SassTown

 

Warning: I had every intention of regaling y'all with my traveling anecdotes chronologically. I thought I could really raise my esteem in the eyes of my peers (oh my, how industrious is she?) but like most women with a myriad of responsibilities my plan went to hell when my dad with whom I stayed on days 4-8 didn't have any internet connection and we kept way too busy having fun to frequent the nearby coffee shop that did. To top that off on the last day of our trip my power connection for my lap top (containing many photos I NEED) malfunctioned and I am awaiting my trip to the Apple genius bar tomorrow to fix it. So now you'll have to take it out of order...

Road Trip Days 5-7: Sunken in the middle of the Smokey Mountains is the beautiful city of Asheville. I drive about 8 minutes down the mountains from my family property in the Beaverdamn Gap and another 8 minutes into the city and I am  in the midst of the most bohemian place you could imagine.

I promise I will absolutely make your mouth water and you may even gain a few virtual pounds when I can access my laptop and share all the delicious culinary delights to be had in Asheville.

My people are mountain people. They are not city people but I crave both. You know how I hate indecisiveness but I love staying up the mountain and driving down to the city for the stimulation I require. There are so much to appreciate about both.

My dad doesn't really comprehend it because he would be happy to avoid the city at all costs but he usually allows me to drag him around wherever we want to go for two or three days before he declines the offer to join us on our outings. He really loves when we return from out escapades with funny stories or yummy food we have found on our journey.

 

Once you get down the "hill" to the city you'll find a unique mix of  down home friendliness and urban sophistication. I think that is one of the draws for such a wide range of people you will find inhabiting, touring and retiring to this area. Not to mention the inexhaustable opportunities for outdoor recreation and the moderate 4 season climate. It is a prime example of the south with a diverse mix of folks with differing skin color, religions, political beliefs and socio-economic statuses. 

 There of course is plenty of controversy as migration to this area increases and development occurs. You'll find the typical battle of business trying to capitalize on the area's resources versus the environmentalist (close the door and lock it after you have found your personal piece of heaven) going on. I find the diversity and controversy stimulating due to my "smart growth" practical philosophy of life. I appreciate a workable approach to these things. I have a strong belief in respecting the environment and mother earth but not putting up stubborn roadblocks to expansion.

 

Sustainable is the new key word in our world and it is in Asheville too. I have no argument with that at all although I get the feeling it will soon be an over used label in our contemporary vocabulary that we all may become desensitized to like so many other good concepts. The economically responsible shopper in me was disappointed to find the prices at some of the boutiques that advetise social responsibility to be so out of touch of with the income level of the local population.

I find it ironic strolling through town multiple days in one week I found the same townies sitting out front of businesses that proclaim to be organic, sustainable and environmentally responsible smoking cigarettes and tossing their butts into the streets of this otherwise pretty little city with so much to offer.

 

 

 

Road Trip Day 4: After a late breakfast on day 4 I felt I wanted to go to the cemetery to pay my respects to my dear Aunt Hazel. She was loving, loyal, a hard worker, generous, lived for her family. She taught me how to cook southern style every summer when I visited and immersed me in their culture.She would tell me to grab my pocketbook and let's go loafering! And Oh could that woman ever talk, for hours, about nothing. I surprisingly liked that.She was precious to me and although we had said our good byes last summer when she was helping to write her Eulogy, I was unable to attend her funeral over Thanksgiving and felt I had really missed out on something important.

You know I'm not a fan of drama and public displays of emotion but when I leaned down to gingerly touch, and then clean my Aunt's headstone I felt greatly grieved. And I missed her. It was my first trip to N.C. that I didn't see her smiling face and accept her "sugar" while trying not to grimace. Everyone on our side of the mountain is still feeling raw around the edges of their mourning. As they like to say we are all feeling tore up over her passing.

 

Her husband, my Uncle Richard passed away 18 years earlier in 1990. He would take me hiking and exploring all over in places my mother would never approve of me going. He talked and demonstrated as he walked along. He knew everything about the trees and the snakes that populate the area and of which I am deathly afraid.He had so many funny tales of he and his brothers exploits around these mountains. Just when I thought I had heard it all he would come up with another tale and  I'd discover a new piece of our family puzzle. It was like hiking with a relevant and interesting history book. Each summer when it was time for me to return to Michigan I always missed them the most.

Now I have my cousin David and some of his children and grandchildren to share memories with. We are striving to keep the stories alive and relevant and to teach these values to the next generation.

 On my last stop I had to see my Uncle James who had shocked us with his untimely death 4 years ago. After years of diminishing health and back problems they had done a heart procedure that really seemed to breath new energy into my tallest uncle whose nickname was treetop.

He seemed to be on a roll, able to move about more freely and having more energy than he had in years. That spring flu season hit hard. Both he and my dad came down with an unruly case. Subsequently my Uncle was hospitalized and entered a downward spiral that he never came out of and he passed, leaving his very close family shell shocked to say the least.

I flew down to the funeral all by myself and picked up my rental car which ended up being a very fast black Mustang. I felt a wee bit conspicuous tooling around the mountains in that car but all my male cousins got a big kick out of it. My Uncle James was a very quiet and humble man and our visits rarely had much conversation but instead companionable quiet and that was ok with the both of us. I do however recall some pretty wild rides on the back of his jeep up and around trails and through mountain passes- so maybe the mustang was a fitting ride for the funeral after all.

 

 

We spent a fair amount of time their taking in the air, pulling weeds and trimming back grass around the headstones of our loved ones.

 

 

Later I tried to explain to my 13 year old daughter who was with us how important these simple rituals were to men like my dad. It demonstrated to him that I had not forgotten to miss these dear people even though I live 600 miles away. And it comforts him to have us there as a matter of respect to these family members that he spent so much of his life with.

I was proud of her, she didn't roll her eyes once or act bored. She didn't say much but just followed along thinking. When we got in our own car and followed my dad back up the mountain home she said she thought it was a fine way to spend 30 minutes if it could make Grandpa happy and show him that we cared about the same things he did.

That made me so happy.

Road Trip Day 2:

Remember the old saying "you get what you pay for?" All three of us paid for a good nights sleep but I don't think any of us got one. I thought we were being so super cool, researching it out and staying in this quaint (as in out of date) vintage 60's motel. We were excited with the massaging bed and all.

I gave a few minutes of worry that we were staying at a "motel" with the room door opening directly outside but there was a new and sturdy looking lock so I didn't say anything to my daughters and after watching CSI Miami and George Lopez we all fell asleep.

I woke up at 3 a.m. and turned off the tv my nightowl had left on. I warned myself, just go back to sleep and suprisingly I did, only to be jolted awake by a loud alarm sound. I am talking about a stunning kind of pulsating buzz that you would hear when Jason Bourne breaches security at some top secret weapons cache, along with a flashing light.

We were all totally freaked out. Could it be an air raid alarm, a fire drill? Holy shit What is it? I glanced at the clock, 5:40. Is that ungodly sound just the ancient alarm clock, like one of the first digital clocks invented. It was. The s.t.u.p.i.d vintage digital alarm clock. I shut it off. Realized the flashing light was just my computer. So I talked myself and my charges down off of the ledge.

By now, all of our hearts are pounding. I reassured my darlings all was o.k. and we really needed to go back to sleep. I lay there convincing myself, actually feeling a bit drowsy and closed my eyes and relaxed. Suddenly the noise returned. I grabbed that demon possessed clock, yanked the plug out of the wall and tossed it under the lousy massaging bed singing get behind me, Satan.

The girls did sort of drift off to sleep but there was not a chance on this earth that I would. I organized our belongings and made them get up by 7:30. We checked out and were out of there by 8 a.m. I had promised them pancakes for breakfast so we had that. I could feel my eyeballs rolling around like they were coated with sand even as I had a cup of coffee with my food. Plan was made to stop and get some stronger type of stimulant so I pulled off at the next exit where I knew there was a Starbucks and loaded up.

Less than an hour later I knew I was in trouble. It was a beautiful morning but for any of you who haven't driven on I-75 through Tennessee and then onto I-40 east, it is not a job for the faint hearted or unfocused. I am telling you it requires nerves of steel between the mountains, the curves and the semi trucks. I was so tired and so highly irritated that this was disrupting my travel schedule I thought my head might pop off. 

 Apologizing to my daughters, and astounding them at that, I explained we would have to pull off and I would try to take a nap and gather my wits. The first thing we came to was this deserted Hillbilly Market. The way my girls looked at me when I pulled into this gem was like I had grown another head. "I'm scared" the baby cried. So on we went around the bend and found a cool shadely spot under a tree in a Cracker Barrel. I laid down in the back seat and fell asleep, despite all the caffiene I had consumed.

I heard them debating about when to wake me up. 15 more minutes I said and drifted back off. A short time later we went on in the Cracker Barrel, used the facilities, bought two jars of cobbler filling (one peach and one blackberry) and we got our show officially on the road, having spent a little over an hour sleeping.

 

 

Luckily we didn't have a lot of miles to drive, and although I felt much more alert we were all acting crabby and contencious instead of like the fun bunch we can be. Traffic was moving and there were a lot of trucks but so far the highway was wide open and we were getting excited to be making good progress.

 

 

 

 

We made our move onto 640 East and then onto I-40 and we were on the mountain freeway now. They always take my breath away at this point of the drive . I am just a mountain person, it is in my blood. Hello curves and grade changes and hello truckers. You stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours.

 

It didn't take long until I was sandwiched inbetween a couple of big rigs, but I manned up and kept as cool as a cucumber. My helpers were getting exasperated with me because I kept giving them cues of what I wanted pictures of and they were always mashing that button about 5 seconds too late. 

 

At least y'all are headed west. Good. I don't need 500 tons of Mack breathing down my neck or squeezing me into the cement barrier in the middle. Oh no, mama's got company behind us. Where are those signs we made? 

 

OK now. So that's how it's going to be. I am alert, caffiene oozing out of my pores. All synapses are firing and here comes that big curve girls, get a picture of that truck warning sign...you know the steep grade change on the curve that could cause them to topple over on the curve. What do you mean you missed it?

I only got squeezed into the median once and I didn't make contact thank you very much. And that honking you did Mr Trucker, that helped me out really well. Why don't you try scaring me a few more times. Girls get those get over and back off signs out! Girls. Girls. Girls, do you hear me? I guess not because one was hiding under a blaket and the other looked to be sleeping.

 

This should get your juices flowing. TUNNEL! Hooonnnkkkk. Wooo Hooo. The baby refuses to come out from under the blanket. But that was fun. My teenager is rolling her eyes. That's a good sign and so is this, our blessed Exit!

 

Hello Candler exit, we are so so glad to see you. If we weren't all so cranky we would get out and dance around that sign. I look at the clock, I am running so behind I feel shamed. Whatever, we are here safe and sound so we head off the exit and in a few short turns we are headed up the mountain that my people are from. It's also a narrow winding road but every turn is familiar and in 7 short minutes we have reached destination Virgil.

 

The only bad side to this is I have to scoot up that steep narrow drive and tell him to hop in becasue we need to head back down the mountain to pick up Princess #1 in 20 minutes from the airport. At least with a very relieved gramps in the car we are all much more cheerful and less likely to tear each other hair out.

 

 

 

 

I am so behind on writing down my thoughts for my blog because there's no rest for the wicked. Blame it on summer vacation. First of all I disagree with the assertion that there is any real kind of “vacation” going on here. That term is slung around erroniously more frequently than it is used literally.  I think I have gathered enough anecdotal evidence to support my theory that the only thing occurring is a break from the school year routine. I relished that first morning in June when the alarm did not go off at 6 a.m. and enjoyed a more leisurely pace upon rising having nowhere I had to be. We loafered around town then stopped at the market and decided what to throw on the grill that evening. I thought it felt a little bit like heaven.

I thought wrong. I’m no newbie to this so I should not be surprised by the lack of productivity going on around here. The lack of a hard timeline to each day has left us behaving like a bunch of procrastinating heathens. We stay up all night and sleep all day (that’s an exaggeration). We read, watch movies and read some more. I think I have seen every episode (from my control post in the kitchen) of One Tree Hill ever made, at least twice. Damn that DVR. Lucas, Nathan, Hailey, Brooke and Peyton, up until this summer I didn’t even know these brat pack wannabes existed.

 

Since all of my little babies have morphed into teenagers they are excelling at what adolescents do best and that is sleep. This is the first year I have not been awoken by the pitter patter of feet that are smaller than mine. The baby is now as tall as I am and I will no longer be vexed with missing shoes since they have all outgrown size 6. It’s not unusual for one of them to straggle in here at 11 or 12 p.m., after working the closing shift and enthusiastically convince us that we need to start a movie. Like fools we do and even though I may have vowed a few hours earlier to get to bed at a more decent hour, I am again looking at 1:30 bedtime.

The downside to going to bed that late is that it still takes me a while to get to sleep (insomnia is my bad best girlfriend) and when you don’t get up until 9, 10 or later, half the productive time of the day is already passed.My solitude and writing time has been overtaken by all these demanding people who are here, bothering me all of the time. That includes my husband. Again, after all the years of weekly travel his goal this year has been to cut his travel time down to 1 week a month, so he can be more involved with the family. Which means he is always here. I’ve always said honey, if it ain’t broke don’t try fixing it. I like it when you go away on a regular basis so I CAN GET STUFF DONE. All of these people are reeking havoc and disrupting the loosely woven semblance of a schedule I am trying to follow. When’s a girl supposed to write?

I thought I was so clever when I established a chore list of things I expected to be done. After all, they are the ones with the lack of things to do. As any stay at home parent knows, there is no such thing as summer vacation. Someone still needs to buy groceries, cook, garden, clean, gas up the car, run errands and to quote my beloved cousin, “the laundry does not fold itself”. Mamas got blogs to read and blogs to write. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the level of cooperation I have received. I divide up the tasks and there may be hesitation and whining involved but the list seems to be getting done.

So far this summer we’ve made one trip to Chicago and a trek up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a greatly anticipated family reunion of my husband’s extended family. The tale of our actual reunion is a story all on it’s own. Let’s suffice it to say that when you take your family on a trip, someone needs to make a lot of preparations and that someone is always me. There’s the reservations, laundry (which doesn’t pack itself either), map-quest, movies and stuff to occupy ourselves with in the car (do we have power cords, earphones,paper towels, barf bags, beverages and snacks, cameras). Then there’s the preparation for those you are leaving behind to hold down the fort. Lay down the law, bake some cookies, stock the fridge with food, lists of instructions and rules, alert the neighbors to call if a wild party ensues and call your prayer group ..... a never ending list.

My husband throws his clothes in his suitcase, his computer in his bag and gets in the car. He is a mobile workforce all unto himself. After a week of travel to the northern most woods, spotty internet and cell phone signals, family obligations and fun we returned in one piece to our home. We found it in pretty good shape, not perfect, but not bad either. We have been home 5 days and I think the last of the laundry just got put away. I just found out (from my snitch oldest daughter) my husband is trying to surprise me with plane tickets for us all to go to Portland before the summer is over.
 

I swear that man is trying to kill me.

This leads me to ask, exactly what is a v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n ? Webster’s defines it as the freedom from any activity, from work and study, an intermission, respite or rest. That concept is foreign to me. I’ve had a few of them in my life since parenthood and they may have been a lot of fun, but the work that goes into the preparation and recovery somehow overshadows the memory. I think I have just compartmentalized the moments of “rest, intermission or respite” that I’ve enjoyed along the way and forgotten the details that surrounded the obtainment of that freedom. If you have any doubts read Did I Say VACATION Could Bring Sexy Back? from last summer.

I have come to the realization that in order to return to the efficient machine I once was I am going to have to re-establish some discipline and routine to this company. But first things first. The girls and I are planning another road trip to Chicago. Then we are taking our yearly road trip to see my wily coyote of a daddy, Virgil (83 and still climbing mountains) in North Carolina and some more friends along the way. It will be sheer lunacy. There will be arguing and cat fighting all through those Blue Ridge Mountain passes and in the tunnels. We will make absolute spectacles of ourselves. We will make memories. We will come home exhausted from laughing and ready to scratch each others eyes out from all the petty arguments that will occur. And hopefully I’ll have documented enough events to write about for the next six months. It will be quite an excursion, but it won’t be a vacation.