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!

Mash-up

I never cease to be thoroughly amused when I come across a new use for the word "mash."

There are a lot of things you can mash in the South besides potatoes.

You don't shut your finger in the door. You mash it.

You don't swat flies or kill spiders. You mash 'em.

You don't press buttons on the telephone or computer keyboard. You mash the buttons.

Give me a call if you come across any more good uses for "mash." If you get my voicemail, just mash 1 to leave a message and I'll get back to you.

First Things First

"Hey there, how y'all doin'?  Sleep well last night?"  I'm doing well, in good health, slept well last night and woke up to a lovely thunderstorm that spoke up to punctuate the word just as I typed it.  Love it when that happens!  Thunderstorm.  Hmm, not that time.  Does lightning strike twice in the same blog post?  I was starting to feel bad that it's been so long since I wrote here but then I saw that my last post and this one are both in March so we're good, right? 

Had to start off on a personal note there, before getting down to business, so as not to be rude.  Now, I don't know about you, but I tend to go to places of business for, well, business.  But here there's another piece to that interaction.  I'm not sure how much is a north/south difference or an urban/rural difference - I think it's some of both.  But I've noticed that I'm so used to operating in the former mode (north + urban) that it's taking me some time to really get used to this Southern small town.

Imagine going to a well-known office supply store to send a fax.  You're in a hurry to send this fax because it relates to your taxes, someone's waiting for it on the other end, and another someone is waiting for you out in the car.  There's one person behind the counter and several in line.  The worker chit-chats with each person in turn, starts their job and personally oversees it to completion.  Your turn finally comes after waiting in line for 20 minutes and the guy turns to you and says something.  That was me a couple of weeks ago.

"I need to send this fax..." I began, but stopped myself.  I had expected the guy to have said something like, "How can I help you?" or "Who's next?"  But he hadn't said that.  He said, "You look familiar, have you been here before?" Which was to say, "I know my regulars, and you aren't one of them.  Are you new in town?"  

I mentally pressed rewind and started over.  "I may have been here once before, I'm not sure, but my husband and I just moved here from Minnesota."

"Minnesota!" exclaimed the worker, and two or three other people forming the line behind me, which wasn't a vertical line at all but more of a horizontal gathering, where everyone just remembers who's on first and waves people with smaller jobs than theirs ahead so they can all watch the production.  Wouldn't you rather watch someone laminate coloring book pages than stare at the back of some stranger's head?  I would.

Fortunately, he took my fax and got it started before continuing on the Minnesota thread, what the weather's like up there this time of year, how fortunate I was to have missed it, but how cold it's been here too - it actually snowed for a couple of hours that one day the other week.  (I've gotta give it to 'em - it was blowing sideways.  I was so excited that day I got out of the car and danced in it, at least for a few seconds.)  My fax went through, he eventually went and got it off the machine and gave it back to me, I paid, and we all said our goodbyes like old friends.  As I walked out to the car I realized that my stress over getting the fax sent out had been replaced with a pleasant sense of having been noticed and welcomed.

It's strange to me, given the fun, relational person that I am naturally, that it hasn't just come naturally to relate that way (at least not on every occasion), but I guess that's some sort of "culture shock," combined with my tendency to lean the opposite way and bring some kind of balance, while my practicality and efficiency screams for the ref to call a time-wasting foul (*blows whistle and winds finger in big circles in front of other wrist where a watch might be*).  I mean, it's not quite Africa or Brazil where everything's so relationally driven that time is thrown out the window, but having been to both of those places gives me some understanding for the different values that are at play here.  People matter more than tasks.  I can appreciate that!

Roots

I've had a few conversations with an Australian friend who lives in Minnesota about coming from one country and living in another, how you often feel like you're not completely one or the other, but some kind of 'hybrid model' in a perpetual state of compromise and of longing for home. (Come to think of it, I have several girlfriends from other countries who married Minnesota boys and migrated there. Hmm, what is it about Minnesota boys? I guess I just considered myself one of them (the girlfriends, that is!) until B.'s Alabama roots came calling. I mean we'd always talked about someday retiring and rocking on the front porch of an old farmhouse down in south Alabam...but I kind of thought of it more as a package deal, something filed away under Future Chapters of Life.)

I've been talking to a lot of people on the phone lately, since I've been filling in at my in-laws' church office while their usual receptionist had surgery. It's been a lot of fun, but every now and then, someone will stop talking and then ask, "Well, now honey, where are you from?" And I'll tell them. And they'll say, "Well, I could tell you weren't from HERE!"

Then just the other night I called a business in Canada about a tax form I was missing (it's in storage in Minneapolis, whoops) and after we'd talked a while, I gave the girl the address in Alabama to mail the new copy to. She said the same thing the southerners said: "Aha, now it makes sense. I could tell you weren't from around HERE!"

My Aussie friend and I used to talk about how much more keenly aware all this made us of the fact that our home, our citizenship, is in heaven and not on earth. It's always a good reminder. I think some people never have the opportunity to fully appreciate that concept.

Tomay-to,Tomah-to

Okay, language confession time. I called a shopping cart a "buggy" tonight. But not because it was the first thing to come to my mind. Simply because I knew that that was what the store employee knew it as. Why stand there explaining that by "cart" what I really meant was "buggy?" It's just not worth the trouble.

That's why I started spelling my last name with a "zee" instead of a "zed" most of the time, back when I moved to the US (or for my Canadian friends, "the States") for college. Why launch a twenty-minute conversation with a stranger when you can just get on with your day? Every now and then it's kinda fun though.