Growing My Own Herb

My mother-out-of-law gave me a Chia (Yes. Those crazy Chia Pet people) herb garden, in keeping with my tradition (can it be called a tradition if I started it last year?) of growing my own herbs, tomatoes and hot peppers, during the summer months. This year I want to also plant a veggie garden, though with the SC soil, this means building a raised garden bed.

You see, I live on approximately 15 acres. I love the country. And while part of me yearns for an urban setting--a place where I would be able to trade in my car for a Vespa (trading also the 100 mile roundtrip commute each day) and live in a flat above my favorite local grocer--the other part of me wants a semi-self-sustaining life in the country. I want one sheep (with the black face and white coat) for aesthetics and two pygmy goats to keep the grass down. I want a couple of chickens (though I heard they smell foul) to lay eggs so I can make my own bread and pasta and yummy treats. And I want bees for honey and wax. But I want to be the girl who can do this AND wear the 4 inch pumps.

Is that too much to ask?

I was thinking how Eva Gabor (Lisa Douglas) had it good. I mean she was the (aspiring) farmer's wife and she wore couture...the best of both worlds.

So, perhaps I will be cleaning out the chicken coop a few years from now, harvesting the ripe summer squash and smoking out the beehive...but I will be doing it all in a pair of Louboutins (Please. Manolos are for amateurs).

Amendment to a previous blog

I forgot to add Nickleback (or is it Nickelback?) and any band that sounds remotely like this band to the list of hated things.

In keeping with the number seven. I propose to make Paris Hilton and Tyra Banks an equal and single, deplorable entity.

Food has feelings, too.

My head was swimmy after class last night. Literary Criticism does that to me. I'm weak, I know. But, it was post-structuralism.
I decided that I needed a oreo milkshake to wash down all of the signifier-signified-aporia-blah-blah-bore-ia (I am an emotional eater. Nothing to hide here).

When I pulled up to BK (aka Satan). I noticed a new advert: ANGRY WHOPPER

Since when did our food become emotional? Who in hell thinks of these things?
(I guess someone who is trying to keep their job relevant in this downer of an economy)
And what makes the damn thing angry anyway? If any of you carnivores care to sample, can you please tell me how angry food is possible?

"These six things the Lord hates; yes, seven are an abomination to him..."

1. Mike Collins and the smug commentary of Charlotte Talks
2. Tyra Banks
3. Mothers who let their daughters listen to Britney Spears (and other such Pop Princesses)
4. People who drive slowly in the left lane (the passing lane)
5. Fast food joints
6. Paris Hilton
7. American Idol

His Eyes Were Watching Blogs

This is not the blog I wanted to write this week. But I woke from a most distressing dream this morning. It went something like this...

I missed another NonFiction class (knowing I had already missed two), but I had no excuse this time for not being there...and it was the class for which our final draft of the papers were due. I was in New York City...randomly...in Manhattan. Prof. Renfroe called me (I suppose with the aid of those handy-dandy notecards he has) and asked me why I was not in class. (Why the hell wasn't I in class?!) When I got off the phone, I got in my car and raced to our class meeting. I remember doing the math, three hours, I'll be there in time for class to end (We must have been living in CT or somewhere that close--in order for this to work out).
Anyhow, I got there just in time.
Everything was fine, I got there with moments to spare, except for the fact that my paper had not been revised or printed and I had missed another quiz. (There were also a lot of people in the class from my other real life classes). The class met at Prof. Renfroe's house. Apparently, the assignment was to cook your favorite stew and write about the process. Umm...well, I walked in on a scene with many kettles-a-boiling. (Trust me, you are as shocked as I).
Well, I know that I needed to somehow find time to revise (as you all have advised), which included actually finishing my paper, and print the damn thing without Prof. Renfroe knowing that I was not, in fact, prepared for his class.

And--just like that--divine intervention...or, in literature, deus ex machina--Robert Plant showed up to save the day. It was just him. No Jimmy Page. No Alison Krauss. It was just enough to hold every body's attention in awe(distracting from my short comings, if only for a moment). I finished the paper, scrambling to make revisions...and no one even noticed.

I don't even think he sang for ya'll--or did his little hair flip/sway thing--or even offered up any good drugs.

Let's all just hope I get these revisions completed...because this sort of saving grace is as likely as Jimmy and Robby announcing the Led Zeppelin reunion tour.

In Response to Chapter 7, Pamela Anderson is not attractive, but these people are:

1. Scarlett Johansson (obvious reasons, plus no plastic surgery necessary)
2. Kate Winslet (see note above)
3. Jenny Lewis (semi-rocker thing going on)
4. Jennifer Connelly (gorgeous, despite the vein that runs through the middle of her forehead during emotional scenes in her movies)
5. Tina Fey (while I realize she is a not an obvious choice, though smart and funny, if you saw her Annie Lebowitz photographs in the January 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, you'd know why.)

Also, Pamela Anderson is not the reason women hate their bodies, though someone like Nicole Kidman is (tall, slender, elegant). I think Chuck's perception of how women feel about Pamela Anderson (or feel about themselves because of Pam) is completely devoid of any reality.

Does anyone care to agree or disagree?

Klosterfuck

Does this cynical bastard like anything?

And, yes. I did just start reading.

Part 2

I do not tell people whom I meet the story. Many people have asked me in polite conversation how I came to North Carolina. I, yet another Yankee, who ventured past the Mason-Dixon line to settle into a life of affordable housing, lower taxes, and warmer weather. I answer the question, with a wry smile and say it was just a change of scenery. Charlotte is the Promised Land of vinyl-sided subdivision and drive-thru Starbucks. I do not tell them that when I moved here into a two-bedroom apartment in South Charlotte, how I cried when I realized for the first time that, indeed, there could be two McDonald’s on one road, or two Wal-Marts, or two anythings that could exist in the myriad of shopping centers that polluted the southern part of the city. I was used to simplicity. Places like this did exist up North, but I had managed to avoid them. I grew up in a small, middle class city in Massachusetts. It is a city that had been built on the furniture industry and, like many cities in New England, resembled more of a town. We only had one Wal-Mart, which existed outside the city limits.

W.W.W.D.

I bought a treadmill and stuck it in the stuffy, spare bedroom. I did this so I will no longer make excuses not to go to the gym or go running outside.

While I was jogging last night, after work, the White Stripes blaring in the background, I couldn't help but think...What Would Wordsworth Do?

Surely, he could not imagine "spots of time" in relation to my artificial environment (heat, lighting, sound...a moving "road"). I can't either.

Ahh....nature, why can't you be more accomodating?

Discretion, anyone?

The professor was leading a discussion on the Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. We were discussing Rousseau and Dr. Whatshisname’s belief that women should be educated in cunning, beautifying themselves, and something else. That these were essential to gaining power in their lives, love and marriage. The “playthings of men,” etc, etc.
The Professor asked something like, “Is this true for women today? Do women still behave this way?” And, if I recall correctly, a few people politely said no.

I was apparently wearing my thoughts on my face (as I do) and the professor noticed and asked, “Antoinette, do you think so?”
To which I replied, in an outburst, “I watch The Real Housewives of Orange County!”
(This, in a sentence, was my very educated rebuttal. Meaning, yes. women do still act this way to gain power.)

A sinner’s confession.
I got a few laughs and a couple of people just shook their heads in disgust.

What is it that we are learning in this class? Saying a lot without revealing, in a sense, our deepest, darkest secret. Yeah—haven’t really caught on.

(P.S.  I am rooting for Gretchen)

This is my rant.

I am here in the airport. It is desolate. I have never flown on a Saturday evening. It is quiet except for the woman who is sitting three seats from me. She is probably in her fifties.

I am trying to read about Alexander Pope. I have lots of reading to catch up on. But, here, I am instead distracted by the over-weight, middle-aged broad in a tacky bright pink sweater and fake pearl earrings.

At first she was loudly crunching her salad. Shoveling it in, forkful upon forkful. It’s okay. Focus. Focus. I chant my mantra in my head.

Next she opens her rice, snack mix. It is a loud, thin plastic container; the kind dried fruit and nuts are packaged in at the supermarket. She opens it and starts throw it back in handfuls. Chopping down heavily on mouthfuls of the crunchy pieces. Do you know what this sounds like??? The chopping of baked goods coupled with the smack of the saliva at the back of her throat.

Ok. Her cell phone rings. And she picks up. I have a break! Finally, no more loud chewing.

No. It gets worse. She is simultaneously eating the snacks and talking to the other person on the phone. Her voice grows louder as she begins gossiping (oh god. a lisp.) about so-and-so and how he lost all the money he had in the stock market, and how he will lose his ski-house and that he and his family will have to live with relatives up in North Conway and that she “never thought it would come to thisssttthhh. It isstthh the wortthhhsstt I’ve sstthhheen in my lifetime.” Her speech, the sound of her voice is drawn out at the end of each sentence—for dramatic emphasis, mind you.

A man sitting across the section from me looks up at me from his book. Really? He seems to say, tilting his head forward to look over the top of his reading glasses.

Her commentary has finally pushed to me to make my usual move of frustration. I take out my phone….and write an impassioned text message to share my anger with a friend, in hopes that the venting will relieve the growing desire to pummel my phone at her face.  But I hold back. But the vision of my desired action, grants me enough satisfaction to hold me over.

Her phone call ends. She is vigorously brushing crumbs of her stiff, cotton pants. Why is it that some people cannot just be quiet!

I think she can feel the hate. She is moving from me. I should have thought of that.

Never Underestimate the Power of the Stuffed Animal

Dakin sat in the corner of the room, a place where he sat for the last few years, on a stack of my clothes piled up in a laundry basket. Jeremy, my neat freak live-in, would tie my ruana scarves around his neck and put my summer hats on his head, so that they remained off the bedroom floor. We called him traveling Dakin, because he looked like a tourist, but he never went anywhere. He just sat there with a blank expression, staring off into the blue wall.

When the call came that Nana was in the hospital, Dakin’s situation changed. Nana was very sick, in the hospital. Nana was dying. I knew this call was going to come sooner or later. I, a full-time student in my senior year with a full time job, just didn’t know it would be so difficult to get there to say goodbye. So I had to bide my time somehow and sent Dakin as an ambassador.

Dakin had been good to me. I was introduced to him probably later then I should have been. I was ten or eleven. I received him as a gift from my Nana. She had bought him for a play I was in at the community theatre. She and my cousins took their seats close to the front of the theatre, near stage right, Dakin in tow. He was a bunny with nubby ecru “fur,”which resembled that of lamb, not bunny. He was dressed in a pink sailor suit with a white hat and matching pink ribbons. I named him after his maker, a name I found on the tag. (zero creative points)

Even though I was older, I still had intense night terrors. The kind that wakes you up in a sweat and the only way to clear your mind is to turn on the lights. But I was always terrified to make the step out of my bed to turn them on. Dakin soothed me somehow. I don’t know if it was the thought of my Nana that helped me. That she picked him out with care. That somehow her energy passed to the inanimate object or if it was that he was pillowy soft and easy to cuddle. All I know is that he made me feel better, safer. Eventually, his tail fell off and went missing and his garb became worn and his fur picked up lint.

Nevertheless, I knew he was the one to go. And I hoped that perhaps my energy might be passed to Nana, I hoped that she’d be comforted. If she died before I made it there, that she would know that I loved her, that I thought of her, that I wanted to be there, I wanted to say goodbye.

Jeremy’s mother washed his dusty body in preparation and, half-dry, I brought him to work to be packaged by the shipper. I packed him in a small box, careful to cushion his journey with tissue. I sealed him in his vessel with a small note. He was second-day aired.

My grandmother was clutching him as I walked into her room days later. I was seeing her in her condition for the first time. In her other hand was a seashell my younger had brought her, tokens of our thoughts and love surrounded her. Her head was tilted up so she could breathe. She had refused any life support. And they took her off that morning I arrived. She was surrounded by her husband, five children, most of her nineteen grandchildren and one of the five of her great-grandchildren. And Dakin.

She died five days later. My mother, who stayed home from the hospital that night, the night she had been moved into hospice, went to see my Papa the morning she died. I heard the news and, tired from crying, crawled into my parents’ bed with my nine and ten year old brothers, turned on cartoons and took a nap.

When I awoke, Dakin was on the dining room table, the seashell tied to the ribbon around his collar. Remnants of Nana’s last days. An orphan of death. It was over. Only the smell of ivory soap, face lotion and hospital lingered on his slouchy body.

Later, at Nana and Papa’s house, my older cousins, sister and I thumbed through pictures, trying to find pictures of Nana for her funera. We spent an hour or so going through hundreds of pictures, spanning nearly eighty years, from black and whites, to the milky colors of the seventies and eighties, to the digital vivids of today. Close to the end of our project, Angela made a discovery. She handed the photograph to me. The date was stamped on the back, 1996, and from the background I could tell that it was taken at our favorite vacation spot by the beach. It was a picture of Nana, holding Dakin by her face.

She was smiling. His was stitched on.

Liar, Liar. Pants on Fire...

I do not like to tell lies.  I hate to sound self-righteous, but I really try not to tell lies.  I have a potty mouth.  I have no temperance when it comes to sweets.  And I speed.  This is just a small list of my many sins.

I have given up on deliberate dishonesty...my face gives me away every time.  I might try but the corners of my mouth turn upward, in a sort of semi-grin and my eyes get big.  I don't believe my own bullshit.  So, how can I profess it to others.  So I have decided that honesty is my best policy.  I believe in cosmic order and that untruthfulness disrupts this order (I know...it's cheesy.  Forgive me.  I feel your eyes rolling as I write this).  I believe that small lies lead to bigger lies...and that leads to lying to yourself (and subsequently believing it), which is the greatest lie of all.

With that said...

When I read this assignment, I was sitting with my mother.  So I turned to and asked, "Can you remember a time when I lied?"  And she did, because she had recently found a document...a confession, you might say...and had laughed reading it.

She said that she found a letter that I wrote when I was in the eighth grade (or one of those middle school years).  I was homeschooled from grades 4-9 and we followed a curriculum that required our work to be turned into the actual school from where the curriculum was developed.  

Ok.  But let me explain one thing.  I am no math person.  That is why my major is English. 

I was having a hard time with algebra, so when I took my exam, stunned by the problems and not sure how to tackle them, I decided to take a peek into my mother/teacher's answer book...a big spiral bound book that held the key to every  problem.  I jotted down the answers and handed it in.

I am not sure how long it took her to notice, probably not much time at all.  See, in math you are given credit on the steps you take to solve the problem...even if the final answer if wrong. Well, needless to say, I had shown little to no effort.  

My mother confronted me.

My punishment was to write a letter of apology to the administrative board or superintendent, someone very important.  My confession and apology were sincere.  I don't remember if I cried, or if I was scared of the consequences, though I am sure of both.  The thing is...my mother never sent the letter, though she had let on that she did.  But she did hold on to it for all of these years.  

Lesson learned.

Part 1

It was a place that I could finally call my own, an attic transformed into a bedroom. It had no closet, a make shift door that only locked with a hook, and two small windows, whose frames were paint-chipped. When the owner of the house kindly agreed to let me paint the room a shade of green reminiscent of the inside of a ripe avocado, I was ecstatic. This enthusiasm carried me through the next couple nights when I realized that, though the house had central air conditioning, the cool air did not flow freely to my part of the house. I had been accustomed to sleeping with blankets, even during the unbearable summer evenings in the South. Because of central air, I did not have to give up my, very literal, security blankets. They made me feel safe enough to fall asleep during all of the nights I spent alone in my old house. But in this new place, in my own place, I was learning a different way of living, even if it was hinging on a meditative state that to kept my heart rate down and, subsequently, my body cool.

I was twenty-two and had never lived alone. I had housemates, four of them. I responded to an ad online when I was looking for a place to live. It was one of the only places that I could now afford and it was closer to my new workplace. My housemates were four strangers who found each other by way of their school. They were all a part of the NASCAR Institute, and though I stuck out sorely, they welcomed me. Jeremy, originally the only male roommate, talked about his cherry, IROC Camaro and other details having to do with cars and I managed to smile and nod in response. I had no clue about these things—transmissions, tires—of which he spoke. Kim was from Idaho. She was in her late thirties but appeared to be approximately fifty-two. She had a mouth only half full of teeth, the bottom half, which I never noticed as she droned on and on about the new man she met online, once beckoning me to see the new pictures he had sent her via email. The pictures were fakes. And then there was Casey, the younger girl, who had recently moved her boyfriend from back home into her room, so that they could be closer. Thus saving them the gas bill and the time spent traveling every other weekend to and from Kansas. They were the only two people I have met from Kansas.

The fact that I had four housemates never hampered my emerging independence. I had no one to whom I had to answer. I had no person who needed my attention or affection or opinion. It was me and my dogs and my books. I stopped cooking; in fact, I stopped eating in the evenings, except for the occasional yogurt or candy bar. I read more. I watched DVDs. And I fell asleep earlier. This room was my tiny slice of heaven, except that it increasingly felt like hell. The sweltering heat those nights were reminiscent of the night that propelled me here.

Nature and Art: The Mint on an August day

I went to the Mint Museum yesterday, alone, and I am glad I did. There is something reverent about museums; they are sacred buildings like churches of old. The gods of Myers Park and Corporate America bestow upon us souls splashed across canvases, minds dissected and bits mounted, presented for our curiosity, amusement…maybe…our salvation. I am not sure. Museums, like churches, lend themselves to the process of self-discovery. Why do I gravitate to this piece? What does this say about the world of which I am part? How does art reflect nature? There were two pieces that struck me in this (how? what? why?) way.

The first piece was a painting hanging in the first room I entered. The artist was an American painter named Milne Ramsey; the painting was called Route en Bretagne (Road in Brittany) 1882. I cannot talk about how it was made; I only can tell how I felt as I remember it now. It is a picture of a dirt road, on both sides of the road, there are trees lining the road as far as I can see. Behind the road, there is a stonewall and behind the wall there is a pasture. The sun is shining as it would on a late summer afternoon. There are no people, only me on this road and it the temperature is now just cooling. I can feel, as I walk under the trees, the warm sunlight on my face change from hot to cool as I pass under their shadows. The air is clean, the ground is rocky and it crunches as my heels dig into it and push away. I can hear birds sing and the sound of the wind slightly rusting leaves and tiny branches of the trees. Insects buzz by. I hear them in the background in somewhat of a harmony. I have been here before, as a child. We were on our bikes riding down this road, my sisters, my cousins and me, our mothers walking, talking to each other, lagging somewhere behind us. We did not care to wait for them either, the breeze felt too good on our faces as we rode through the light-speckled shadows, giggling with freedom. It was us and it was nature (or what we knew of nature in its manmade glory). This is one of the last days I remember with my cousins in our youth, before our kindred spirits were ripped apart by the move. I will forever regard the day they moved as an eternal loss, we so innocent and it was totally out of our control. But today is perfect, I say to myself, and continue on…the road that leads to anywhere.

A second piece, called Perpetual (2001) by Siobhan Hapanska, caught my eye. It was a dead pine tree on display in a clear case. From a distance, I saw it had goldish ornaments hanging from the branches. As I approached the tree for a better look, I realized that they were not gold ornaments, but clear, hollow ornaments that had been filled with the tree’s pine needles. It shocked me at first, the sight of the needles, once a part of the tree, crammed into the ornaments, now separated by glass, hanging off the tip of each branch in decoration. What was wrong with the way it had been in the forest? It was adorned with those needles in the first place. Though, they had then been green and fragrant. It made me think of Christmas, too. I have gone only one Christmas in my life without a Christmas tree. A couple of years, we had tried a new tradition, cutting them down ourselves. Yes, we became cold-blooded tree murderers. Surely, the pagans, those nature lovers, did not start this horrible thing. I do not know the group to blame, but it caught on: the mass murder of various evergreens for one day, left to dry out in our family rooms under the glow of colorful lights, glitter, ribbon and other trinkets, and then thrown out onto the streets for the garbage man to pick up. It a ritual as unusual as the single display I encountered; the duality of the evergreen as life in winter versus the death of that tree. It is like when you know you have a problem, but until somebody points is out plainly, you go on unaware or the damage you are causing.

So it was the lonely tree, so lonely and dead, exposed to the branches, that had me thinking on my car ride home, of nature’s impact on us and, in turn, our impact on nature.