subtle changes

When I first moved "up north" as folks back home in Alabama called it, I wondered why on earth North Carolinians complained about Yankees so much. The war was a very long time ago. (150 years, to be exact.)  Then after five years of living here, I attended Wake Tech (a local community college) and learned the saying that there's two types of Yankees: a Yank, and a Yankee (with an expletive in front of it). And I sadly must admit, within 8 years of living here, I too had learned the difference.


Having lived in different places, including one overseas stint that involved learning a whole new culture, I understand what it's like to long for something familiar, to feel out of place, and to be totally baffled by everyone around you. It's not a pleasant feeling.  I've always tried to gently rebuke those who have never ever had the privilege of living somewhere else and are totally ignorant of what that's like when they criticize others for being totally "normal".


So I was more than a bit surprised today to find myself biting my tongue in Target while waiting in line at the register behind a girl from Massachusetts and the cashier who was from New York. After 24 hours of reading comments from all my Yankee friends on Facebook, making fun of southerners and our "snow phobias", it was a bit much to listen to the two go on and on about how "it'd have to be knee deep at least before they'd even consider dismissing school for snow" (while customers are looking for anything that resembles a boot in the store and not being successful at all; and snow shovels? Who on earth sells those?  What do they look like?)


For the first time ever, I found myself wanting to say/ask "Then why did you move here?  Why don't you go home? No one is making you stay."  I understand.  It's so foreign from what they knew. It's a different way of life, a different way of thinking, a different climate that presents different challenges. I get that. I really and truly do. I also understand the frustrations, the emotions, and that stark realization that just when they thought they were meshing quite well, suddenly they realize they aren't. It's unsettling. But at times like this, when everyone around me is all excited, I get a little sick and tired of hearing the arrogant recitations of how much better and superior their lives were back home.


So now I'm at home, in my warm house, reading reports from AL, TN, and MS of snow, skipping Facebook posts from the complaining Yanks, and knowing that when they show the news tomorrow with wrecked cars on the roads, at least half of the wrecked drivers will have northern accents. You know, the ones who know how to drive in the snow. 

speed bumps

It is an unwritten rule in my life: whenever fast progress is being made on projects of any kind (even if its laundry or housework) a speed bump of some sort will occur.  It's just a fact of life that I can now sometimes laugh about. :)

I'm well over half-way through quilting the 2013 Bernina Saturday Sampler quilt, when reality dawned on me that the fabric we picked out the first of January for a baby quilt needed to be cut and pieced and quilted by next week. Even though it says February on my calendar for the shower date, it means the actual work has to be done in January. It's those little details that always seem to throw me for a loop.

And my much needed hiatus that I've taken at church since the children's Christmas play is now officially over and we are back in full swing of planning and organizing. Today I've already been on-line and had a trip to Michaels this morning to start preparations for the kids Valentine's party (and upon hearing one game idea my husband thinks I've totally lost my mind).

I hope to share some of it next week, but for now, it's safe to say my brain is in motion. And to use an expression I hate, my niece would say I've gone "cra-cra."

courtrooms

A few years ago I sat in on a court session (they were handling eviction cases). Everyone was super quiet, the cases moved very quickly, and I was a bit intimidated at how austerely the judge ruled the courtroom. Every time the doors opened, he briefly stopped and stared at the person coming inside.

Yesterday Bobby needed to be at a courtroom in another county, and since his wheelchair is still not repaired I needed to drive him. I was also curious to see how this type of court (superior court, as opposed to magistrate court) would be handled. I expected it to be even more somber and serious.

The courthouse was relatively new, meaning very nice and very clean, the guards at the metal detectors were very nice (and Bobby left his fork in the van instead of in his pouch since the Wake County Courthouse officials are not ADA friendly and were going to confiscate it because it "could be a weapon"), they didn't ask Bobby to take his pouch off the side of his wheelchair or treat him like a suicide bomber, but the courtroom itself was very informal.

After the judge came in, all the different lawyers for the different lawyers were whispering among themselves and in no particular oder addressed issues with upcoming cases (clients currently in custody and not able to attend, in session in a court downstairs, etc). The lack of organization was bothering me more than a little.

But I will say this: I was impressed with the judge, even if he didn't run an austere courtroom. When he talked to the defendant, he was clear, asked some very good questions, asked for clarifications when he needed it, and lectured the defendant with some history about how he would have been sentenced in the past in NC, as well as reviewing the potential sentencing he could receive before handing down the sentence.

When I was in college, a group of boys would go downtown Nashville on weekends to watch "night court". They described it as Judge Judy with a lot more action. For some reason that never instilled any desire in me to go. Yesterday, I was impressed with some of the lawyers, how they defended people who were wrong without attempting to sugarcoat the crimes, how they saw their clients as humans who had made mistakes, but still needed to be treated as humans. I was also a tad appalled as lawyers from both sides discussed a case on the docket (the client who was supposed to be present was in jail), and were postponing a hearing until next April (so much for swift justice) and the Assistant DA shrugged and said "I doubt he'll make it until then." (the guy had coded in prison and was transferred to a prison hospital).  I think like the medical field, the court system is very complex with a lot of ethical situations people don't consider until they've actually had to deal with all the details of a case. It's a bit scary how people's lives are impacted by a few short minutes.

Courtroom watching is not my thing. I can't say I'll never go again, but it's not something I hope to do in what little spare time I have, either.

the dusting

Yes, we are southerners.
Yesterday was my planned day to go to the grocery store for the week. When they announced on the news at lunch that Wake County was cancelling afterschool activities, Bobby looked at me and said "You better get on to the store now."  And he was right.
I parked at the very end of the parking lot (think malls at Christmas time), and was expecting the bread and milk to be almost gone (which they weren't, thanks to the bread and milk men making a new delivery). That evening I was telling my mother-in-law about it, and she said, "Oh, you know Tuesday is senior citizen day. That's why everyone was there, for there discount."  So now Bobby wants to go grocery shopping on Tuesdays. Sorry buddy-o, but I'm not there yet. I'm not fighting a huge crowd for a discount they won't give me anyway. I'll stick to my shop on the day I need to go plan.

And at 6:30pm, we turned on our floodlights so we could see the snow when it began to fall. And when it had changed over from rain to snow enough to officially call it "snowing", he sent e-mails to all the kids who've been talking to him the last month about their prayers for snow. :)

I've enjoyed seeing pics on Facebook this morning, and we're laughing a little that the snow was so light that Bobby was actually able to go out in his wheelchair and get the newspaper without any problems whatsoever (which would be impossible in anything more than a dusting), and vehicles are flying by on our dirt road (which would be frozen mud if we'd had a true snow). In a few hours, we'll head out for our day's appointment, get home this evening, and then venture back out to church.

Shakespeare could have written his play "Much Ado About Nothing" about snow in the south, but I'd much prefer a title like "When Hope Springs Eternal".  There's something about that childhood fervor of desperately desiring this thing called snow and being amazed once you finally see it. It is mesmerizing, and I wouldn't trade our southern snow for anything.

And after being stuck in the horrendous icing that happened in 15 minutes around 2pm a few years back, I now understand the panic behind the prediction of snow or precipitation and freezing weather. Gridlock and on the interstate and wrecked police and tow trucks? No thank you!

chicks

We received an advertising e-mail from one of the three places where we've bought chicks in the past (Carolina Town & Country in Sanford), saying they'll begin having chicks from the hatchery the first weekend in February. That seems awfully soon to me. I know they'll need 4-6 weeks under a heat lamp, but with it still being winter, they'll actually need the heat lamp much longer than that. In the spring it's so warm during the daytime after 4 weeks you can cut the lamp off during the day and just have it on at night, but with the day time temps being in the 40s and 50s, that's really not an option.

And as nice as it would be to rebuild our flock and have a wider range of egg colors, the breeds we'd need/want are not all brought in on the same week. I'm not driving to Sanford every weekend to get the various breeds. There's also the timing factor, and Bobby wants us to hatch some of our eggs as well.  To do that means we have to make a decision so we know when to start the incubator (so we won't have different age chicks which require different schedules at the same time).

A part of me says yes to new birds. We lost half our flock this fall. While egg production always slows down when the daylight hours are short, we are getting by on the eggs we have (though I did have to buy eggs last week), and we've not been able to give any away this fall/winter. I also miss the variety in colorings and personalities that comes with having various breed.

On the flip side, both hen houses are in need of work. The small one, where the chicks would go at 2-3 months until fully feathered, has a top door that is broken, and the attached coop needs some minor repairs to keep animals out.  The big hen house has three doors that are rotting, and the door to the coop is off.  I've been making do by leaning it against the entrance at night and placing cinder blocks in front of it (which a raccoon could move if it really wanted to).

So I have to decide: give myself extra work now when I'm trying to get some projects completed, or wait until the spring when there's more daylight hours in the day. It seems like a no-brainer.

commandments

We listened to about ten minutes of the Martin Luther King Interfaith service broadcast on the wral this morning.

We learned that the last five commandments: Don't steal; Don't kill; Don't commit adultery; Don't covet; and Don't slander actually mean this: Don't take money away from Medicaid/Medicare; Don't cut anything from the educational budget; Don't tell the poor they need to work to receive anything; and don't cut a teacher's salary (ie, I guess that does fall under coveting as other state employees DO somewhat resent going years without any raise at all, EXCEPT for the protected sub-category called teachers).  Sorry Ms. Rabbi, but after your political rant you called a prayer, we watched two more speakers and then turned it off.

I think racism falls under the same category as equality: it means a lot more when people practice and live right than when they just rant and rave about it.  It's a lot like the Good Morning America Show. They talk about women's rights SO much, and yet when they interview a woman who is holding a position in a new field, they don't ask her how she entered that career, what she likes about it, what she hopes to do....they ask her how it feels to hold the power of being the first woman there. How is that equality? We like your gender so much that we won't actually focus on your talents and capabilities and who you are as a person?

Days like today make me want to be a hermit.

opinions and placement

The more I learn about quilting, the more I learn there is to know.
Along this quilting journey, I've learned that there are many opinions.
Early on, I quilted what I knew (ie, the way my Grandma did).
One lady snobbishly informed that was NOT the way to quilt.
Since then, I've learned the phrase "stitch in the ditch" and what the experts consider to be quilting.

Stitch in the ditch is where the quilting seam is found in seams (not outside the seams) of  the top layer.
Photo from www.tqn.com

And then yesterday, I saw photos of quilts made 150 years ago. They can be seen here.
Of the thirty quilts in the exhibit, NOT ONE used stitch-in-the-ditch with straight stitches.
A few had decorative stitch-in-the-ditch quilting, but most used a 1/4" straight stitch inside the pieced material, just like my Grandma did.



This photo does NOT use stitch-in-the-ditch, but places the stitches inside the square and not on the seams.



I suppose it really comes down to preference: what one likes, the amount of time you have, what look you want the quilt to have, and whether you view the quilt as a piece of artwork or a household item to be used.I would have never guessed that quilting would be an area where women would impose their arrogance and snobbery, but like any other hobby or craft area, it is. And I'm coming to grips with the fact that it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks (other than my husband and the person I'm quilting for). As long as I enjoy the process and make a quilt that won't come apart when washed, I'll be happy.

And in case you're wondering, I prefer my Grandma's method for puffy looks, when short on time, or when wanting to emphasize a certain color or design. If I want something to look seamless on top, have a modern look, or place the emphasis on the piecing and not the quilting, then stitch-in-the ditch is the way to go.  But I recognize that's my opinion and preference, and if you disagree, I'll still think your quilt and quilting is something to ooh and aah over.