Things That Are Confusing about Connecticut, Round Two

• The roads.  THE ROADS.  I've been much much better about expanding my bubble living in CT this time- going new places, venturing out alone, not sticking to the same old places time and again.  This is in part due to the fact that I'm just plain older; every time I begin to think harsh thoughts toward my past self that lived here, I remind myself that I was 21 when I moved last time and say "YOUR PREFRONTAL CORTEX WASN'T EVEN FULLY DEVELOPED, cut the girl some slack!"  But even more than having a fully developed brain to thank for this expanded bubble is the wonder that is modern day GPS.  Google and Apple Maps are my very, very best friends.  We spent hours together daily last summer and fall when we first moved here.  I still touch base with them multiple times a week.  Nothing makes sense about the roads here:  if you're on the highway and miss your exit, you can't just get off on the following exit and backtrack, midwestern-style.  The next exit takes you to an entirely different place with no obvious connectors to the road you originally wanted.

• Sneezing- or rather, people's reaction to it.  If you sneeze here, people will stop what they are doing, turn to you, and audibly say, "Bless you!"  Hang on, I feel like I'm not explaining this well.  Yes, I grew up with utterances of "Bless you" and "Gesundheit" in response to sneezes, but I need you to picture people not just saying it off-hand, but rather halting whatever their current task is, then turning toward the person and declaring, "Bless you!" as if they really are trying to ward off a sneeze demon, or whatever the past belief that prompted the original of that phrase is.  Last Sunday we were all listening to the sermon like good little Christians when someone one row up sneezed.  No less than four people turned toward that person and didn't bother to lower their voices as they blessed them.  And business carried on as usual, with the exception of Derek and I looking at each other like, "Helloooo, Crazy Town."

• Suckers vs Lollipops.  To me and my midwestern brethren, this

is a sucker, while this

is a lollipop.

Here, they are both lollipops.  This comes up a surprising amount at my job, possibly because there are so many children in libraries, possibly because on any given day we have too much candy in the workroom.

• Street Names.  Roads here often have charming and amusing names.  I often run on Camels Back Road, which is a short road with one steep hill, a quick up-down.  One of my favorites on our drives down to the coast is Roast Meat Hill Road.  So many were clearly named before city planners could get their hands on plat maps and say, "Look, the roads going North-South will all be the names of presidents, East-West will be tree names- none of this Mystic Meadow Lane or Velvet Place nonsense."  (Ahem, Midwest.)  Crowing these unusual names to our captive passengers has become one of my favorite things to do whilst driving around the state.  Also confusing, in a not so whimsical way, are places with names like this state park

For those that don't feel like zooming in and test their vision, that sign reads, "Satan's Kingdom State Recreation Area."  One has to wonder what kind of "recreation" is happening at this place.  We whizzed by pretty quickly in our vehicle, so I couldn't make out the bloody altars and eternal fires between the trees, but I'll be sure to report back if I ever pluck up the gumption to visit Satan's Kingdom.

Sticky

Our children have little to no memory of living in a house without central air conditioning.  Anymore, central air seems to be an asset Midwesterners take for granted, as sure a thing as tornadoes in spring and the fair in late summer.  Of course we all remember sweltering summers spent at the grandparents' house where you trailed ice cubes over your face as you sat inches in front of the fan, and who could forget that May where my third grade classroom's window unit quit working (PURE, SWEATY MISERY), but at least in my experience, central air is anything but uncommon in the Midwest.

Here, it is a different story.

Few houses appear to have central air, excepting new construction, of course, of which there isn't that much.  Window units abound, and we can usually pick out a few ductless units here and there on our walks.

Why all this riveting HVAC talk?  Well.  Yesterday at 3:30 p.m. the temp was in the low 90s, with a "real feel" of 105 degrees.  We're living in a house without central air, which has been, shall we say, a learning experience for our precious children.  Learning that no, Adelaide, we're not going to bake a pie when it's already 85° in the kitchen, and no, I'm not buying that chocolate-covered whatever; it'll melt in our cabinets and I've already over-stuffed our fridge trying to keep everything fresh.

We did go out and purchase window units for the kids' rooms, because if the kids aren't sleeping well, we aren't sleeping well.  Derek's rigged a series of fans to try and pull some of that cool air from one of their rooms into ours, and it's provided some relief.  I'm sleeping just fine, but I feel like I tolerate the heat better than Derek, possibly because at any given time I seem to operating around ten degrees cooler than he does.  Hover your hand over his arm at any given time and you'll feel that he simply radiates heat, whereas most of the year my hands can double as ice packs for your sore muscles.

Fortunately the temperature's supposed to take a dive Tuesday, so we've only got a couple more days of stillness.  That's how we've been coping:  by being very, very still.

Contraptions!

Activities that don't require much movement are current favorites in this house, which means we've been playing a lot of games like Quirkle and Roll For It, with Contraptions being an ongoing favorite of the boys.  Atticus suggested Twister the other day and I'm still desperately sad I wasn't quick enough with my phone to capture the look of disgust on Caedmon's face at the idea of allowing our sticky selves to touch each other.  We've spent considerable amounts of time at the two local libraries, at the pool, and have been eating outside in the evenings.  Ice cream is also a balm.


While I don't remember Connecticut winters to be as brutal as Iowa's, I still know that there's going to be a time come February when I'll curse my summer self, wailing that I didn't appreciate the ability to go outside, that I wasted precious time moaning about the heat that my winter self longs for.  So yay for summer, sticky heat and all.

Up and Down and Down Some More and Then Up Again

If you're wondering what preparing to move a family of five 1200 miles away is like, here's the best gif I can find to approximate that feeling:

And the soundtrack is something like, "YaaaaAAAAaaaay!" immediately followed by "NoOoOoOoo!"

Repeat ad infinitum.

"Ad infinitum" is the problem with this whole process, really, at least at this point.  We're past the initial excitement, and the weeping while you break the news to your local loved ones (well, mostly), and the brainstorming about what the future could look like.  We're solidly in the middle, where for every one task you complete, eight more pop up in its place.  

For instance:  Be sure to get everyone to all the various doctors before you go.  Congratulations, you got all your people to the doctor/dentist/eye doc- more or less.  Oh, but wait, now you need to cancel any appointments more than two months in the future.  Make sure you sign any release forms because someday very soon you really will live in CT and some future doctor will need access to your records. What about insurance?  What about when you're trying to clean the inner glass on the oven door because oh yeah you're also getting your house ready to sell and you insist on taking the oven door off yourself because hello you watched, like, two YouTube videos on this and are therefore an expert, but then the door made a scary sound amongst your fiddling so now you need Husband to come help, and he obliges but then the door makes the scary sound again but this time the sound is accompanied by lots of blood everywhere and now it's time to hustle the family out to the car to take Derek to Urgent Care because that door dang near near sliced his right thumb off.  And now you get to add changing the dressing on his thumb daily, plus multiple daily doses of antibiotic, plus finding a doc in CT to take those stitches out in ten days.  

You know- like that.

What I'm saying is, it's stressful.  It's insanely stressful.  And so I've found myself to be just the teeniest bit cranky and out of sorts lately, and feel like it's even infecting the tone of these posts.  So while I've told myself that I want to post close to daily throughout this process so that someday I have something to look back on- half of my memories of our kids' young childhood is thanks to this blog- I don't want it to be a daily whine-fest.  To help battle that back, my thought is to finish each post with a list of five things I'm thankful for on that day.  I'm hoping this will change my mindset, but also reserve the right to abandon the idea pretty much whenever I want, because changing my mind at will is one of the things I exercise with wild abandon in my life.  

Today's Gratitudinals  (Is that a word?  Probably not.  Does it matter?  Definitely not.)

1.  My vacuum.  It's a Shark that we bought maybe a year ago, and we have become extremely well acquainted whilst getting this house ready to sell/ cleaning up after all the nasty people that live here.  I include myself in that round-up.

Picture less hula-ing, heels, and happiness and you'll get the idea.  But also more vacuum attachments!

2.  The Notes and Reminder apps on my phone.  I swear I would remember nothing and everything would be late without those.  

Shopping lists, book recommendations, things I want to remember to tell Derek or do that evening, e v e r y t h i n g.

3.  This book, which I swear isn't just good because it's somewhat pertinent to our family's current situation:

Yes, it's YA, and yes, it's a graphic novel, but that just means you're not going to spend the next six weeks trying to slog through it like this month's Classics Book Club you're already regretting joining.  It's funny, and insightful, and thoughtful.  

4.  Cadbury mini eggs.  Not the cream eggs, mind you, which are positively revolting, but these small, delectable candies filled with Cadbury chocolate that is somehow superior to other, sad, American-born chocolate.  And okay, I know that Cadbury chocolate is made in Hershey, PA, but it's still so much better.  My taste buds neither care nor know why.

5.  The precious minutes it took to write this post.

Better Vans, Better Libraries

The rumors are true:  We got a new vehicle.

Here is the truth about driving a vehicle so far past its expiration date it's going all Kevorkian on you, begging for the sweet release of van-death:  Your children (and you!) will be almost indecently grateful for this new vehicle.  They care not one whit that this vehicle is not brand-new, or that it's not as fancy as some of its fellows out on the road; they're just happy to be able to hear again.  Every single time we've ridden in it, at least one of them has commented, "It's so quiet!"  I said nearly the same thing to Derek after driving it to the library last night.  "I cannot get over how quiet this van is.  I mean, it's seriously, like, silent."

Now, is it silent?  Of course not.  This is not a Tesla we're talking about here.  But it has zero, count 'em, ZERO holes in the muffler, nor does the flex pipe need to be replaced.  It has four, count 'em, FOUR working door handles, AND the back hatch opens.  And did I mention the heating in the back of the van?  Because it works!  It pumps out beautifully warm air at your command!  MAGIC!

Speaking of the library (I kind of did, buried somewhere in a paragraph up there), can I just say how marvelous it is to visit a 21st century library?  I remember the cruel limits imposed on me as a child, like three books is gonna last me more than a day, lady.  Do you know how many books we checked out last night?

That's a heavily cropped screenshot of our online account.  Between four of us, we got to check out 50 items.  And that's just at one library!

Now, the downside to this is that we go to more than one library on a regular basis, and we check out at least as many books at our small town library, and that's just a heck of a lot of books to keep track of.  We do have a system for all these library books, kind of, and we have yet to lose a book.  (*crosses fingers- knocks on wood- mutters a prayer*)  

Also:  Are 21st century librarians nicer, or is it just me?  I have some pretty cranky librarians populating my memory banks, but how much of that was actual crankiness and how much was those poor people reacting to me being a punk kid?  When it comes to librarians, our family is blessed with an embarrassment of riches.  Ah, but then again, I remember a librarian in Connecticut who was so determinedly hostile I found myself hoping she'd run afoul of an overloaded book cart one day.  I walked to her library many, many days, with an infant Adelaide strapped to my chest and my face stretched into a wide, wide smile, but apparently when a librarian chooses to use her not insignificant powers for evil it can even thwart attempts to kill someone with kindness.

She was rude and cold to this face, a face that has loved books since she was teeny tiny.  Librarian Most Vile and I did not become besties.

Thankfully, 95% of the librarians we've encountered in Iowa have been the very antithesis of LMV:  Kind and open and helpful and smart and funny, reinforcing my notion that book people really are the best people.

For all my book homies

The Smell of Love

I remember when the sixth Harry Potter book came out and I first read about Amortentia.

Actually, what I mostly remember from that book's release is getting home from work at 2 am after my bookstore's giant Harry Potter party.  Let me tell you what, nobody knows how to have fun like a couple hundred people so obsessive about Harry Potter they're willing to hang around a bookstore for hours just to buy their books at midnight, unless it's the people who work at the bookstore and spend weeks decorating the store, planning their costumes, and staying up for several more hours after getting home at 2 am just to get a head start on The Half-Blood Prince.

Anyway.  Amortentia.  A love potion of sorts to you muggles.  It wasn't so much the "love" part that intrigued me, but the potion's scent.  Each person who comes near it smells something different, seemingly their favorite scents; I remember Hermione smelled freshly mown grass and new parchment and something else.

Immediately upon reading this, I, naturally, wondered what Amortentia would smell like to me, and in very short order was perturbed to find I had no earthly idea.

This is no doubt because I have a crap sense of smell, which doesn't normally bother me; in fact, it's been a real boon to me in recent years, being in possession of three small children and all the bodily fluids they derive so much joy from flinging around.  I generally don't mind cleaning up after sickness and potty training and all the other liquid parts of my glamorous life, most likely because I usually can't smell them.  I am bothered by strong perfume-type smells mostly because they induce an immediate pounding headache, but really all this means is I have to stay out of Bath and Body Works and any section of our church where large groups of college-age males are gathered.

So, fine:  I know what smells I don't like, but what about which smells I do?  This has bothered me, that I didn't have a favored scent, that I had no idea what I would smell if Amortentia was wafted under my nose.

But finally, finally, I smelled it.  The scent that sent me a-swooning.

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?  Are you thinking all kinds of fancy things like jasmine and sandalwood and notes of vanilla and lavender?  Because if you are, then I daresay you don't know me at all.

Diced onion sizzling in bacon grease.

That's it.  I made a new potato soup recipe a few weeks ago, and I keep finding excuses to make it over and over again, because that second step of dicing a white onion, then cooking it up til it softens in the leftover bacon grease of all that beautiful bacon you just fried up?  It is heaven.  It is nirvana.  World peace could be had if they'd just cook up a bunch of onions in bacon grease at all those talks and summits and meetings, I'm convinced.


And so, of course, I'm curious:  If we weren't all relegated to the sad, sad world of muggles (aka CRUEL REALITY), and you were smelling Amortentia, what would it smell like to you?

To put it more simply (for those of you who hate whimsy and fun):  What is your favorite smell?  Do you have one?  Have you ever smelled onions cooking in bacon grease?  Is it not divine?

NO SHAME

Fee Fi Fo Fum

Last week when I went to put in my garden, I discovered something peculiar.

I decided that these were not the Commander Hybrid Zucchini seeds their package advertised; no, surely seeds as blue and sparkly as these would grow into, if not a beanstalk reaching into the heavens, at least a glittery shrub or a tree that only produces bedazzled fruit.  So far the seedlings that are coming up look suspiciously ordinary, not a gem in sight.  (Note:  Do yourself a favor and DO NOT do a google image search for "bedazzled zucchini."  The internet is a strange place, y'all.)  Raise your hand if you suspect these are the kind of seeds God used to plant the Garden of Eden.  And yes, I realize he spoke it all into existence, but the image of God hoeing rows in a divinely tidy garden, pausing every so often to glance down in annoyance at the hem of his soiled robe- well, it really tickles me.  No worries, though, he'd just say "CLEAN" or something and the stains would evaporate.  They didn't have Oxiclean back then, you know.

What has happened to this post?  Hijacked yet again by God and gardens.

Does anyone have any legitimate knowledge about why these seeds look this way?  Not that my theories are completely implausible or anything.  You were so helpful yesterday- that mystery white flower is columbine!  (Thanks, Common Household Mom and Cassi Renee!)  I confirmed it today by going by the flower stand I bought them from, and sure enough, there they were.  I celebrated by picking up some Clementine Dark Purple and Clementine Blue varieties of columbine, because I thought the white looked awfully lonely, didn't you?

In other, scarcely related gardening news:  Hyacinth-wise, I had a terrible year.  The Midnight hyacinths came back for their third or maybe it's fourth year, but they looked as if they were doing so under protest.  Scraggly and wilted-looking from the first day they bloomed, I do believe it's time to yank them out.  I had five promising-looking shoots whose photo I'm pretty sure I optimistically posted about a month ago, but as it turns out, I didn't plant them in a sunny enough location; the iris and hostas around them grew up and over them enough to block their much-needed sunlight.  They never did flower, nor did all but one of the hyacinths I planted next to the steps of the front porch.  Again, not enough sunlight.  I might try to dig those up and put them somewhere else, see if they'll do anything next spring.

My lone flowering hyacinth of the year.  I did love its peach color.

The tulips and hyacinths by our front porch were so underwhelming this year I was anxious to get some color out there, so I got the big container done as soon as I was sure we were done with the evil flower-killer that is frost:

I was a little surprised at myself, adding those yellow Gerbera daisies; I generally find Gerberas to be fickle and high maintenance, and since I don't truck with divas, even the flowering variety, I usually avoid them except for maybe a sneer thrown their way when I'm in the nursery picking out my easy-going petunias and lantana (which I have yet to find this year).

Now I'm off to go plant the new columbine.  I'll be sure to talk to them about making new friends and not leaving anyone out, and warn them against those awkward ice breaker games everyone's forced to play when forming a new group.  (Hey, have I ever told you guys about the time I went to a Mom's group at my church in Connecticut, somehow got seated at a table with Rich Connecticut Women, but somehow couldn't find anything in common with them during the get-to-know-you game that consisted of the instructions "Find something everyone at your table has in common, and no cheating with things like blue eyes and nose jobs!"  I have no idea why we couldn't find any common ground, what with their suggestions consisting of things like, "Okay, who has at least four fireplaces in their house?  Well, what about just three?" and "We all went to Tuscany within the last year, right?"  Meanwhile I'm there like, "I live in a 600-square-foot condo and I know I'm in a church but I'm pretty sure even Jesus would have a hard time loving on all of you."  Good times.)  

The Tercel

Brace yourselves:  I'm going to talk about cars today.  Be assured it will most likely never ever happen again.  Not because I don't like them or I have a religious belief against them, but because in general I just don't really care about them.

Oh, except for my first car.

It was blue.  A pretty little blue Toyota that had been my dad's.  I remember when we went and bought the car (in large part because it was, up to that point in my life, one of the most intensely boring days I had ever experienced).  The poor sales guy kept showing my parents different cars, and my dad would stubbornly repeat variations on the theme, "I want a car that will get me from point A to point B.  That's it."

And that's what they got.  It was (is, it is, because don't kid yourself: that car is still running, and will probably run until the end of time) a little 4-cylinder, stick shift, two-door Tercel with dark vinyl seats (the better to retain heat in the summer so as to give you immediate contact burns on any surface of skin you were foolish enough not to protect from the car), no air conditioning, no power steering, no power anything, for that matter, no right side-view mirror, no radio, no speakers, no clock, no nothing car.

I loved that car.

It was peppy.  It whipped around corners beautifully.  It was as reliable as the sun (more on the sun in just a moment), got great gas mileage, and the one amenity it featured, heat, worked so well in the winter it was like it was trying to make up for the fact that it lacked pretty much everything else other cars have.

So maybe it wasn't the most powerful car in the world.  I've heard another Tercel owner compare the sound of the engine to that of a lawn mower.  So what?  It moved with alacrity when I pressed down on the gas pedal.  It's not like my life was The Fast and the Furious.

So maybe my affectionate nickname for it was The Easy-Bake Oven.  I remember getting in the car to drive the five minutes it took me to get to work as a carhop at Sonic, and arriving in clothes quite literally drenched in sweat.  When it's well over 100 degrees outside, you're sitting on dark vinyl seats, and the cooking implement isn't so much a light bulb as the sun, it's going to get a little hot.  So what?  As a carhop, I spent half my shift outside, anyway.  (This was a little different when I started working in a drugstore.  On the very hottest days, I would bring a different shirt to change into when I got to work, and hang my sopping wet shirt up to drip-dry while I worked.  I'm pretty sure they loved me there.)  I had friends who said things like WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS CAR and I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HOT IN MY LIFE and OH JEEZ I FEEL SICK.  It was a car, wasn't it?  Teenagers.  So dramatic.

It was because of this car that I was so confused and not a little cranky when we moved to Connecticut.  We lived in a relatively working-class neighborhood, not at all what you'd call affluent, especially by Connecticut standards, but there was a high school just a couple blocks away from our condo, and that school parking lot was full of nice, new cars with brand names like BMW and Lexus.  What the heck?  This gave me lots of opportunities for curmudgeonly grumbling about Youth Entitlement and Kids These Days (it just occurred to me I was the ripe old age of 21 when I moved there- at this point I could either label myself as an "old soul" or just accept that I've always been a little cranky).

Now, thankfully, we're back in the midwest, where the school parking lots are full of bikes and old trucks and, my favorite, an old, rusty, beater car that has a bumper sticker that reads "Don't be fooled by my car- my treasure is in heaven."

My point?  I don't really have one.  Except to say that even if you have money coming out your ears, please don't get your kid a nice car when they first start driving.  I am happy with just about any car I drive now, I don't care if it's pretty, I don't care if it doesn't have power-whatever- I just want it to get me from point A to point B.  (Although, I'm not gonna lie, I might cry on the day when I finally get to drive a manual transmission vehicle again.  I feel very strongly about those.)

Oh, Iowa

It's always interesting to me how unique the different regions of our country are.

I was at a friend's house a few days ago when I was struck by the conversation I was a part of, along with several other women.  We were discussing how to get our children to wash their hands, not just because it's necessary for good health, but specifically because it's painful for our children to do so right now.  The air is so cold and dry here this time of year, and our children's skin is so parched and chapped, they complain of it stinging and burning when water is splashed on it, and many of them cry when we put them in the tub.

The conversation then turned to our own hands.  Several of us have open cracks and cuts on our fingers, because again, cold, dry air, plus running a household and being the mother of small kids guarantees your hands are in water for large parts of the day.  There were as many remedies as there were women there:  Use camphor, but only the kind found at this one tiny drug store.  Use Eucerin.  Use this stuff that's actually made for horses but my veterinarian brother swears by.  Use cow udder cream.  Use coconut oil.  The only unifying factor between everyone's chosen ointment is that it's a cream or oil, not a lotion, thus not something that could ever be contained in a pump bottle like common lotion; no, this is the kind of stuff that has to be forcibly extracted from its tub, then not so much massaged as violently rubbed into the skin until it's finally permeated the epidermal layer of your damaged skin.  Well, that and gloves.  Everyone says to wear gloves to bed after slathering gook on your hands.

Just the other day I was helping Cade get dressed when I found a spot of blood on his clothes.  Then another.  And another.  They were fresh, but I could not find the source.  He swore he didn't have any "owies," but I continued to hunt, trying to figure out in what way our young son had been hurt.

I finally realized it was me.  One of my hands was bleeding in two spots, and the more I looked on him, the more I was bleeding all over him.

I never had these conversations in Connecticut, and only rarely in Kansas.  In the latter we talked about how to avoid getting dirt in your eyes, mouth, and every other orifice on the windiest days, but never how to keep your children from crying and your own skin from constantly bleeding because everyone is so dang dry.  I honestly can't decide which is worse, but I am thankful I don't have both at the same time.

One Post, Two Ways

I really couldn't decide how to write this post.  So I decided to put both versions on here.  It's like a Choose-Your-Adventure-Novel around here today (anyone else remember those?).






Version 1:


Things have been busy around here lately.

I bet it's been the same for you, too.

One day it's a cookie exchange.  The next it's a Christmas party with friends.  Then it's a Christmas party for work.  Then you need to send in sprinkles for your kid's class.  Then you need to send juice.  Then you need to send her in pajamas.  Then you need to send a bunch of paper towels.  Then it's the Christmas program.  And then something else and something else and something else.

This morning pretty well summed up what the past few weeks have been like for us.

After picking Adelaide up from school (she was apparently sick, although she's organizing the toy corner as I type this.  Methinks I've been duped.), I sat down to write return addresses on the Christmas cards that I didn't order enough of while the boys went from chasing each other with plush footballs to chasing each other with plastic golf clubs to chasing each other with big glass Mason jar candles they got from a shelf that is evidently low enough for their grubby little hands to reach.  Through it all, I thought that perhaps I was finally getting this whole multi-tasking thing down, until I reviewed what I had just written on the Poovey crew's envelope:

Crisler
220 E 8th St*
Cambridge, Get into time-out right now 50124


In other news, today I learned that I have not broken an old habit of writing down whatever I'm currently saying aloud.  It also comes as no surprise to me that we live in the state of Get Into Time-Out Right Now.

Seems pretty dang accurate, actually.



*Not our actual address, creeper.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version 2:



Things have been busy around here lately.

I bet it's been the same for you, too.

One day it's a cookie exchange.  The next it's a Christmas party with friends.  Then it's a Christmas party for work.  Then you need to send in sprinkles for your kid's class.  Then you need to send juice.  Then you need to send her in pajamas.  Then you need to send a bunch of paper towels.  Then it's the Christmas program.  And then something else and something else and something else.


Then 26 people are violently murdered in an elementary school and now 20 children are dead.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I just can't stop thinking about it.  I'll be going about my day, writing a blog post, then WHAM, there it is.  I'm guessing it's what most other people are feeling, too:  torn between wanting to keep the people of Newtown, Connecticut in our thoughts and prayers and realizing that constant rumination doesn't really help anyone, and that there's nothing wrong with trying to capture as much Christmas cheer as possible.

Still, it's hard to be frivolous or funny when all you can think about are the families for whom the holiday season is most likely forever ruined.

So, yeah.  That's where I'm at today.

Prayers for Connecticut

Thus says the Lord:

"A voice is heard in Ramah,

lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

refusing to be comforted for her children,

because they are no more."

-Jeremiah 31:15

Praying for all those in Newton, Connecticut.

You Sure Talk Funny

One of my favorite classes in college was a certain literature class taught by a certain eccentric professor.  One of the random things I remember him saying was that the most proper and correct American English is thought to be spoken in the central to northern region of Iowa; not so much in terms of grammar, but properly spoken words, the language unhampered by accent or regional dialect.

I remember taking him for his word at the time, but also believing that the English spoken around my home probably wasn't so different from this "proper and correct" version that is supposedly spoken in Iowa.  I had spent almost all my life in Southern Kansas, and couldn't hear a trace of an accent in most of my fellow residents.

Then I moved to Connecticut.  For the most part, I worked with people who were native to that state, with the exception of a girl from Arkansas.  Some of our co-workers determined that she sounded like a Southern belle and I sounded like a cowgirl- never mind that most of these people had probably never seen an actual cowgirl in their lives.  Besides, they were the ones with the accents- New England/ Yankee accents, with a few easily recognizable dialects like those from Boston or Maine.  I, of course, spoke proper English.

Since moving to Iowa, I haven't gotten nearly as many "Where are you from?  I can't place your accent," comments, cementing my belief that I am speaking properly and correctly.  After all, isn't this the place where perfect American English is spoken?

We traveled to southern Kansas a couple weeks ago, visiting family.  Not for the first time since moving away, I was able to detect a kind of rural twang in the speech of the people around me, whereas a few years ago, I was all but deaf to this accent.

So fine.  Maybe I was wrong in college.  But I'm not wrong now.

One of the people I saw was my dad.  I have been aware of his accented way of speaking since he had me practically in tears, going over my first grade spelling list, insisting that I was misspelling the word "hoe."

"Spell 'hoe.'"

"H-O-E."

"No, 'hoe.''

"H-O-E."

"Kristy, that's not right!  Now, try again."

"H-O-E!"

Finally, my mother came along and said in her mercifully un-accented voice, "Kristy, spell 'hole.'"

"Oh.  H-O-L-E.  But Dad was saying 'hoe'!"

Given a lifetime of hearing these kinds of things from him, it wasn't surprising in the least to hear words like "coon huntin'" come out of his mouth.  I've learned to let conversations about things like how high in cholesterol squirrel is just wash over me, nodding along like I agree:  Tell me about it.  I hardly ever get squirrel or ranch dressing on my salads anymore; I mean, what's the point of eating salad if it's going to be bad for you?


It further wasn't too shocking to hear land descriptions like, "Well, I believe that house used to be pert'near to that ol' crick..."  from my grandparents.  So, yes.  Certain members of my family have an accent.

I, however, talk like my mother.  She does not have an accent.


I truly believed this, right up until we were at my sister's baby shower, and I overheard my mom in conversation and she exclaimed, "Well, bless her little pea-pickin' heart!"

I have heard her say this many times, but it wasn't until that day that I realized this is not the kind of thing I ever heard in Connecticut.  Nor have I ever heard it in Iowa.

A memory then floated to the surface of my mind of several of my friends in Connecticut laughing at me for saying, "She was as happy as a pig in mud!"  Another of my mom's little expressions.

Apparently my mother is in possession of several of these little colloquialisms.  Which means I may just be, too.

It wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong.

The Sunflower State

When I first moved to Connecticut, the people I met had all kinds of questions about my home state.  None had ever been to Kansas- surprise, surprise- so I became their primary reference guide.  Over time, I discovered that their questions could be grouped into four main categories:  Geographical, Agricultural, Tornadic, and Other.  While I certainly didn't mind- in fact, often welcomed- queries about my upbringing in the midwest, after a while I did get tired of being asked whether or not I had ever milked a cow.  Here's a little taste of what I was often asked.

Geographical: 

• Kansas- that's one of those states in the middle, right?
• Hmmm, Kansas- that's one of those square states, right?

Agricultural:

• Did you grow up on a farm?
• Have you ever milked a cow?
• Have you ever touched a cow?
• Have you ever touched a pig?
• Have you ever touched a chicken?  I mean a live one?
• Have you ever ridden a horse?
• Do you know any cowboys?
• Wait, what did you say?  What's 4-H?
• Have you ever ridden on a tractor?

Tornadic: 

• Have you ever seen a tornado?
• What's it look like?
• What's it sound like?
• I heard that the sky can be completely clear and blue and a tornado can just come right down without warning.  Is that true?
• How can you live in a place that has things like tornadoes?

Other:

• Do you like "The Wizard of Oz?"
• Isn't Kansas, like... kind of claustrophic?

I only received that last question once, and was completely bewildered by it, until my co-worker explained that he would feel claustrophic if he ever lived in a place so far from any open ocean.  I told him that Connecticut, with all it's trees and high population density felt far more claustrophic to me than my wide-open-spaces home. 

I have to say that I probably received more tornado questions than any other, closely followed by those in the Agricultural category.  One of my favorites is one that was actually posed to Derek.  A man asked Derek where he was from, and when he responded, "Iowa," the man followed up by asking, "So, you get a lot of hurricanes out there?"

Derek paused, then clarified, "Hurricanes?" 

The man missed his chance to correct his gaffe when he said, "Yeah, hurricanes."

"Nope, we don't really get any hurricanes in Iowa."  I think it showed great restraint on Derek's part for not giving any number of smart-aleck remarks that had to have come to mind.