How can I repay a kindness when I don’t cook? Go Shopping!!!

I live in the South but I am not a cook. It’s an oxymoron. Southerners live to eat so they must cook. I eat to live. I don’t like to cook. It takes hours to prepare a meal and 10 minutes to eat it. I’m just not into that kind of energy trade-off. Anyway, my husband came down with the flu two days before Christmas this year. My son and grandchildren had left that morning to go back home to Texas and I was cleaning the house and washing clothes. I heard my husband call my name in a very weak voice. When I responded, I saw that he was on the floor and could not get up. (Reminded me of the commercial…I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!) He was really hot and feverish to the touch. He had complained earlier that he felt ill but I had no idea that he was this sick. This was not just the ordinary flu with chills, fever, vomiting and all that other disgusting bodily fluid regurgitation. This was the kind of flu that sneaks up on you before you know it and affects your inner ear. It keeps you from being able to balance yourself enough to make it to the bathroom to pee. It made him so weak he could not lift any of his extremities. I could not lift him back onto the bed because he was like “dead weight”. So I called 911. This was a first for me. The operator asked me questions like “had he passed out”, “was he breathing”, and several other scary questions about his observable condition. She told me to stay on the line till the emergency people arrived, just like on TV. Anyway, when the fire truck and ambulance pulled up to our house, it got the attention of our immediate neighbors who gathered to see the emergency vehicles and which one of us (me or him) was going to take a ride to the hospital. Then they (our neighbors) went into action. One neighbor sat with me in the emergency waiting room until the attendants got my husband set up in ICU. After he came home, Christmas Day, she made sure we had meals. Delicious home cooked meals that were part of her Christmas Eve and Christmas Day lunch and dinner from her extended family. Another neighbor offered to take care of our Chihuahua. The leaves in our front yard (that our lawn care people hadn’t done yet) were bagged and raked by our neighbor across the street with whom my husband exchanges books like a book-of-the-month-club. Another neighbor brought us a pound cake. So, how can I let these marvelous people know how much I appreciate their help and their generosity? I would love to have them all over for dinner to say thank you, but I don’t cook. I am really good at shopping so I think I will get each one a unique gift. Maybe I should learn to cook…NAH.

Unemployed…after all these years

I have recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. Taa, Daa!!! At first, I thought I might enjoy the free time. I have finished all the projects I put off for the last four years because “I was working and didn’t have time”. This was my mantra each time a project looked like it might take more than 4 hours and cut my precious weekend short. Now my house is clean and organized (way too organized). I am looking for ways to make it cleaner and more organized. Crazy? Absolutely! In anticipation of getting a meaningful interview in my field I have updated my resume, created a new e-Portfolio and burned it to CD’s with a cool stick-on label to impress prospective employers. I am a graphic designer recently employed by a company that publishes real estate magazines and, well, we know in which toilet the Real Estate Industry currently awaits flushing. The state of the economy and the time of the year means that I might just as well forget getting a job or an interview until sometime in the spring. I am willing to work part-time in another type of work. My husband transitioned from Sales Support and Telemarketing to WalMart Greeter. He is 80 years old. I am 64 years old, and age is another obstacle to re-employment. Ageism is alive and well out there! MDES (Mississippi Department of Employment Services) has been sending me literature about how to get a job, how to construct a resume and cover letter, how to dress for an interview, what to say in an interview, punctuality, etc., all the stuff I already know and the reason I have been able to remain employed for the last 39 years. The real trick is to find a job opening in my field. For that to happen hell will have to freeze over and the Catholic Church will have to sanction birth control. I am trying to use the free time I have now to get a feel for what I will experience (emotionally and physically) when I am retired. I really haven’t been able to savor the “sleeping-in late” thing, yet. I continue to awaken around 6AM, the time I used to get up and get ready for work. After I eat and take my pills, I fix myself a cup of coffee to get the neurons working at optimum speed. I walk the 30 second commute to my home-office to check my e-mails to see if I have a reply to any of my on-line job applications, then I check the current temperature and today’s weather forecast, and I look for more jobs. Can’t give up trying.

The NFL and Sundays

Sundays are the day before we Americans have to go back to work or school or carpools or myriad other duties on Monday. Our calendars mark Sunday as the first day of the week. For me it is the end of my weekend. Most people go to church on Sunday, go to a restaurant for brunch, and come home to get “ready for some football”. I have never been a real fan of any sport and least of all football. I learned the names of some teams (Cowboys, Packers, Colts, etc) but I never have been interested in football except for the camaraderie, chips and dip, beer, and those little sausages in the biscuits. Being with friends, ignoring the falling leaves that mark the change of seasons from warm to cool then cold, taking my mind off the inevitable march of time towards a return to my job on Monday is the NFL’s gift to me. Lots of people are fans or fanatics of the NFL here in Mississippi. Bless them. Sundays would normally be very depressing for me. So, here’s to the NFL, its fans and fanatics and it’s distractions from a long, quiet, boring Sunday afternoon in the south. Long live the NFL!!

Twelve Miles

It’s 7 AM and the mist is rising from dark green meadows and small ponds along the 12 mile route I drive to work each day. Bradford pears, tall pines, stately oaks, crepe myrtles, and scaly barked sycamores form a shady canopy over the narrow 2-lane road. Gold, brown, and red toned leaves have fallen into the shallow ditch alongside my route. It is officially Fall in Mississippi. The full Autumn moon is descending in my rear view mirror as today’s sunrise almost blinds me through the front windshield with its intensity. It’s going to be a hot one although the cool breeze I feel through the car’s air vents does not confirm the forecast on my radio. I take a sip of Mississippi grown coffee brewed by a locally owned franchise with the deceptive word “Seattle” as part of its corporate name. It is owned by a US born Chinese American and it is great coffee. I can say this with SOME authority as I have tasted coffee in two Central American countries, Starbucks and Seattle’s Best in several major American cities from east to west. I love coffee. But I digress. This is my favorite time of day, quiet, cool, picturesque. The speed limit is 35 mph but few drivers go that slowly. I take my time. I am not anxious to get to the office. Wonder if I will miss this drive when I finally retire?

English or…Southern? Potato. Potahto.

If I were visiting the US from a non-English speaking country and had recently learned to speak “The Queen’s English”, I would have great difficulty understanding what was being said. The Brits call it speaking American, not English. Most obvious are words that sound alike but are spelled differently (homonyms), like “to, too, two”, there, their, they're”, “capitol, capital”, “tow, toe”, “ate, eight”. Then there are words that are spelled alike and sound alike but have different meanings depending on how they are used in context (contranyms) like “cleave, dust, bank, lay, execute”. Heteronyms are words spelled alike but have different pronunciations and meanings like the “wind blowing” or “wind up the toy”, “it is appropriate to speak”, or “he will appropriate the funds”, “I caught a bass” or I play the bass”, “he will lead a group” or “the bullet was made of lead”. And this is without adding a local or regional accent!

I live in the southeast US where English words are pronounced with deep diphthongs and southern accents that sound ultra exaggerated to people of other English-speaking countries (even those with odd accents like Australia and South Africa). Some southern words can have a completely different pronunciation and/or meaning depending on the state (LA, GA, MS, AL, SC, TN, KY, FL, etc.). A typical example is all and oil. In "southern" it is difficult to hear the subtle difference between "awl" and "awl". (Several years ago I watched a comedy skit based on the southern pronunciation of these two words. Hilarious!) And there are southern words that can be used as singular or plural like the contraction y’all. Tire is pronounced “tar”, wide is “wad”, bream is “brim”, “wash is worsh”, “car is cah”. Lots of other words ending in “r” are pronounced as if they ended in “ah” (rhotic) like motah’ (motor), jah’ (jar).  There is just barely a hint of difference in “pat, pet and pit” when said by a true southerner. For a giggle go to http://www.gagirl.com/southern/south.html “How to Speak Southern”.

If you get to South Carolina be prepared for the dialect called Gullah or Geechee that originated with African American slaves. In Gullah date is “det”, gate is “get”, and eight is “et”.

I have a slight southern accent and can be understood by almost all “Yankees”, including my husband who is from New York. Not so for some of my deeply rooted southern friends who find it difficult to understand a New Yorker and New York's wait staff find it difficult to understand my southern friend’s dinnah’ oahdah’. Eudora Welty wrote her stories in a southern dialect and reading them is just as difficult as hearing her read them!!

Accents from Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, America and other English-speaking areas (like Wales, Ireland, Belize, etc.) make learning and speaking the English language difficult, at best. Learning English with a British, Aussie, SA or Southern US accent can make people stare. A Chinese émigré with a southern accent is jarring to your ears at first. Children of Central American immigrants are fluent in Spanish and Southern here in MS. “I pity the fool” who wants to master English whether here or abroad. Even we who speak English cannot agree on any standard pronunciations. Tomato. Tomahto. Regional immersion is essential in the US.

Even though it is not easy to learn, English is still the international language of business. Oops, I forgot Wall Street Speak!!! Is that really considered English?

Mississippi Morning

I usually am awake around 4:30 am every morning during my workweek. I lay in bed thinking about what I have to do that day and wait for the alarm. But on Saturday and Sunday I get up, take my pills, stretch, put on my walking shoes, get out my mp3 player, hat and glasses, and head out for a walk around 6 am. The sun is just lighting up the horizon and there is a mist hanging low in the trees. The slight breeze feels cool on my arms and legs. Birds are heard but not seen. I begin my walk and dial the soundtrack to “Everybody’s Fine”.  The smell of Magnolias, roses, honeysuckle and many other sweet scents I cannot identify swirl around me as I walk. This is the time I think about other mornings in other places I've lived when I was alone with my thoughts, smelling fragrant plant life, feeling the dew being cooled on my skin by the slightest of breezes. I remember early mornings when my grandfather and I would sit on the front porch of his Alabama farmhouse, he with his coffee and me with my glass of milk, enjoying the smells and the quiet and each other. There are a few other walkers, joggers, bicyclists. We wave as we pass to acknowledge each other. Occasionally we mouth “good morning”, but mostly we just wave not wanting to intrude on each others thoughts and privacy. This is my Mississippi morning.

Is My Job Unhealthy For Me? YES!!

I am one of those workers imprisoned in a cubicle-type environment, sitting for the majority of the day, staring at a computer, doing repetitive tasks with my computer mouse. Fortunately I have not developed carpal tunnel syndrome and I won’t die from hemorrhoids. About 3 or 4 times a day I make a trip to the bathroom, approximately 7 steps away from my chair and 7 steps back. At lunchtime I try to go out to a store or mall-like area to walk and stretch and sometimes to shop while I’m on this side of town. (Loews has wide aisles and I can pick up a few plants or some bug spray.) After lunch I am back at my desk, sitting and staring at my computer again, wolfing down a veggie sandwich (attempt at healthy eating here) because I didn’t want to “sit” in a restaurant to eat. When I get home, I wash clothes, load the dishwasher, walk the dog, and exercise on my treadmill (when the weather is too hot and humid for we humans to breathe here in the deep south). I check my email, watch the news on TV, play with the dog, and fold the clothes I’ve washed. I am active for most of the 5 hours I am at home before it is time for me to sleep. Without that small amount of activity, I might not be able to get a full night’s sleep. My brain would still be in high gear from inactivity. In my world a full night’s sleep is about 5-6 hours depending on my “insomniac dog’s” bladder function.

From the time I shut my alarm off at 6 AM, till I arrive back home at 5:30 PM, I am moving less than I am moving the 5 hours I spend at home before I go to bed at night. During my work-day for almost 12 hours my butt is glued to a chair at the office while I perform my duties as a graphic artist for the publishing company where I am employed. If I worked from home I could get up and move around more frequently. When I was self-employed many years ago I would do household chores as a break from work and I worked more efficiently and quickly because I was activating my enzymes and hormones with exercise and I was in a much better mood all day. There was less interaction with co-workers and that can be a downside for more gregarious people. Now we have Skype if we need to conference. The energy savings alone should be an incentive for business to encourage their employees to work from home. If the job depends on close interaction between people, businesses and employees would benefit from having some kind of exercise venue to break up the sedentary office environment. (And I don’t mean pouring coffee in the break-room.)

I hope to retire soon. Then I can get up at 6 AM and power-walk for 30-40 minutes, eat breakfast, clean the kitchen, walk the dog, wash clothes, make the bed, vacuum, check my emails, fold the clothes, meet a friend for lunch, go grocery shopping, water the plants, clean up my tool room, paint a picture, paint the house, etc. The possibilities are endless and I’ll be healthier!

50th Anniversary of "To Kill A Mockingbird"

Maybe Harper Lee was meant to write just one great story of the deep south that I grew up in. Maybe all of us have only one great story to tell. Her book and later the movie became my favorites for life. In the summer of 1959 I had just moved to Atlanta, GA from living in Japan where, as a pre-teen, I had experienced a mild racial prejudice for having white skin and for being a member of the American occupying force after the end of WWII. I was enrolled in middle school in an Atlanta suburb where I observed the bigotry against black students on my school bus. It was a much more virulent racism than my experiences in Japan had been. White students yelled racial epithets at black students from the open windows of the bus. I was threatened when I tried to point out to the white students that racism and what they were doing was wrong in any society. It was a very scary time for the black children and for those of us who were sympathetic to their plight. I began to understand how members of different societies discriminated against others on the basis of skin color, white or black. It is hatred and it is perpetuated by fear without reason. This is the 50th anniversary of "To Kill A Mockingbird" and not much has changed.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good

(10 good things about living in the South)

1. Winter is short
2. Dogwooods grow wild along the freeway
3. People say hi even if they don’t know you
4. The smell of food is everywhere
5. Brumby Rockers and straw hats
6. Cicadas singing at night
7. Sugar Cane
8. Delta Blues and Bluegrass music
9. Storytelling
10. Magnolias

The Bad

(10 bad things about living in the South)

1. Summer is very hot and humid
2. Allergies
3. Deer season
4. The smell of food is everywhere
5. Ticks, May flies, mosquitoes, and Dog Vomit Fungus
6. Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion
7. Alligators in the swimming pool
8. Sand in my bed
9. Obesity
10. Poverty

The Ugly – Bigots and Racists

Neighbors in the South

One BIG advantage to living in a southern state is neighbors. They are nosey, spontaneous, funny, helpful, generous, inclusive, and these are really good qualities. I’ll explain. Nosey – “Honey, I see someone walking around our neighbor’s house that I don’t know.” Spontaneous – “I think I’ll go over there and ask them what they are doing.” Funny – “Hi neighbor, I think I scared your AC repairman off yesterday.” Helpful – “I’ve got a cousin that does AC repair and he won’t charge you a lot.” Generous – “Hey neighbor, come stay with us till your AC is fixed.” Inclusive – “Come with us to church on Sunday and we’ll get everyone to pray that your AC is fixed soon.”

Neighbors in the south expect interaction. They will walk by your house expecting you to come out and talk awhile, which could be ten minutes or an hour. For every subject you bring up they have an anecdote, a reference, or a full blown story. They are great storytellers and some stories border on gossip. The difference lies within the point of view of the storyteller and how he interprets the facts. If he sees the AC repairman walking around your house he might interpret it as "skulking" or "creeping". At that point it is his duty to investigate on your behalf. The story will also take on vivid color as it is re-told from neighbor to neighbor. The neighborhood grapevine has now become more vigilant since the story morphed into a possible burglar posing as an AC repairman.

Still, it is great to be surrounded by people who will stop and chat, tell you a story about a neighbor who has had trouble with his AC, and give you a full account of how the Lord played a hand in helping him get his AC fixed for almost nothing, then suggest y’all get together sometime for dinner.

The Wearin’ O’ Th’ Green (Southern Style)

Each and every spring in the South we get ready to sneeze, cough, choke, suffer headaches, and generally feel lousy. Our flora are copulating in their special way, generating clouds of pollen spores with a greenish hue. As this cycle of plant life is dancing in the air, we retreat indoors to avoid the unpleasant physical effects. Cars are coated with green, lawn furniture is unusable, drug stores do a huge business in antihistamines. This lasts between 6 weeks and 10 weeks. Occasionally a heavy dew or short rain settles the big green clouds and leaves a sort of abstract nature’s artwork on everything. But the cloud returns and so do the symptoms. At the end of this annual orgy, the green is replaced with an explosion of rainbowesque colors. Plants have birthed flowers, trees have grown leaves, all the empty spaces have been filled with color and foliage. Birds, bees, squirrels, mice, shrews, and who knows what other species, establish nests to raise the next generation. Summer is on the way. Soon I will be able to take a deep breath of air. No more need for my asthma rescue inhaler...till next spring.

My P.O.V. on Retirement

If I live long enough to be eligible for residency in a retirement facility, I hope I don't. I don't want to spend my remaining years shuffling down a dimly lit, urine smelling, sad little hallway to my closet sized bedroom with its obligatory 17 inch TV, vase filled with faux daisies, and uncomfortable visitor's chair. The last thing I want to talk about is my ailments to another senior who is obsessed with bowel movements. I want to live out in the fresh air filled with progressive thinkers who know how to have fun. I want to shop till I drop and go to see kick-butt, scifi movies with a socially redeeming message. I want to drink a White Russian every year on my birthday. I want to try to stay awake every new years eve and drink a toast to the new year. I want to visit Australia and see Ayres Rock, go snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, see the Rabbit Proof Fence (or where it used to be), pet a Roo, play a didgeridoo, see a Koala, tour Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, see the remains of the last known Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine), and taste a vegemite sandwich, maybe. Then when I'm too old to do or go, I want to quietly slip into the last dimension having exhausted my wish list.

I’m going MAD, MAD, MAD from the rain, rain, rain…

It seems like it’s been raining for months. It has! It’s been raining for the last 4 months and I’m sick of it. Humidity is normal in the south but I feel like I’m drowning each time I leave the house now. I’ll probably regret saying that when we go through a dry spell and I have to water the lawn every day. But right now I’m tired of seeing all the green and black mold growing where it shouldn’t. I’m annoyed about not being able to clean up and enjoy my screened-in porch ‘cause it keeps raining and I can’t put my chairs close to the screened side because they’ll get wet…again! My lawn is mud and pools and ponds where grass used to grow and mosquito larvae are probably growing there by the millions. I’m sick of putting all my rain gear on to take the dog outside so she can do her poop and pee and then having to haul out towels to dry her off when she comes in soaking wet. I remember one of the short stories in Ray Bradbury’s book “The Illustrated Man” called "The Long Rain". I am including a short synopsis from Wikipedia here:

"The Long Rain" — A group of astronauts are stranded on Venus, where it rains continually and heavily. The travelers make their way across the Venusian landscape to find a "sun dome", a shelter with a large artificial light source. However, the first sun dome they find has been destroyed by the Venusians. Searching for another sun dome, the characters, one by one, are driven to madness and suicide by the unrelenting rhythm of the rain. At the end of the story, only one sane astronaut remains, and manages to find a functional sun dome.

I’m going slowly MAD from the sound of the rain, first softly tapping on my window panes and then loudly hitting windows and roof. Then there's the sound of water dripping into the bucket I have had to put in my fireplace to catch the rain blown down the flue from gale force wind gusts. I’m going MAD (I tell you) from not being able to move about without an umbrella always at the ready. I am fed up with jumping over puddles between where I park my car and the building I want to enter, winding up with wet feet anyway. Drip, drip, drip, splash, glub…

Feeling Very Gra’ma

I am feeling very gra’ma tonight. I think being a gra’ma is like looking at your DNA bars, knowing you are connected to the future and that a sliver of your genes will make it into the next century. A great feeling and I do so hate to be left behind. It also gives me a chance to relive all the special moments of childhood without the skinned knees and bruised ego. Now I have someone to buy things for and to leave things to. I will also bequeath to my grandchildren a legacy of humor, creativity, sense of adventure, intuition, reason, good health and hopefully a little jewelry. I am less ME oriented and more THEM oriented. Now, when I go shopping, I look in the toy aisle and the children’s clothing section. I look for children’s books and music. Their little brains are like tabulae rasae and the more positive their experiences, the more confidence and poise they will have. That should translate into a happier life experience for them. I get a selfish satisfaction from being able to contribute more than just genetic material to their futures. However, some of the genetic traits I wish they had gotten from me, but didn’t, are: red hair and almond shaped eyes. That’s it! Red hair with their blue eyes, what a combination and blue eyes in an almond shape, wow! But they are stunningly beautiful as they are with brown hair and blue eyes all set into angelic faces. Their smiles light up my world!!

Southern Stories…

Southerners are great storytellers. Some stories are autobiographical, some are biographical, some are, well, just "stories". Figuring out which one is which is the tricky but fun part. Obviously, the Brer Rabbit stories are a little of each. I heard a story this morning that caught me by surprise. I was at my veterinarian’s office talking to a woman who by her own account was born in the south and has traveled far and wide. She moved into a nice subdivision up north several years back and had a lovely African American neighbor with whom she was friendly. When her neighbor moved away, the rest of the neighbors discovered what she had known all along. Her lovely African American neighbor was the widow of Malcolm X. The neighbor’s daughter was a celebrity who’s holding company owned the home she lived in. I thought it was a great story until I read what happened to Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz. Her grandson torched her home and she later died as a result of burns suffered in the fire. This could have happened after she moved away but the time-line is a bit fuzzy. It is a great “story” and I enjoyed hearing it. I would hope that Mrs. X lived a lovely suburban life after her husband was gunned down by three members of the Nation of Islam. This is one of those times that a southern storyteller’s tale is probably autobiographical, biographical, and a story.

A native southerner and friend of mine told me about his service in the National Guard during the civil rights upheaval in Mississippi. He was one of the soldiers guarding James Meredith at the court ordered desegregation of the University of Mississippi in 1962. He described the scene in detail. The National Guard had guns but there were no bullets in them. The Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, attempted to block Meredith's entrance. My friend's sympathies were not with the courts, they were with the governor. But he was there to keep the peace and serve his country. His story is autobiographical.

I was living in a small town in Georgia back in the 90s. On the way to go shopping, my husband and I passed through Lawrenceville, GA on the same day the Ku Klux Klan was demonstrating on the town square. The KKK was dressed in white sheets from head to toe and the state police were armed with rifles, shields, and batons. The KKK was facing the street with their backs to the government buildings located in the center of the square and the state police were ringed around the square facing the KKK. It looked as if they could begin a gunfight at any moment. (I thought the KKK might have had some guns stashed beneath their robes.) The traffic around the square was going very slowly and I was scared. I had read about the Klan and heard lots of stories but at that moment I was looking at one of the most feared organizations in the South. The holes they cut out of their hoods for their eyes and slits for their mouths made them appear truly evil. The KKK demonstration was peaceful that day. This story is definitely autobiographical.

I love hearing these stories. I will continue to check them out to see which ones are plausible. With a wealth of history dating back to the Civil War, I suspect all of my neighbors and friends have a story to tell. I’ll keep listening.

Weird weather

We are getting a LOT OF RAIN here in the Deep South. After seeing the projected snowfall amounts in DC, VA, and surrounding areas, I am grateful we only have the rain to deal with. My stepson says the DC area is preparing for 20 inches of snow and treating the event as if it was a category 5 hurricane. According to the weather pundits, the El Niño effect is causing all this rain and snow. Most of the southern states (LA, MS, AR, AL, GA, FL, SC, TN, NC, etc.) are ill equipped to deal with a lot of snow. Northern states have fleets of snowplows loaded with salt to handle volumes of the white stuff on all their major highways. The south has dump trucks loaded with sand to keep the bridges passable. So when the south gets more than a dusting of snow, we panic. We have dealt with category 1-5 hurricanes. Preparation for a hurricane is much different than preparing for 20 inches of snow. We get more hurricanes. So we put our emergency money where it will do the most good. Luckily, El Niño has kept our hurricane season quiet and for that we are grateful. I’m looking at the bright side of this wet weather. All the snow and rain will eventually end. Spring will bring warmer weather and all the trees and flowers, which are now benefiting from an abundance of moisture, will explode with color. DC’s cherry trees, GA’s peach trees, MS’s magnolias, all the dogwoods, azaleas, Bradford Pear trees, and other native and non-native plants will soon make us forget that we nearly froze our butts off, or felt like we were drowning just a few short weeks before. The weather pundits will file this season as the wettest, coldest, weirdest. I’m glad winter is short in the South and the rest of the year is pleasant. This is a really good reason for me to retire in the South. Only 2 years and 8 months to go...

It’s A Rainy Day In…

The South is humid. (I love humidity. It makes my skin soft.) Rainfall where I live is usually 56 inches per year. The total 56 inches is normally distributed throughout the year. Last year, it felt like we got all 56 inches within a 4-5 month period towards the end of 2009. Wait, we did!!! So far this year (2010) we appear to be headed for a similar scenario. Added to the H2o, frigid air from the north (Canadian Clippers) and from the west (yep, Texas), are keeping me indoors. It is unusual to have S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in the southern part of the US, but I am beginning to get a little depressed. I got up this morning at 5:30 am to let the dog out to poop and to feed her, then walked around my very quiet house feeling a little "blue". People in the South rarely spend more than a week or two avoiding bad weather any time of the year. El Sol is center stage most of the time even if it is cold. This season has been cold, wet, and dim. I’m looking forward to February and March when the grass will green, the birds will sing in my backyard, the Bradford Pear trees will blossom, and Dogwoods will brighten up the highways. Spring is on its way. I saw a Woodpecker this morning testing out a choice spot on the Sweet Gum tree in my front yard. The rain has stopped for awhile. I’m going to CUPS for my morning coffee, muffin, and conversation. Things are looking up in my galaxy. I’m feeling much better already.

TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY...

Today was a good day at work. I caught up on the latest political trash coming out of DC on my Yahoo page, kept up with friends on Facebook, emailed more friends, looked up new phones on the Verizon website (can’t afford even the free ones), listened to the soundtrack from Crazy Heart, music from John Butler Trio, Scissor Sisters, Robert Palmer, Free, Gordon Lightfoot, and talked to my husband on the phone. Oh yeah, and I did some work. All-in-all a relaxing day at the office. It did make the day go faster. One day closer to retirement!!!

We have a friend staying with us. He is an engineer on contract with a local company. He lives in Seattle with his wife (my BFF) and their two big puppies. It is so nice to have him here and to be able to communicate without measuring every word. People here in the south are so very nice and that is part of the problem. When I want to express myself with fervor, I resort to 4-letter words, something I picked-up when I lived in LA. Definitely the sign of a poor vocabulary. WTF? So now I can really express myself while he is here. Also, I am able to talk about things “liberal” and “green”. We also share a fondness for “My Cousin Vinney”. I will be sad when he finds that job back in Seattle and has to leave. But wait, there’s SKYPE. Yayyyyyyyyyyy.

Time for me to go into the living room and read another chapter of “I Sold My Soul on Ebay”. Checking out other viewpoints and taking a break from my stash of SciFi books. Another day in the life of G.R.I.T.S.

Thinking about Retirement, ahhhhhhhhhhh

Although I’m not officially retired (tired but not retired), I am mentally preparing myself for life after work. My actual working career has spanned about 49 years. I began working at age fourteen for a lady down the street from my parent’s home in Smyrna, GA who decorated linens (tablecloths, pillows, etc.) by sewing/embroidering flowers and other decorations into the fabric by hand. My job was to illustrate the flowers, etc. as a template. Thus began my artistic career! I was paid in custom knitted bedroom slippers. Since then I have had many jobs and the one thing that stands out in my mind about all those jobs (except the illustration job when I was fourteen and having my own business when I was 27)… I HATE WORK!!! However eating and having a roof over my head have been a priority. I have tried to make each work experience feel temporary. To date, I’ve had 49 years of temporary jobs, the longest of which lasted eleven years. Now I am down to my last temporary job, I hope. (It actually began as a temporary/part-time graphic design position and became permanent full-time.) I am on year three at this job and have less than three years to go till I am eligible for social security and medicare. It may seem odd to talk about a permanent, full-time job as being temporary but it is mentally liberating for me.

So, now I’m thinking about what I’ll do when I actually stop working and my time belongs only to me.

First, I can turn my alarm clock off permanently. There are so many other reasons to wake-up early that don’t require an alarm…the dog wanting to go out to pee, insomnia, dreaming about asteroids hitting the planet, nightmares that the Republicans win in 2012, TEOTWAWKI, etc.

Second, I will have free time to do whatever I want. I can resume my artistic career started when I was fourteen. Maybe not. I think linen is now embroidered by machine at a factory in China or the Czech Republic.

Third, my husband and I can travel internationally. But where-in-the-world can we go that won’t cost as much as both our social security checks combined? We could visit our children and grandchildren! Virginia, Ohio, and…Texas. That way we won’t have to pay for a hotel room. Should keep us busy for about six weeks a year. Then we can go visit my sisters in Minnesota and, oh yeah…Texas. (Why does almost everyone I know, or that I am related to, live in Texas?) I have a brother that lives in, yep...Texas. So, if Texas becomes a sovereign country, I WILL have to keep my passport current. Texas may be the extent of our international travel if we can’t afford to go to Canada or Belize. Wonder if flights into Dallas, Houston, and Austin will require an entrance and exit fee like in Central America? Do I need to “declare” those gifts I brought for the kids birthdays? I LOVE RAGGING ON TEXAS. It’s bigger and weird-er.

Retirement may not be the “Nirvana” (a place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world) that I think it should be. Maybe I will get another “temporary” job just to fill in those days when I have nothing to do. Hope it comes with vacation time and benefits!!!

A Church on Every Corner, A Chicken in Every Pot!

Two things you can count on in the South are churches and chicken. (That doesn’t include Church’s Fried Chicken.) I believe almost every Christian denomination is represented in the Southern State where I live. Surrounding my subdivision, within a radius of about 5-7 miles are 3 Baptist Churches, a Presbyterian Church, Church of Christ, Unitarian Church, Episcopal Church, Catholic Church, Central Assembly Church, and a Methodist Church. (The rest are under construction.) In addition there are Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintos, Hindus, Wiccans, and Native American faiths represented. I haven’t seen too many Synagogues but we do have a beautiful Hindu Temple being built right in the middle between local businesses and a trailer park. Location is never a problem. Some churches look like warehouses. Some are elaborate and full of stained glass windows. Christian faiths, by far, make up the majority of places of worship in this state. I never give anyone directions to my home like, “turn right at the church” ‘cause there’s a church on almost every corner and two of the three entrances to my subdivision have a church on the corner. FACT: There are more churches per capita here than any other state in the Union. I believe there are more churches here than there are fast food places, grocery stores, WalMarts and car washes combined.

After church on Sunday there’s chicken for dinner (er lunch). (The three meals served in the south are: breakfast, dinner, and supper. So dinner in the south is lunch everywhere else.) Chicken is at the top of the food pyramid here. It is fried, boiled, broiled, blackened, fricasseed, stuffed, BBQed; it’s used in spaghetti sauce, soups, salads, veggies; for breakfast, dinner and supper. Chicken is inexpensive and plentiful. Southern cookbooks dedicate almost half of the book to chicken recipes. I haven’t seen a recipe for a chicken dessert yet but I might have missed it. I like chicken. I haven’t met a southerner yet that doesn’t like chicken or have a special chicken recipe handed down to each generation in the family since the Civil War. Wasn’t there a scene with a chicken in Gone With The Wind? Ahhhhh, the Civil War, but that’s a story for another day.

SKYPE-ing

Ain’t technology great? If you can’t be with the ones you love, SKYPE ‘em. My husband and I have been SKYPE -ing with his son and grandchildren for the past two years. They lived in El Salvador and since trekking down to Central America is costly and not too easy for older people (my husband is the older person, he’s almost 80) we can “virtually visit” with them. Now they live outside DC and that trip isn’t too easy for “older people” either so we still SKYPE. We now have a vidcam on 3 computers so we can SKYPE with three different contacts if we want to. We don’t want to! That would be reverb-city. All those conversations bouncing off each other in one tiny office. Running around, talking to three different people requires some aerobic training too. At least we will have the ability to SKYPE on two machines in case one computer dies. So we are always available, (if we turn the computers on). I dread the day when SKYPE starts charging for their services that are free now. But we might be able to afford it if their charges are similar to the rates my husband paid when he was using SKYPE last year to make calls as an independent contractor. They charged $2.95/mo. We still have the headset he used to talk to clients. Hey, even “older people” can get the hang of this internet stuff.

SKYPE FOREVER!!!

Recently, I got to SKYPE with my son, daughter-in-law and my two grandchildren. OMG, too cute!!! They live in Texas, so if the state secedes from the Union, I WILL need my passport. Although the trip won’t be as tiring as a trip to El Salvador, I think it will be less costly. I just hate having to go through customs and now they might be using “full body scans”. That means I’ll have to get in shape before I let strangers see me naked. Ugh! In the meantime, I can SKYPE with my family and see all the clothes and toys I sent them for birthdays and holidays. Maybe someday SKYPE will be able to transport our bodies through cyberspace (BEAM for us Trekkies). Can’t wait to try that one out.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t put on makeup to SKYPE. Heck, I sometimes SKYPE in my pajamas. I shudder to think how other people with fewer inhibitions use SKYPE. What I don’t know I can imagine. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

The "A" list

I lied, I haven’t EXACTLY retired, yet. I have 2.75 years to go. But who’s counting? I did move to the South for several well researched and maybe some “not so well thought out” reasons/excuses.

The "A" List:
First, Affinity. I was born in the South (a different Southern state than the one in which I currently live).

Second, Affordability. Most everything in the South is more affordable than anywhere else in the US.

Third, Amusement. Southerners are great storytellers and most of their tales run the gamut from humor to absurdity. There is usually a moral, an animal, or a history lesson in each narrative. Some of the best authors come from the South. Joel Chandler Harris, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, etc.

Fourth, Amity. Southerners are very friendly and even if you are a Liberal Yankee, they will help you when you are in need, (mostly because you are a real curiosity to them since not too many Liberal Yankees move to the South, but also to honor their tradition of Southern Hospitality).

Although I was born in the heart of the Confederacy, I escaped for about 25-30 years to Missouri, Japan, California, and Texas. I don’t recognize Texas as being in the South since THE SOUTH is usually defined as the general area south of Pennsylvania and the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi, consisting mainly of those states that formed the Confederacy. Texas wants to be its own country now so maybe I should dust off my passport. I did do time in North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. So you might say I am well versed in Southern Culture. I can blend in. My husband, who was born in NYC, has lived in the south for many years but has given up on the blending thing. He just tells everyone that he is a “damn Yankee” and won’t go home. He loves almost everything about the South. Although there are many differences between me and my Southern roots, I picked retirement in the South because of its familiarity. I understand southerners. I don’t agree with their politics but they are genuine, caring, and predictable. I need stability in my life now.