lily pads. At first glance, I thought there was some construction underway, as they had the entrance taped off to the little round patio overlooking the water:

I almost moved on to the next display, but something caught my eye and I took a closer look at that planter on the right:

And a little closer:

See all the fluffy feathers underneath her? She's about to have a bunch of lil' fuzzy buddies waddling around behind her.
Awww.

Vacations and Returns

Since I work in a school I had a few days off for spring break. The weather was going to be crummy here, but not at the beach. We headed down for a few days in the sun and warmth, and it was everything we wanted and more.

Wednesday Night:

Monday Morning:

It was worth every minute.

Black Ties and LBDs

Going to a lil' shindig tonight to shmooze with the elite. Not my usual scene but there were extra tickets. I'm not usually a social-anxiety-haver. But this thing has me all out of sorts for some reason. I'm feeling about as apprehensive as B. would have been if it was still looming on his agenda. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to get to know new people, have a memorable experience, fabulous food and drink, and of course for the purpose of the event in the first place - to benefit programs for people I know and care for.

I think I'm afraid of standing out like a sore thumb, like a "you're obviously not from around here." Like I'll show up in sensible, well-balanced, closed-toe shoes when everyone else is wearing little strappy metallic ones they can't walk in. Or the other way around. I was talking to someone at work just yesterday about the whole southern "no white shoes after labor day" thing, how most of the average people don't care one way or another, but will still follow the rule out of fear when they're sure to be in the company of high society, sorority girls, and the like. I suspect this place will be positively swarming with them, bless their hearts. Do people really still care about dumb stuff like that? Really?

The gentleman who dropped off the tickets at the office yesterday said that if our gentlemen escorts didn't have tuxes, they could probably get away with a black suit and bowtie in the ambient lighting. B. wasn't about to venture into that formal wear world. He *might* have done so if some of our close friends were going to be there, and if he could get away with wearing some black Chuck Taylors instead of stiff, pinchy dress shoes with soles that scuff the dance floor. But not this time. From what I could tell, though, neither were many of the other husbands, so I'll be meeting some female colleagues there instead.

So, what to wear? I have never had a little black dress. I finally recently ordered one, and it's due to be delivered Monday. The soiree is tonight. Today is Saturday. Did you do the math? To be fair, I didn't know I would have a ticket until yesterday. So I have a little shopping trip to make today to hopefully find a top that I can wear with an appropriately fabulous skirt I have had for years but never, ever had the opportunity to wear.

The comforting thing about that skirt is that it's floor-length. That means I don't have to shave. Because without fail, shaving before a stress-inducing public event means nicking myself just enough to bleed like a stuck pig, and having to head out the door with little squares of toilet paper stuck to the bloody spots in a vain effort to keep it off my clothing. Which creates another challenge, namely, to remove the little squares from my skin without setting it off again before we arrive and are photographed for posterity. Don't believe me? I did it the afternoon of my own wedding. To my armpits. With a sleeveless dress. It all worked out in the end. #Idonwannatalkaboudit.

Anyway, the skirt. I think it still fits. I guess it's about time to go find out, seeing as I also still have to wash my hair and fiddle with it for a few hours. I'm quickly running out of time.


Post-Event Update:

- Skirt still fit. Score!

- Found pretty but practical top to wear with it, and whenever else I feel like it. Score!

- Found bonus chunky necklace and small clutch purse on sale at last minute. Score score!

- Dusted off some bridesmaid shoes from my college roommate's wedding. Still just as uncomfortable as that other day I wore them 12 years ago, but did the trick. Check.

- Hair took just 10 minutes to pin into a fun updo that stayed put all night. Score!

- Turns out Southern high society folks are just normal people who were probably all too concerned about their own outfits to worry about someone else's. Ran the gamut from flowy, elegant satin dresses with fur wraps to tight, clingy dresses presumably stolen from their teenage daughters' closets, and no one seemed to care one way or the other. People watching was much fun. Score!

- Almost unwittingly offended one of my tablemates, another "not from around here" with a fascinating accent, by asking him where he was from. He answered my question with "Where are YOU from?" If I HAD been from here, he probably would have been irritated, but when I said Canada, we got into a fun conversation about Canada, Panama (where he was from), and all sorts of other things.

- Ate tender, juicy sirloin steak, fried oysters, cajun shrimp, crawfish cakes, cherries jubilee cheesecake, and all sorts of yummy accoutrements, not to mention the wine and some coconut rum concoction. Score score score score score score score!

- Bid on a couple of items at the silent auction, and came away with a birthday gift for B. Can't spoil the surprise (of course that would take him discovering that I've been blogging and actually reading it all), but ask me in a few weeks. Hey, it was for a good cause. Looked it up online and figure I even got a deal! Score!

Year of the Rabbit

Okay, so I had an off year. A friend (jokingly?) commented on facebook around the new year, "If 2010 was a person, I'd punch it in the face." I think I might be able to say that about mid-2009 to mid-2010. The latter half of 2010 was pretty darn good. But with only one post for all of last year, compared to 16 the year before, I guess it's time to get back in gear.

I have good excuses - not that it fills the gaps with reading material for my imaginary readers, but I guess it makes me feel a little less unproductive. The first half of the year was taken up with some medical issues, and then shortly after the last post mid-year, I got a full-time job. Yay! I've been working as a school administrator and I love it. I went from no kids to suddenly having dozens of them. They are cute and hyper and they make me laugh all the time. But at the end of the day, they go home in one direction, and I go in another, curl up with a cup of tea and my computer or a book or something, and hit the reset button. When I'm not doing "homework" of course. But that comes with a cup of tea as well. Truth be told, I don't go many places without a mug of creamy tea in hand.

B. got a job too...and wouldn't you know it, we work not just in the same part of town but in the same building! Doing very different things, but we were able to arrange things so we have the same schedule. We commute together and even have lunch together. It's been great for us.

Work was especially busy at first since the previous girl in my position had been gone for several months before I came, and school was starting in about a week. For B. too, as his team has been pushing hard to meet a big deadline. I appreciate the busy time these past few months for a couple of reasons. One is that it helped us make the transition to feeling like productive members of society again. But mostly because it has made me remember why we went on our sabbatical in the first place. We had gotten so burned out, trying to spin way too many plates, and we turned into different people that neither of us wanted to be, or be around. Once we both finally got jobs going again down here, we vowed to manage our commitments more wisely and have tried to hold ourselves to that. For the most part, despite some crazy days and an occasional bout with my stubborn savior complex, I think it's working.

One such crazy day in particular - a Monday, no less - we ran some errands after work and arrived home hungry, tired and cranky. As we pulled in the driveway and walked to the house, I wracked my brain trying to figure out what I had in the fridge or freezer that could be cooked up quickly for dinner. Then we opened the door and walked in to the most savory, mouth-watering aroma: roast beef with a hint of mustard sauce. Somehow, in the craziness of the day, we had both forgotten that we'd left the crock pot slowly simmering a little slice of heaven. It was melt-in-your-mouth tender. I reheated some leftover rice pilaf, threw together a simple salad, made a sauce with the meat juices from the bottom of the crock pot, and dinner was ready in 5 minutes. We devoured the whole thing.

It wasn't the first or only blessing to come our way this new year - nor the most significant - and we're only a month in. Thanking God that the proverbial wind has shifted (even if proverbial winds bring abnormal amounts of literal ice and snow for these parts). What else does 2011 hold?

Dirt Under My Fingernails

November - June = 7 months since I've written. That's a sign that I've been busy and certainly not bored!

This year has been a very different year from last year. Last year I chomped at the bit, hating having been uprooted from the cool, comfortable black dirt soil of my lifelong home and transplanted into the foreign, hot, humid, red clay soil of the south. My roots couldn't move, couldn't find water, couldn't breathe. The harder I struggled, the harder it became. When I finally stopped fighting and relaxed, I started to understand how to operate in this new environment.

Now I've come up for my second season in this garden and I'm seeing all kinds of beauty that was lost on me the first time around. It's been good for me, I just didn't know it at the time.

I've made friends. I've grown. I've laughed. I've loved. My roots have found water.

My Childhood Penpal

Unpacking boxes from the move (still...a month later) continues to provide many thrills and Christmas-morning-like moments of discovery and wonder. Then again, I am pretty easily amused.

I found some of my favorite clothes that I used to wear to work and out places, but hadn't thought I'd need on our 3-month-trip-turned-permanent. Yay.

Went through heaps of files, got rid of 63 lbs. of paper (yup, I weighed the box to get a quote from a document shredding company).

And found a stack of letters from my childhood penpals written 20 years ago.

There was a girl from Scotland, a boy and a girl from the Philippines, and then more letters from one of her cousins who was my friend's penpal and had written to me too. But the girl from the Philippines was the most faithful writer, and her notes were full of encouragement and talk of being friends forever. She always had the cutest stationery, too (a lot of it looks Japanese) and I was always all embarrassed of my boring notebook paper (though sometimes I had managed to get it in pretty colors). We used to write when we were 10-14 or so, but lost contact after that.

And then I found her on facebook!

Her name had changed slightly, as many of ours do, and she wasn't in the Philippines anymore, so I wasn't sure if I had the right person, but sent a note anyway. She wrote back incredulous, and we sent messages back and forth all day long. Then I called her and we talked for an hour that day, and again for over an hour yesterday.

It was so much fun to realize that after all these years on opposite sides of the world, we both now live in the US. She speaks and writes American English like a pro, we are the same age, and we have had some similar enough experiences in life (such as living somewhere you aren't from, which I wrote about in earlier posts) to really connect. I'm waiting to hear back on some business trips I may be taking early next year, because if that contract goes through, two of them are in suburbs of her city and we could actually meet in person!

It's strange to me that back then, before cell phones and computers and stuff, we couldn't have known that we'd be chatting back and forth like this - instantly and for free. I look at the pile of letters now and feel kind of nostalgic, like I got to participate in a bygone tradition that "kids these days" may never know.

Signing off smiling and feeling blessed.