Why I can't sleep late (and how Jordan's Mill Pond figures into it....)

IBM ruined me.

When I worked there fresh out of college, they had this MARVELOUS arrangement called flex-time. If you got in a 7:00 am, you REALLY could leave at 3:30pm! And people ACTUALLY left at 3:30 pm! Home by 4:00 pm! 

Well maybe my nephews ruined me.

In the long hot summers of high school, they’d swarm in our house around 7:00 am, and BANG, throw open my bedroom door and lunge into my bed to wake me up, bouncing and yelling. 

Whatever it was, I am ruined for good. I can’t manage to sleep late and any attempts to do so leave me feeling slovenly and out of sorts. Today even my Saturdays go a little like this:

3:30 am: Pug #4 AKA “Little Girl” takes a post directly beside my husband’s head. In the dim light I notice her posture, which can only be likened to a vulture. 

4:00 am: Husband twitches a muscle, somewhere, anywhere.

4:00:01 am: Little Girl frolics in our king sized bed “My Lord and Master is awake, my Lord and Master is awake!!!”

4:00:02am: Husband stumbles out of bed and heads for shower.

4:00:03am: All four pugs (in bed) migrate over me to the two inches of mattress between me and the edge of the bed. They sit and watch intently for their Lord and Master to get out of the bathroom.

4:20 am:  In the bathroom I can hear The Lord and Master put his shoes on the floor prior to putting them on. This soft sound is followed by whoops of joy from the bed (but not from me) as the pugs practically shiver in anticipation of his return. 

4:30 am: Coast is clear. Pugs and Husband OUT of the bedroom. Turn over for blissful sleep.

5:30 am: Husband comes into bedroom asking “Are you awake?” Well, yes.

And so my days begin. And now, I am in this habit, which can’t seem to be broken. Though I am slow to get going and I complain heartily, I love knowing the day will stretch ahead of me full of opportunities.

Back in the day I do remember something I most definitely WOULD have missed if I had slept in.

I was on a youth retreat – one of many I enjoyed with the Seaboard Baptist Church. They were held at Jordan’s Millpond – a gorgeous, distinctly Southern oasis. Central elements were the Mill House and the Mill Pond, complete with cypress trees from which Spanish moss hung like so many wispy gray beards. At times, there were peacocks, screeching their distinctive laments. There were flat-bottomed wooden boats for rent for fishermen, and wooden boardwalks, some criss-crossing from bank to bank and some mysteriously dead ending. And always, always, a musky scent of decay or as I know now, the scent of rich soil being born.

The overnight retreat was held at an appropriately quaint location. Around the millpond’s dogleg and just out of sight, was a cottage, owned by the Howell family I believe and built AROUND A SCHOOL BUS! I loved it! There was a great den with plenty of chairs, long sleeping porches, a full kitchen, bathrooms and a  fabulous bus in the middle with cots for sleeping!

The retreat usually consisted of a few very intense bible study sessions held by the handsome, earnest, young Baptist preacher determined to save our souls, especially the Methodist kids since though we were baptized, we were not immersed, so we weren’t really saved.  We had volleyball, cookouts, and lots of giggling. We all stayed up WAY to late talking and walking in this enchanted place, and finally one, by one the Howells, the Davis’s the Maddreys, and the few Methodists (me and Dean) with assorted guests (including my dear friend Jill), would find an empty cot and give it up to Morpheus, drifting off to sleep.

After one of these nights I woke up on the sleeping porch in the silent cottage at the first hint of sun. I remember crawling out of bed and stepping outside. The grass was wet with dew on my bare feet. The morning air was still cool as if just waking up itself. I drew closer to the end of the Mill Pond, to watch the first rays of light dance across the brackish sleeping water. A fine mist rose from its surface. And then I heard a gentle splash and to my astonishment saw a huge buck, with a fine multi-pronged rack slide into the millpond not far from where I stood. The swell of his shoulders as he swam through the pond to the other side hinted at both the power in his strokes  and the depth of the pond where he traversed it.  He swam straight across, slipping in and out of shadow and brilliant rays of  morning light, then reaching the other side, hauled himself effortlessly out of the water and  then silently vanished into the woods.

For once, I am quite sure I was at a loss for words.

Even now, I am overwhelmed just remembering this most beautiful of sights. And even now, I have the feeling that, I, well, really might miss something if I sleep too late…….

Bring back the State vs UNC Rivalry! ( Sorry to see you go Sidney Lowe! )

Sidney Lowe, I am sincerely sorry to see you hang up your red jacket. I believe you were earnest, and I for one hoped you would be the man to bring back the glory days of NCSU basketball! 

Because when I grew up. It wasn't the Duke-Carolina rivalry. It was the State-Carolina rivalry. And I was on the side of red.

Well I had to be. Before I broke my father's heart and went to Blue Heaven I was a Wolfpack girl all the way.  NCSU was my dad's Alma mater and the favorite team of my nearest and dearest friends. It was crazy really and as KIDS  we were RABID about our rivalry. If I dust off a few mental cobwebs, I am right back on the bus, on the way to Northeast  where all of us obligated to the hour drive would sort ourselves among blue and red lines - writing on our notebooks, on the moisture of the windows, on the back of the seat on ANYTHING what school team we KNEW was the best. David Thompson, Monte Towe, and Tommie Burleson were the guys to watch and Norm Sloan took them ALL THE WAY beating GIANT UCLA to win the NCAA in 1974! They WERE BASKETBALL! We went WILD!

 I am a big fan of writer Malcom Gladwell. He has written a series of fascinating books including The Tipping Point, and Blink.  Another of his books focuses on Outliers and it occurs to me (and I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong) that among the sea of soft blue and brilliant red there was a single outlier, a stalwart soul who despite the draw of the State-Carolina rivalry, was stoic in his support of...gasp...dare I say it - Duke! This was Jimmy Edwards and I remember thinking...well WHO cares ANYTHING about Duke??? 

Flash forward 4 years or so. I had visited NCSU in person and been intimidated by the sea of bricks and the lack of fellow females. I had visited my friends at UNC and admired their graceful rolling campus and classic buildings and amazing library and I applied early decision and was accepted. I was thrilled, though somewhat uncomfortable with switching sides.

And then an unexpected  thing happened. At the huge freshman convocation we are herded into the gym and taught these words:

I'm a tarheel born and a tarheel breed and when I die I'll be a tarheel dead!
So rah-rah Carolina-lina, rah-rah Carolina-lina,  rah-rah Carolina-lina go to hell DUKE!

DUKE?!?!?!?! It was amazing. Here was an even larger rivalry and I didn't know it! Oh yes, the UNC-State rivalry had legs, but the UNC-DUKE rivalry whipped the campus into a fevered state! And all these years it still does Jimmy knew something all along that I didn't! But after almost 30 years of games later, you can bet your sweet ass that I do now!

When I married my husband, I took great pride in the fact that he didn't watch sports on TV. After spending much of my pre-college life avoiding my Dad's football games, I didn't miss it one bit. Over the years we managed to sneak in a few March Madness games and a few Duke-UNC games to stay in touch with the thrill of ACC basketball - including when my oldest son was born and we watched the games from the hospital TV.

As I've grown older, and started work at UNC. I am right back to cheering on those Heels! But alas and alack - though my now grown boys enjoy staying fit (running, working out, biking, etc.) they are not into organized sports. So that has left me yelling on the the couch at Roy and his boys alone, with an occasional support of husband dearest.....until.....UNC played Miami this March 11th. After trailing at times mightily the WHOLE GAME we won at the buzzer. The game was on at work and....on at EMC where my youngest son Zack works part time. (He has transferred form NCSU to UNC by the way, seen the error of his ways.)  He likes to rib me a bit about my devotion to UNC so his texts to me are a bit of a jab at first...

Zack - UNC getting toasted
Me -  Only first half! Give them time!
Zack - 25-20 Mama not lookin good
Zack - Make that 28-20 :(
Zack -  Lol UNC gonna get first round eliminated
Me - Techincally second round
Zack - good lord
Me - Okay, just stepped back into game again good lord is right!
Zack - Looking a little bit better
Me-Trying
Zack - Oh well
Me-Sad
(Here we lose our connection - it  freezes at UNC, when it reconnects UNC has turned the game around)
Me - Holy crap check the game
Zack-Whoa! Shame I can't watch it, internet filter.
(He walks out to the cafeteria where a handful of diehards are watching the final seconds of the game)
Zack - whoa
Me- Holy Crap
Zack- Holy Sh**
Zack - Man like, .1 second left on the clock.
Me- and THAT my son is basketball!
Zack - I saw the last 10 seconds in the cafeteria. Some ten seconds
Me - Hell yeah. Unbelieveable!
Me - I have a meeting at 3 and another at 4. I have to settle down.
Zack - p intense though
Me - Awesome! Go Heels!

So there you have it friends. I got what I wanted for my birthday this year and wasn't even something I knew I wanted - that my son now gets it - why I rant and rave and why I love Roy's boys. It will take more time, but I'm hoping that what I witnessed was the birth of a Tarheel fan. It's never too late.

Now if only NCSU can reclaim their former glory.......It's never too late.....

How Walmart is turning me into a Vegetarian - or Why I miss Charlie Painter, Carl Price, and Ben.

I know I lament about cooking, but this recipe is a cinch and perfect to cook at my mom's: Swiss Steak a la Fannie Farmer, a recipe I've prepared successfully multiple times. To paraphase Ms. Farmer:

1. Buy rump, round, or chuck steak.
2. Beat with a meat hammer, er, meat tenderizer.
3. Brown.
4. Stick in oven for 2 hours with stewed tomatoes and onions. 

When Mom and I were at Ralph's I should have heeded the foreshadowing:  2 of our favorite waitresses  started a diatribe about how much they hated Walmart. I scoffed - the one in Roanoke Rapids is certainly better than the one in Durham......

Fast forwad to me at Walmart at the meat counter. Any beef other than hamburger appears to be in very short supply. Choices are slim, and I pick the only slab of beef that meets the critera for Swiss steak.

We bring it home, I beat the hell out of it with a mallet, brown it and pop it in the oven. 

So when I removed 2 hours later, my hopes for a melt in your mouth roast is dashed to bits when I realize that EVERY MOLECULE OF THE BEEF is HELD TOGETHER BY TWO MOLECULES OF GRISTLE. It was wretched - the fattiest, gristliest hunk of beef you can imagine. I didn't remember it going INTO the oven like that. I sawed and searched until I found a piece of barely edible beef about the size of a deck of cards and put on mom's plate - another even smaller one for me.

Mom ate hers. Well after all, she did live through the depression. I myself, a child of the sixties, raised in the day of "if it feels good, do it" decided it DID NOT feel good, so I WASN'T GOING TO EAT IT. I could hear a cow laughing somewhere in heaven.holding his sides and chortling "Disgusted another one!!" And disgusting it was. Gristle - the most hideous sounding word is indeed the perfect sounding word for the most wretched meat I have ever seen or tried to eat. Walmart should be ashamed of labeling  it for human consumption.

And is there a butcher to complain to? Was it cut in Roanoke Rapids or far far away? I suspect somewhere in the bowels (another apt word) there is a butcher in the back, but I don't think they come out very often, they only dash in and out when the produce guys give them the "all clear."

And that is why I miss Charlie Painter, Carl Price and Ben. When I was a kid Charlie Painter ran the absolute perfect version of the country store just a 1/2 a block away from my house with every conceivable item a small town family could want. (Most memorably cookies in large jars 2 for 5 cents handed out WITHOUT rubber gloves by whoever was working the register. )Mr. Charlie was a nice man and the town's pubescent boys would count on him for their first job bagging groceries.

When you entered the small, store (which was bursting with stuff) and headed straight back, you'd come to the meat section where Mr. Carl (who always called me "Meanness" )  and Mr. Ben always had fresh pork, beef, and chickens. And sausage - the BEST homespiced sausage you can imagine. Country hams wrapped in their sacks and hoops of sharp chedder cheese. We knew WHERE our meat came from, we accepted that these good men dealt with it properly, and we appreciated the good quality and care given to any meat bought on the premises and wrapped up in crisp white butcher paper.

Today that individual touch seems to have gone the way of hoop cheese and jars of cookies, pushed aside by the big boys of Walmart. There is one good way around it....

Just pass the vegetables, please!

Barbie Baldness

When I was little I discovered the horrible truth.

Let me preface this by saying my sis is 9 years older than I am. I was generally not allowed to play with her stuff (due to an unfortunate incident with  Madame Alexander doll and a ball point pen.) The occasions I was permitted into her magical realm where very special. She had the spectacular "early" Barbie with wicked black eyeliner and blue eyeshadow, ubiquitous blond ponytail, and black and white striped strapless bathing suit. You know the one!

So I am sure that after I stripped Barbie naked (what little girl wouldn't?) I took out her ponytail. And learned the terrible truth! Barbie was bald! A rim of hair and bangs hid a shining dome!

It was shocking and I was relieved to get Barbie's friend Midge for my own. She had  a pate FULL of red hair. No worries! Somehow along the way however I managed to get a Barbie that came with  3 wigs - and she WAS really bald!  But boy, what fabulous wigs!

Fast forward to elementary school. My dad's mom is staying with us on and off. At 4 foot and just a few inches she was the perfect grandma - crocheting afghans and making doll clothes for Barbie and Midge. She was cute as a button! And her helmet of white fluffy hair was ADORABLE...until I realized my Grandma was BALD AS AN EGG! One year on Christmas morning before opening gifts I went to wake her up - and saw her sans wig! Not really egg bald, there was a white  halo dancing around her bare skull...but still - didn't baldness happen only to men and Barbie???

Now many years later, at my half-century mark - only my hairdresser really knows for sure - but I dye my roots diligently, because, you see, when the white roots come in, my thinning middle aged hair looks even thinner! Alas, my own ponytail - still Barbie perky is about the size of a pencil. I do a mean bun, but the inevitable is  happening, slowly, but surely, I am joining the ranks of my grandma and Barbie. It is maddening and saddening but I hold out one dear hope. Maybe one day I too, can have Barbie-fabulous wigs!!!

SO change what you can and accept the rest - cause middle age is about being grateful for what you DO have!

2011 - here I come!