Savannah and Celia

My first trip to Savannah was the summer when I was 18.

I was working in a restaurant with a girl named Celia who went to college with me. She had olive skin and dark hair and wore flowing dresses. She was the daughter of Delta planter and lived that summer in a rented house on Jump Off Road with a papazan chair and a huge garden that we tended in our underwear. We were working on our tans, and the house was utterly secluded. She took me to a family dinner at the house of her landlord once. We drove to the bottom of the driveway, and when the car couldn't go any farther, his son picked us up on a four wheeler and took us up to the house. There was a fire pit with a whole deer roasting over it, and the father was frying fish. Celia was the kind of person who had adventures.

One night, late, after the restaurant closed, we decided to drive to the beach. We got in her car at about 2 am and drove from Sewanee, TN to Savannah, GA through the night. We got to Tybee Island in the morning, cleaned up a little in an Arby's bathroom, and went to the beach.

We spent the day lounging on a sheet on the beach. Celia played the guitar, but I could never hear it. The wind blew the sound away from me, and the ocean roared. I can only remember what it looked like--a beautiful dark girl, mouth moving through lyrics I couldn't hear, the wind blowing her hair and the sand.

We slept that night on the beach on our sheet. I went to sleep sunburned and sweaty and woke up freezing.

A high school boyfriend wrote once that between 17 and 21 I turned  from a sword to a ploughshare, and he must have been right because tonight I felt no desire to sleep on the beach. Instead, I walked in the wind as the darkness dropped down over the water. I put my toes in the lukewarm surf and sat on a swing, watching the waves and remembering Celia for the first time in years.

Decoration This Weekend

Since Decoration generally kicks off summer for me, I thought I would blog about it and maybe try to actually keep you updated on all my summer adventures.

Here's a list of stuff we did:

1. On the drive to MS and back, Livy and I listened to Amelia Peabody books, while she worked on multiplication, read Dr. Seuss, and drew both imaginary scenes (for instance a dragon fighting a zombie T-Rex) or sketched things we found (like a big leaf and a dead butterfly).

2. My mom and I found the oldest grave in Egger Cemetery, a lady named Anne Egger, who was born in 1763. We talked to her great, great, great, great granddaughter, who told us that they probably came to Caledonia by way We also found a set of Kirkpatrick graves nearly that old and were excited by the name. Probably early Scots-Irish immigrants to the area. The name Caledonia certainly suggest Scotland.

3. We decorated all our people, and the graves looked lovely.

4. Livy and I went with my mom and Mimi to the little cemetery chapel service on Sunday morning, which I haven't done since I was a child. The piano was out of tune, just the way I remember it, and that made the singing even better. We sang old hymns that I knew well, and it wasn't so terribly hot as usual.

5. I got a great idea for a book. The first book I have ever really thought about writing.

6. On the way home, Livy and I drove highway 278 all the way across northern Alabama instead of taking the interstate.

7. We slammed on the brakes and turned into a road labeled Natural Bridge and ended up hiking around the longest natural bridge east of the Rockies. It was beautiful and we saw a snake. A motorcycle lady is supposed to facebook a picture to me for identification.

8. We found a monastary in Cullman, AL. We walked the Stations of the Cross, culminating at the abbey cemetery and a pretty little chapel with those brightly colored statues that Catholics seem to be fond of. Really cool find.

Now we are home. Livy has gone to her dad's house, and I am headed to Savannah this morning. More posts from there, I hope.

On Vacation with Aaron (Warning: Extreme Sappiness Awaits)

Dear Blog,

I love going on vacation with Aaron. It's so fun. I am never coming home. Well, until Aaron gets all J on me and insists we have to go back to work, do the chores, see our friends, etc. He has many excellent qualities, but quitting our wholes lives and running away together to an exotic beach location is not one of them.

Back to his good qualities. He is so chill and doesn't care if we just meander. Want to take a detour into Chattanooga? Okay! Want to walk across my favorite pedestrian bridge over the Tennessee River at dusk? Okay! (And we did eat at his favorite Mongolian Grill in Chattanooga too.)

Another good quality is that he talks and talks and listens and listens. All day today we've been talking. We talked about what we think will happen to our friends in the future over lunch (and cheesecake). We talked about Ancient Greek myths at the Parthenon. We talked about what a Victorian person would think of everything going on in the park while we sat on a swing and people-watched. We talked about how pretty the Opryland hotel is while we wandered through its conservatories, and we talked about all the people and how fuzzy they looked to Aaron since he is so blind without his glasses while we laid in the sun by the pool. I just love it that we talk and talk and talk.

I think getting away with only your favorite person is the best thing in the world. Better than bacon. Better than a spoon of butter oil. Better than Whitewater. Better than Pride and Prejudice. Better than the smell of gardenias.

You know how I know that Aaron and I are just right and even better? Because he is the most fun person in the whole world. Amen.

Science and Art Adventures

I finished an amazing book that was an adventure itself, The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure. Wendy, an avid Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, immersed herself in Laura world by reading history, revisiting the fiction, and travelling to the Laura Ingalls Wilder historic sites. She records her adventures in a witty and modern book that was fascinating to me as a fellow Laura lover and that was often hilarious.

Aaron and I went to a lecture at the Tellus Science Museum by a technician who worked on the Saturn V rocket and by a model rocketry enthusiast. It was okay. It was fun to see all the familiar Apollo 11 footage, but we knew almost everything the technician said about the Apollo missions. I wish he had given us more inside details about his job putting together the rocket and what it was like to be at the launches. The rocketry enthusiast was just a little too enthusiastic. I wasn't particularly interested in that part, and he was convinced that it would hold our family together Republican-style if only we would build rockets. A little weird.

Afterward the lecture, we went to dinner with friends and then to see the New X-Men movie. It was amazing! I have always loved Magneto best, and this was his movie. The backstory on the friendship and parting of the ways between Magneto and Professor X was wonderful, and the very young and insecure Mystique was a delight. This might have been the best X-Men movie yet, even without Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart.

Summer of Adventure

So, I am done with being serious about anything except adventures. I don't plan on writing about anything else on this blog for a while. I'm not going to be writing about parenting, Oism, rhetoric, or anything else that belongs to normal life (unless I just really want to). Instead, I am going to write about my adventures.

Usually, in the Lyra universe, I am like one of the Oxford scholars. My adventures (and I love them and plan to dedicate my life to them) are in the realm of books and ideas. But since I don't know what I will be doing in the fall (hopefully, school, but there is some doubt), I am going to fill up every second with another kind of adventures, Gyptian adventures. Like Farder Coram, I am going to see things and do things and think about things, different things, outside things, exotic things, things that don't happen in grad school, things that you can't teach.

I'm going to read, of course; I think I would die if I didn't read. But I am going to read like Gail Wynand: here, there, everywhere. No courses of study for me. Only random entrances and exits into new worlds, coming and going when I fancy.

So to start off my journaling of this adventure story, I'll tell you what Livy and I did since ATLOSCon ended.

• Toured an old gold mine and panned for gold.
• Read Percy Jackson out loud in a hot tub.
• Played Yahtzee, Trouble, Chess, and Checkers.
• Canoed on the Toccoa River.
• Parked my canoe in the tip of a fish trap and wandered around it marveling at those awesome Mississippian Indians.
• Shouted at geese.
• Rode horses.
• Started my tour through Bruce Springsteen, thanks to the mixed CD a friend gave me. (Incidentally, he talks about dock workers as much as country singers talk about farmers. It's like an adventure through the North.)

This last few days has started my summer off right, in my opinion. Check back for more adventuring.

Not Completely Typical Day in the Life, but What Day is Typical Around Here?

I've decided to jump on the bandwagon! I love "Day in the Life" posts, and recently really enjoyed Amy's and Lynne's. I love them because I am so nosy about what other people are doing, how they live, what's important to them. I love these posts for the same reason that I love to look at other people's bookshelves and read formspring questions. Anyway, here's my day on Wednesday:

• Woke up and immediately remembered how it rained in my Jeep last night. Went outside in pajamas to take the top down so that it can dry all day in the sun. Used 8 towels to mop the water out of the floorboards.



• Helped Livy with a technical difficulty in her morning video game.



• Checked email, blogs, facebook, twitter. Switched computers in the middle with Livy so that she could do her math, reclining like a pampered queen in my bed.



• Talked on the phone with a friend about potty training. Glad that stage is behind me.



• Read a chapter of The Subtle Knife.
  



• Chatted with my friend Shea and on Enright House (an Objectivist chat room).



• Ordered some Vitamin D online.
  



• Read out loud to Livy from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a book on Pompeii, and a choose your own adventure book.



• Had a difficult and ear splitting hair brushing experience. Why can't girls have buzz cuts again?
  



• Walked with Livy to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Chatted while we were there about going to Pompeii, going to Egypt, riding a camel, and how much money J.K. Rowling made by writing the Harry Potter series.
  



• Chatted with Shea some more (about giftedness, learning styles, and careers for different temperaments) - very neat-o stuff.
  



• Miranda came for a surprise visit, and we caught up on what's been going on this summer while I folded clothes and put them away and did the dishes. That doesn't sound like a lot, but every piece of clothing and every towel in our house was lying across the couches. It was a big job and deserves more than this little bullet point to celebrate it.
  



• Mowed the grass in higher than 90 deg heat with breaks to get water and not get heat exhaustion. Ran over a bell pepper which had drooped close to the ground. Cursed really loud, but was drowned out by the mower.
  



• Read another chapter of The Subtle Knife out on the porch, since the air is a little cooler in the evening. Smoked my last few cigarettes, since I usually don't smoke when Aaron is here (he is on a business trip). He hates the way it smells and doesn't want me to die. Go figure.



• Took a nice long bath during which I watched an episode of Angel.



• Chatted some more with Shea. It sounds like I spend much of my life doing this, and while that is sort of true, it's also true that we hadn't talked in a while, so we had a lot to catch up on. :)



• Cuddled up with Livy and watched part of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets movie. Poked her often so she wouldn't fall asleep before we had to leave for the airport.
  



• Drove to the airport ridiculously late at night to pick up Aaron. He had been on a business trip for 3 days, and his flight got delayed, and we got back from the airport after midnight.



• Tried to put pajamas on a completely passed out child who weighs more than 50 lbs.



• Went to bed super happy that Aaron is home and sleeping beside me.
  

Life Learning Progress

It's been a while since I posted about the kinds of things Livy and I have been up to.

I let you guys know what I am reading in a post a couple of days ago, and I am also (very intermittently) working on my French. I've been preparing for my poetry appreciation class at Mini-Con and working on the podcast with Jenn. Aaron and I have been watching the first season of Veronica Mars (and loving it all over again for me).

Now, a list of what Livy's been doing:

• constantly playing Dreambox, an online math game for K-3rd grades
• occasionally reading one of the Bob Books to me -- She likes math WAY more but is willing to read a book to me now and then
• playing computer games like Strawberry Shortcake's Cookie Party, Blue's Big Art Show, Arthur Pet Chase, and Barbie Island Princess (she can handle these games by herself)
• counting her allowance and planning what she will spend it on -- Her interest in money is fairly new. Before, she didn't think about it much, but now she is planning ways to earn extra.
• making a scrapbook with pictures of family and friends
• writing and decorating cards to Grandma, Mimi, and Dad
• watching Scooby Doo, Harry Potter movies, and Strawberry Shortcake
• playing with her friends
  

Things we've been doing together:

• playing Where in America is Carmen Sandiego -- This game is for ages 8-12 and requires a lot of reading, so she needs my help.
• I've been reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets out loud, along with lots of other smaller books.
• working in our vegetable garden
• cooking
• cleaning and organizing the house
• going swimming
  
• We visited White Water, a local water park. We got season passes as usual, and when the weather is good, we often go once a week.
• With Aaron, we did a road trip to see his family in Indiana and friends in Chicago. This included the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the Museum of Science and Industry, the top of the Sears Tower, the Indianapolis Children's Museum, a drive up into Amish country, and a short wildlife hike through a marsh.
• visiting our local Tellus Science Museum two days in a row
• watched two planetarium shows, one on finding constellations and planets and things in the night sky that evening, one on planets that have been found in other solar systems and what they are like
• watching Glee together

So, as you can see, we've been having a super fun time!

Learning What I Like About Georgia While I Was in New York

Now, don't be sad New Yorkers. I had fun in your city. I certainly enjoyed meeting some New York Objectivists. But I didn't like New York too much; we just don't fit each other. My trip taught me to appreciate some things about my home here in GA.

1. Plants are just so lovely. Not just my own garden and yard, but the ones you find scattered all around here. Crepe myrtles in the medians. Grass growing between the buildings and the sidewalks and between the sidewalks and the streets. Pretty flower gardens at the entrance to each neighborhood or office park. Parks that flow seamlessly into the rest of the city. Real woods. Plants make my eyes feel rested, and they make me feel connected to the seasons and to the natural cycles of the earth.

2. There really can be too many people. So, I am very, very extroverted. I study in noisy restaurants and like to go out of the house and among people every day. But there were just too many people for me in NYC. I like how there are lots of people here, so near Atlanta, but there is still space to stretch out and feel expansive, even outside of my own house.

3. I like comfort. GA is very comfortable. It's full of big comfy chairs, tables spaced far apart, bench swings on porches and in parks, dirt paths so cushiony for my feet, large, convenient, attractive bathrooms that are open to the public, and polite, attentive service.

4. I like it when other people treat me like a human being. In NYC, people treat one another (strangers passing in the world, I mean) as obstacles to be gotten around as quickly as possible and wiped from the memory immediately. In GA, people look me in the eye, smile at me, speak a word or two, nod a greeting at me, try to avoid bumping me or stepping in my way, and even help me out when I need it. Once a man climbed under a parked car for me to get a sippy cup Livy had dropped out of her stroller. I love seeing the recognition on other people's faces that I am a human with needs and values and worth.

5. I like Southern men. I like it when they open the door for me. I like to be noticed and smiled at, not leered at like a faceless mannequin. I like how the men here slow their steps to let me pass through the door or up the stairs or into the elevator first. I like how the men here offer help in physical tasks, like putting luggage on an overhead rack. I like it when they offer me a seat on a subway (although even here, that's pretty rare).

6. I like houses. Apartments in NYC are just really freaking small. I like decks and porches and extra bathrooms and spare bedrooms and full size stoves and ovens and washers and dryers right in the laundry room. I like roofs over my head, not other apartments. I like the quiet streets and the backyards and the storage sheds. I like driveways. I like outdoor dogs.

So, yes, I am very happy to be home. But I will miss public transportation that is easy and reliable. And I will miss the food in Koreatown.

Embracing the Weeds

Inspired by Jenn's Facebook post:

Today, though there were nearly knee high weeds in my garden and it looks pretty awful, I did not pull them or lay down the cardboard I've been saving and mulch over them. I did not mow the backyard. I did not do the laundry. Instead, I reminded myself how unimportant those things are, and I did something super important: what I really, actually wanted to do. I went hiking.

In 20 years, I will be glad that I saw a neat-o ruin of an old mill. I will be glad that I got exercise. I will be glad that I got caught in a sudden rain storm. I will be glad that I hopped from rock to rock over a lovely little creek. I will be glad that I worked on my running form around a pond and saw people fishing from the bank. I will not give a rat's you-know-what that I did not pull those weeds.

Lots of Excitement and a Musing

Well, I'm back to normal life (for two weeks anyway until our next trip). I'm very very very glad. Aaron's parents visited, my mom visited, and we went on a roadtrip to Washington, D.C. Just to shock and amaze you, here is a list of all the things I have done and seen since my last post:

• Atlanta Botanical Gardens
• walk through Piedmont Park
• High Museum of Art
• fancy lunch at the museum restaurant, where Livy was served iced tea in a real grownup glass without us having to ask, which made her whole lunch and (I think) got her to eat pickled beets because they are grown up too
• the library
• Greenville, SC to have dinner with an internet friend, now known in the flesh
• drove up the Blue Ridge parkway into Virginia (absolutely lovely!!)
• Monticello, Jefferson's home
• National Air and Space Museum
• Holocaust Museum (gruesome and graphic, but very wonderful museum, nonetheless)
• National Portrait Gallery
• American History Museum (for a minute only, we didn't like it)
  
• walking tour of the Mall and surrounding monuments (Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korean War, World War II, Washington monument)
• party to welcome a friend who is visiting our Atlanta Objectivist group
• 6 hour float down the Chattahoochee River on blow up rafts

So yeah, I'm kinda tired. The fridge is empty. The laundry is piled up to the ceiling. I am looking forward to this coming week, hanging with Livy and Ryan and Morgan and Sean and Rational Jenn a lot (we missed them tremendously), doing some housework, mowing the grass, and being at home!

And here is my musing:

At the aforesaid party, a friend of mine, a lovely attractive woman who would be admired by any man with any sense, mentioned that she was upset by her boobs sagging. It got us talking about changing bodies. Here's my two cents: There is nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty and attractive, but there is something wrong when we don't accept the reality of being 30ish and 40ish. Our boobs are gonna sag. Our faces are gonna get wrinkles. We'll probably all gain a few pounds as we age and our metabolisms slow. I think that's okay. If a man wants to date a woman with maturity and experience, he's gonna have to accept that those women have wrinkles and boobs that sag a bit. If he wants perfect boobs and flawless skin, he's gonna have to choose a person who hasn't lived and loved and learned sex techniques and made progress on career goals and traveled and has lots to teach him. The thing is, I don't think most of the pressure really comes from men. I've spent most of my life on the heavier side of our society's ideal, and yet, I've never hurt for very wonderful men in my life. My boobs that sag a bit have been greeted by men with that stupid (yet lovable) smile that they always get when faced with breasts of any size or age. I think that men (in general) are much kinder to our bodies than we women are ourselves.

Earlier this year, I made the resolution that this year, I was going to stop resolving to be something other than I am and making myself miserable. I've kept that resolution by ending my obsessive and dangerous dieting cycle and by practicing talking nice to my body and the bodies of other women. I'm trying to think more about other things about me and the women I know and less about our looks. There is nothing wrong with noticing someone's looks, but I, and many other women, focus on looks way too much.

So, my final word on this is: I am not a mannequin, not a teenager, not a Barbie doll. I am real 30 year old woman who has had a baby. I can't be bothered about stretch marks, sagging, and my first wrinkle. I have way too much living to do for that. :)

My Mom's Summer Do Everything With Us Touristy Visit

My mom got in town last night. Usually when she comes to visit, my grandma comes too. She's 89, so that limits our activities pretty severely. We love her and her visits, but we decided to plan this visit with just my mom so that we could do all kinds of active and exciting things. So far, it is awesome!!

We got up this morning and went to the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville. It was great. We had been once before with our friend Rational Jenn and her kids and parents, and afterwards, we checked out a library book on rocks, minerals, and fossils. Knowing more about what we were seeing really made this visit better. Livy was excited to see all the things we had read about and excited to show Grandma around the museum (since Grandma was a newbie and Livy a seasoned vet). She really enjoyed digging for fossils (we took home a shark's tooth, a fish vertebra, and a stingray's tooth) and panning for semiprecious stones (we took home a huge variety of tiny gems). We looked at fossils galore. My mom is taking an archaeology class right now, so she was particularly interested in the exhibits of fossils and how scientists find them and date them. We looked at many minerals from the lovely (precious stones and metals) to the weird (gypsum, Muscovite, and petrified wood). We saw examples of the first cars and a replica of Sputnik. Livy did some experimenting with magnetism and light in the children's area, and my mom learned about bell jars and sound waves. It was a great trip, and I freaking love that museum.

Then, we stopped at Arby's for lunch.

Later this afternoon, we went to Whitewater to play on the waterslides. We spent 3 1/2 hours going on waterslide after waterslide, playing in the wave pool, and floating around on the Little Hooch River. We found out that Livy hates enclosed tube waterslides, but will ride literally anything else. She is way braver than she is tall, and she was disappointed a few times not to be able to ride insane slides that I would never get on in a million years. My mom doesn't like tunnel slides either, and she doesn't like going backward down steep slopes in a raft (she found out from experience). I like twisty slides with tunnels. It was an awesome afternoon, but we are completely wiped out.

We picked Aaron up after he finished work, and we all went out to eat barbeque for dinner. Yum. Livy, Mama, and I nearly fell asleep even at the restaurant. The only thing keeping me awake now is the prospect of watching an episode or two of Heroes (my new obsession).

Tomorrow, our plan is taking the train down into Atlanta and going to the High Museum and the Botanical Gardens.

A Composition Entitled: What I Did This Summer

A list of things I have done so far this summer as a lady of leisure:

taken a bath with Livy
translated a French poem
had lunch with a very cool friend whom I do not see often enough to suit me
watched Season 1 and part of Season 2 of Buffy
watched Enchanted with Livy cuddled up with me in my bed
planted my summer veggies
listened to Ayn Rand's speech "Philosophy, Who needs it?" with a group of Objectivists
eaten Chinese food
finished Maisey Dobbs
applied for a neat-o new job for the fall