Month 12 of the Year 30

So, here we are…the end of my journey on the year 30!! Before I sign off on the year 30, however, I must relate my latest adventure.

For my final adventure, I needed to do something exciting and extraordinary—but, as promised in month 1, there will be none of that in this blog; the exciting and extraordinary will have to wait for another year. What I managed to do this month was more like interesting and ordinary, things that most people did as teenagers or college students: smoking and going to a dance club. Now, some of my young, sensitive readers may balk at one or both of these activities, but rest assured, I engaged in them merely as blog-worthy experiences. I don’t intend on becoming a wild party girl after one carefully planned, responsible night of debauchery, as you will see.

Smoking and going clubbing at age 30 (I presume) is totally different than at age 18 or 21. First of all, my friends are all old now, too; many are married with children—and already tired. They are mature, responsible people who now think through the consequences of damaging their health by using harmful substances or losing sleep—boring, right?! I am normally responsible as well and have been since I was like ten, so I skipped the whole teenage experimentation stage. Which is why 30 is the new 16 for me. But my friends, by and large, passed through this stage so that when I called saying, “Hey, do you want to smoke a cigarette and go to a club with me?” they weren’t necessarily overly excited about it. No, I have in-laws coming tomorrow and can’t stay out late. I have to work late. I have family in town for the holidays. It’s going to be crazy-busy going out this time of year. The only friend truly excited about going out was Deana, four months pregnant who could not enjoy a smoke with or around me and who had to work early Saturday morning. I had to hurry up and have this adventure before we all started wearing dentures. 

Not only was it difficult at age 30 to recruit people to smoke and club, all of the planning and responsibility involved removed any illusion that I was acting like a footloose teenager. Hey guys, I want to smoke one cigarette on Friday night—are you in? I experienced smoker’s frustration when I realized I wouldn’t be able to light up in the club or at any of my friends’ smoke-free homes. I would be relegated to some surreptitious puffing in the cold night air, in an area where no one would judge me or ban me. As a would-be smoker, I was faced with how unfriendly people were to my hypothetical actions. I also had to decide: did I want to buy a pack of cigs or bum one off a stranger—both new experiences. And which club to go to? Though it would’ve been truly funny to ride the bull at some sleazy club, I couldn’t bring myself to choose that. Instead we decided on the most respectable club we could find. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

The night of my last year 30 adventure, I hauled myself out of the armchair around 7:00 p.m. to begin getting ready. I have to confess that the thought of sliding into some comfy pajamas and curling up with a good sitcom was infinitely more appealing at that moment than going out on the town. My friend Deana (did I mention she turned 30 this year also?) confessed she felt the same way; going out nowadays can be such a hassle. Nevertheless, like the good old days (when I was twenty-something), I tried on numerous outfits and heaped up the rejects on my bed. What was the closest thing to cool club wear that I owned? My sister Allison, who was accompanying me, acted as my Yoda in all matters of club etiquette. It was much easier to locate in my belongings some loud, sparkly jewelry and a bottle of body shimmer. 

At Deana’s, we were joined by three sweet girls I didn’t know, who graciously refrained from laughing at a 30 year-old girl so evidently unworldly-wise. 

  

Someone should have told me these were real--not candy-cigarettes...

After appetizers, we headed to a nearby convenience store so I could buy my first (and last) pack of cigs. We settled on a pack of Marlboro Lites and I was pleased as punch to be carded. Part of the store clerk’s training must include abstention from moral judgments. He did not bat an eye at my pregnant friend’s purchase of a six pack (for her husband) nor her hanging around with the likes of chainsmoking me. On our way back to the house, I stuck my nose down in the cigarette carton and almost gagged, the smell was so disgusting. We appointed a designated smoking area outside of Deana’s house and the moment had arrived. It was not as complicated to smoke as I’d thought; nor was coordination as necessary either. It was a strange sensation, for sure, feeling the sort of burning in my throat, and seeing clouds of smoke issue from my mouth. How I wish I could have blown smoke circles like they do on TV. Instead I coughed, so at least I had the typical smoking experience in that way; everyone on TV always coughs their first time. Of course, I had the additional pressures of the peanut gallery ranged around me offering critiques. “Elisabeth, you are not inhaling.” In between puffs, I protested that I was. “You should feel it in your chest.” I couldn’t tell if I felt it there or not, but despite all of the interference, I managed to smoke almost the whole thing. When Allison joked about the loss of my lungs’ purity, I felt sad momentarily, like I’d lost something after all. The next morning, when my voice was scratchy and I kept needing to spit, I wondered if the effects of my smoking habit had already set in. 

 

To mask the sense of loss, I did what any twenty-one year-old would do—head for the club. Though it was almost 11:00 p.m., past my normal bedtime, Allison insisted that now was the time the party got started on the dance floor. Deana, Allison, and I drove uptown to the most un-skanky club we could find. Once inside the club’s seedy interior, I was confronted by that oh-so-familiar middle school dance awkwardness. Not many people were dancing yet but were hanging back in the shadows against the walls. Almost immediately our little group was approached by an older wild-eyed man (he may not have been wild-eyed but it was too dark to say that he was not) who asked us each in succession if we wanted to dance. I think he asked me last, after my sister and my pregnant, married friend. Perhaps the outfit wasn’t club-cool after all. But wonderfully, it didn’t much matter to me. You see, when you’re 30, you just don’t care anymore about some things. In my younger years, I would have cared about looking nice and meeting a guy out; nowadays, I don’t want to meet a guy “out.” I’d rather meet a guy in church or at the grocery store than in a club. At age 30, you just want to have fun dancing with your girlfriends and not be accosted by wild-eyed men. After murmuring some excuse to him, we stationed ourselves near an unfortunate wall—unfortunate because the wall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Though some dancers quite enjoyed busting a move and watching the results in the mirror, we turned our backs to it to escape the sight. On the rare occasion I caught a glimpse of myself dancing, I shuddered and turned away. 

Finally, the music really picked up, the dance floor filled, and the shyness was gone. It is so much fun to be a 30 year-old clubber! We danced for about two hours straight until we wore out my poor little pregnant friend. We had so much fun that I forgot to bum a light and join my fellow smokers on the patio, but I guess that is one experience I’ll have to forego…And thus ended the year 30!

Thank you to all of you who have cheered me on and let me know you’ve been reading my blog this year. It’s been such a fun, memorable experience. Though I don’t plan to continue blogging at this time, I’ve themed the upcoming year “31 and counting.” That way, I can continue trying new experiences all year (and life) long. Thanks for sharing this journey with me!!

Month 11 of the Year 30

I’ve realized lately that the good thing about not having a lot of experiences early on in life means that they are richer later in life when you have time to savor them. That has been true of painting, sewing, having blonde hair—all the things I’ve enjoyed this year. I don’t know if I savored this month’s task or not, because for me cooking has always been just that—a task. I have done very little cooking simply because I don’t really enjoy it. I come from a well, a short line of people who don’t like to cook. My grandmothers were good cooks, but my mom, though a good cook, dislikes doing it and she has passed down that distaste to her daughters. But this month I sought to conquer the distaste as my “first” was cooking the Thanksgiving turkey and dressing for my family.

One of the greatest joys of cooking, I am told, is cooking with others. And it might seem like a sweet and precious thing to cook Thanksgiving dinner with one’s mother, but on my first night back in the kitchen, things were neither sweet nor precious between my mother and me.

After a long, busy, tiring day, Mom and I joined forces to make homemade cornbread for the next day’s dressing (not to be confused with the Yankee’s version: “stuffing”). Since the cornbread has to cool before you crumble it to make the dressing, you have to make it awhile beforehand. At any rate, due to the time of day and attitudes of the cooks, making cornbread was far from fun. While I measured and mixed, Mom stood nearby, barking out orders and thrusting ingredients into my hands. We exchanged a few sharp words because she felt I wasn’t holding the measuring cup properly when I poured milk. I meanwhile was so concentrated on not spilling the milk that I didn’t heed her advice as to cup-holding form, which led her to say that I wasn’t really there to learn about cooking. While this was probably accurate, it seemed at the time like a low blow. When we were done making the cornbread, I put it in the oven to bake and threw out the following barb as I left: “I’m going to go write down what’s just happened here.” Which turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, but it seemed like something at the time. Her words to me: “don’t write anything ugly about me.”

I should probably say at this juncture that my mom and I have a very good relationship and that if she were ever to actually read my blog, I daresay she would find the incident amusing now.

The next morning, I managed to make the dressing without incident. Dressing is kind of an important part of the Thanksgiving meal in our house and there could be no room for mistakes. Thus, Mom hovered at my elbow the entire time, trying to step in and stir if I didn’t act quickly enoug. Nevertheless, the dressing turned out well.

Around noon, it was time to prepare the turkey for our evening meal. This was an eye-opening experience. As aforementioned, I never really cook and raw meat is fairly nauseating to me. I mean, I almost gagged at the chicken broth I poured into the dressing mixture!

Right away, Mom expected me to start pulling body parts out of the turkey right and left. It was a tough assignment; the turkey looked so much like a living thing—proud breast, taloned feet, wings tucked stoically by its sides. It was the first time in my life that I was face to face with the reality that turkey is more than a thinly carved piece of meat situated between the sweet potato casserole and green beans on my plate. Fortunately, there is no love lost between turkeys and me in general, so I was able to overcome this first hurdle quickly.

In addition, we didn’t have much time for me to warm up to the process, so I had to jump right in. I slid my hand down into its cold, slimy body cavity, searching for its neck, not knowing what a neck should feel like. (I shiver again just writing this.) When I failed to find it, my mom located a large, curved bone and wrangled it out of the poor guy.

At this point, my sister-in-law, Sara, another 30 year-old turkey-virgin, was watching and photographing as Mom, Vanna-like, showcased the heart and other internal organs. Next, it was time to season him, but first we had to pat him dry. I felt like I was bathing a newborn for the first time, raising up his hands and legs and patting him dry underneath. It felt very invasive and personal, but by this point I felt a strange affection for the little fella.

As we began adding flavoring to the turkey, however, he started to seem less like a bird and more like a tasty morsel. Mom and Sara were claiming his body parts before he was even cooked! Sara wanted his dark leg meat…and on reflection I think he would have been okay with that. Thus, I greased my turkey baby up with lots of butter, sliding chunks of it into his armpits and underneath his legs. We rubbed him down with salt, pepper, rosemary, and some other spice. Mom said he’d probably still taste like plain turkey despite the seasonings—and he did.

With the rest of his remains we were economical. The heart and other body parts went into a boiling pot of water to be cooked for the dog. And I began to reflect on the things I was thankful for following this experience.

1. I am thankful that our family doesn’t eat giblet gravy, now that I know what that is.

2. I am thankful that our family doesn’t put stuffing inside the turkey. Having seen what I saw and felt what I felt inside a turkey, I don’t want to see someone pulling a spoon out of that self-same orifice and plopping what comes out onto my plate.

3. Finally, I am thankful that I didn’t personally know my turkey before stripping him of his vital organs and seasoning him to taste. I have enough issues handling raw meat without hearing it “gobble” at me first.



Timid hands...at first




This one is a bit blurry but shows the frenetic energy needed to work that bird!
--Sara quote




Mother and Daughter Bonding over Butter and Bird



Month 10 of the Year 30

                A couple of nights ago, I attended my first opera! It was cool to finally experience what so many of my heroes and heroines from 19^th century British literature experienced – with some modifications, naturally.

                The closest I’ve come to participating in musical theater was when I acted in a variety show at my church wherein a group of us girls sang and choreographed a dance to “How do you solve a problem like Maria” from The Sound of Music. We each sang and acted the part of a Catholic nun; it was very cute. We dressed in black graduation gowns and used toilet paper around our faces to help create the wimple. We were a giggly crew before we went on stage as girls’ toilet paper kept unwrapping from their headpieces. The end of the song contained a surprise for the crowd; we held up our gowns (tastefully, of course) to reveal that we were all wearing black fishnet stockings underneath. Let’s just say, after our rendition of that song, Julie Andrews rolled over in her grave--and she was not even deceased; we were more like “sistas” than reverend “sisters.”

                Not knowing my history of apparent irreverence toward musicals, the opera folks let me in, and as aforementioned, it was neat to compare it to what I have read about opera-going. The opera was quite the vibrant social scene back in the day, and people went to see and be seen. I suppose those of us in a small town today see and are seen by going to the local greasy diner or worse, Walmart. How far we have fallen!

                In my favorite novels, everything that is dramatic and significant occurs at the opera, when a handsome gentleman shares his opera glasses with a beautiful lady, or when the lower class rube enters the box and raises the eyebrows of the social elite within, or when the entire theater’s eyes are drawn to the fair heroine’s entrance into her box, bedecked in sumptuous velvet and sparkling diamonds. The real action at the opera took place not on stage but during the intermissions. I equate this with me at a football game. I can attend a game in person or watch it on TV and be so caught up in the social atmosphere, I barely know who is playing who, let alone the score or anything that happens during the game. During intermissions, the novel’s characters box-hopped. This was an all-important time when the old dowagers congregated to gossip and amorous gentlemen dropped in to flirt.

                My opera experience was slightly different from this. I arrived not in a stately carriage arrayed in my finest duds, but in the tired shirt and pants I’d had on for the past 12 hours, the ones I’d taught, driven and eaten in. My jewels consisted of silver earrings and bracelet that needed a good polishing and a necklace of questionable taste. My hair was limp from the humidity and residual makeup had settled into the lines on my face. Moreover, it was student night at the opera which meant that we paid less money and witnessed dress rehearsal mistakes. We sat not in the glamorous raised boxes (those were empty) but in the nosebleed balcony looking down onto the stage. Our intermission was none too dramatic or romantic, either. We quietly single-filed to bathrooms built for twelve and listened to a question-and-answer session with the second-string singers.

                Perhaps the lack of drama and excitement in the experience itself made the opera more central than the machinations of the audience. I began to feel transported to 15^th century Spain (Il Trovatore was the opera), but then the conductor would bark at some member of the orchestra (once he said to some poor musician, “What planet are you on?!!) and I’d be snapped back to a 21^st century American dress rehearsal on a Thursday night at the end of a long day. We were further bound by reality by recurring glitches in modern technology, namely that for parts of each act the English translations displayed on the screen above the stage would vanish and I would be lost. They were singing passionately and gesticulating wildly but I could only guess at what they were saying. Was he upset that she didn’t love him or was he merely telling her she had repulsive breath? Without the translation, the interpretation was completely up to us. Now had I imitated my 19^th century sophisticated forebears, I would have either studied Italian or googled the summary ahead of time so I wouldn’t have been lost without the translation.

                One more observation from my night at the opera for which my years of reading classic literature had ill prepared me: the incongruousness of appearances. We watched the most unlikely of couples fall madly in love with one another on stage; stout, middle-aged, mismatched characters whom you would never imagine together acted the parts of young, ardent lovers in the story. I believe it was Samuel Taylor Coleridge who wrote that we must suspend our disbelief to accept fiction, but in this case, I was hard pressed to suspend my disbelief and accept the mismatched romance playing out on stage. Of course, in opera, as I had to be reminded, the voice is the thing and the stout unlikely middle-aged singers were the ones with the phenomenal pipes.

The screen up top was the one that kept going out at the worst times...

21st century opera goers

a few more



Can you tell I was really fantasizing about sitting in one of those boxes? I even dared my friend to sneak into one but she dared not.



Month 9 of the Year 30

                This month as my “first” was clothes-related, I thought I’d open with one of my earliest clothes memories.

                When I was at my kindergarten graduation, I remember squatting on the stage with my fellow graduates for group pictures. I can still recall looking out into the audience, smiling proudly and holding up my certificate. I can also recall the smiling, laughing sea of faces. When I got home, my family informed me what the cause of some of the laughter was. That day I was rocking a soft yellow knee-length jumper with a floral print and accessorizing with a headband. I was also rocking the un-ladylike pose of a squat on a raised stage and my underwear was showing for all the world to see. I would have long forgotten this little faux-pas except for the photos that memorialize it and which family members continue to erupt with laughter at.

                I could tell another embarrassing kindergarten story of how I conceived that it would be a fun idea to wear no underwear at all to school one day—might not have been a problem except that I was wearing the aforementioned yellow jumper. I could tell that story but then it would seem I have some weird obsession with undergarments (given the pair I wore on my head last month) so I best let it lie there.

                Well, this month my dedication to the Year 30 was severely tested. I have been swamped, stressed, overloaded, overwhelmed—did I mention busy?—with work, full-time graduate classes, and student teaching (and a knee injury that has temporarily halted my running). But I’ve remained committed to seeing this year’s adventures through, even if my hair turns completely gray by the end of the semester.

                For three Friday nights this month (and two Saturday mornings) I left my hectic life and entered a haven of calm that is my friends’ Leah and Sarah’s house. You see, they had offered to teach me how to S.E.W. and as these are my initials (no joke), I imagined it would come fairly naturally.

                Leah and Sarah (sisters) bravely took me on as their pupil. The first Friday night we went to a fabric store and selected a pattern and a fabric. Sarah mentioned that an easy pattern would have an elastic waist and no frills. But of course the pattern I liked most was for a flouncy skirt with a waistband, a zipper, and two pockets with cute bows. The girls and I agreed that we might as well go big or go home. I selected a light blue twill fabric that would be appropriate in any season. At this point, we were all still optimistic and bright, not letting the fact that the fabric store didn’t have twill tape on hand deter us. We were confident, ready. I thought I would have a skirt by the next morning, though Leah cautioned against chrono-optimism.

               

Reality set in, though, when we unfurled the directions, which were written in Greek. “Press 5/8” top seam on the front left side. Baste.” And there were like 29 steps written like this! It was actually more like 42 steps but the sewing experts know that 42 steps would discourage novices so they bundle several steps into one. I occasionally asked, after hours of intensive labor, what step we were on and invariably we were still on step 2 or 3.

                Needless to say, it was a lot of work but I learned a lot of cool things. Like that basting is not just something you do in the kitchen. I really liked pinning the pattern to the cloth; it would take awhile and we had to take the pins right out again, but it was still fun. I also enjoyed working the sewing machine; I think it would be fun to work the pedal and make stitches even if you were just sewing your thumbs together.

                I marveled at Leah and Sarah’s patience as they watched me slowly pin, iron, stitch—for hours—and on five different occasions. Sarah told me to include in this blog that I asked them if I had correct “sewing form” – which I thought a valid question at the time. I think that at the moment I asked that question, one arm was sticking through the interior part of the machine and the other arm around the outer part so that I was hunched over the sewing machine kind of bear-hugging it. I think I needed some guidance as to form at that moment.

                The first weekend we worked on cutting the pieces and making these elaborate pockets with bows. Every time I made a mistake, and the girls said we needed to rip the seam and do it again, my response was that no one would notice that little mistake. Thankfully, they did make me re-do those mistakes because all told, the mistakes would have finally become noticeable.

                Probably my biggest mistake that first weekend (we usually had one big one every weekend) was cutting the fabric for a much longer skirt than I had wanted—but that was easily rectified.

                The second weekend the skirt really came together and the whole process started to make more sense to me. Mom Gillian stepped in to help us with installing a zipper, which was actually kind of harrowing. The largest mistake that weekend was that I put the zipper on the wrong side of the skirt. Did not know: women’s zippers are supposed to be on the left side of the body. Mine is going to be on the right side. Please don’t judge.

                I dashed over the third Friday night of September around 8:45 to see the project through to completion. We had like four steps left (in sewers’ terms, like 12 steps). We worked awhile, somewhat delirious with tiredness, yet trying to make the September deadline. It came time to try the zipper and pull the waistband together—and it came together, sort of. It was actually funny—the two sides of my skirt didn’t match up at all. One side was higher than the other and the zipper was askew.

Leah broke the news that this was, in fact, a major setback that would take hours to rectify…and it was already close to 11 p.m. So I bailed—yes, it’s true. Leah and Sarah offered me a lifeline and I took it; they are planning to rip the top of the skirt apart and put it back together correctly for me.

                So let me conclude with a few reflections on sewing:

1.       Sewing takes a lot of time and work. Did I find myself saying “I could buy a skirt at ROSS for $25 or less and be out of the store in 20 minutes, as opposed to 25 hours of sewing?” I confess the thought crossed my mind. But ROSS couldn’t give me the learning experience, which was what it was all about, after all.

2.       I am not writing off sewing. I’m fascinated by the handwork, the precision required, the different side of my brain I got to exercise. When I had to measure cloth with a ruler, I was a bit flummoxed as I haven’t really measured since elementary school.

3.       Sewing is best done with friends who make it more of a social event. It would be really scary to see what I would have done with a sewing machine and blue twill fabric if I had been on my own. I once tried crocheting and I just crocheted a dome shape that most resembled an alien’s hatwear. That was the last time I used crocheting needles. Hopefully the same will not be true of sewing.

Thanks, Sarah and Leah!! Can’t wait to try on the new skirt!

ADDENDUM

Several days have passed since I drafted the above. Yesterday I arrived home around 10 p.m. after a long, rough day to be greeted by a large package. Inside was my completed (corrected) skirt!!! Thanks so much, girls J

Month 8 of the Year 30

         When I decided that one of my “firsts” was going to be taking a spontaneous, uncharted roadtrip with a friend, I instantly knew who that friend would be.

          My friend Julia is a lifelong friend who I’ve literally known since birth, though we didn’t become close until our late teens. Julia is my opposite; she is very laid-back, go-with-the-flow and spontaneous, whereas I am tightly wound, and very plan- and schedule-oriented. Julia will accompany a friend on a midnight shopping trip to Walmart at the drop of a hat. Any “friend” who called me up at midnight for a Walmart run might not get the most Christian response. (You see, I hadn’t planned that Walmart trip and I would calculate how much sleep I’d lose and how tired I’d feel the next day, etc.)

          So if I wanted to take a daytrip filled with spontaneous fun, it would have to be with Julia. It also had to be with Julia because we needed desperately to redeem ourselves. On one of our last trips together (many years ago actually), we traveled to the North Carolina mountains. On our return home, we set out on our 1 ½ hour drive home, singing to music and chatting, not noticing that we had missed our early turn off. We drove and drove (for hours) without paying attention to where we were going, not noticing that nothing looked familiar—until finally we saw a sign for Augusta, Georgia! We were mortified. Turns out, we were nearer to Columbia than Augusta, but our 1 ½ hour trip home extended into a five hour trip by the time it was over.

          This roadtrip then was made for us—no schedule and no rules. I wanted to drive with no destination, turning left and right as the mood hit me, embracing spontaneity. Now to be honest, we did plan to drive towards the North Carolina mountains to ensure we’d end up somewhere interesting, so we sort of cheated, I guess.

          To also ensure that we had adventures along the way, I crafted an extensive “Checklist of Fun” filled with items for us to attempt to complete throughout the day. Some items on the list that we did not do but I wish we had: taking a photo with roadkill, finding 30 of something, and working a nonsense word multiple times into a conversation with a stranger. We did manage to pull off other funny things, as you will see…

          1. Dance in parking lot. Okay, this one we actually added to the checklist after we did it just so we could check it off. We pulled away from my house around 9:15 a.m. on a Saturday and headed through Cherryville and beyond towards Morganton. (We went through a lot of small towns like Morganton, Rutherfordton, Marion, Old Fort, Black Mountain, and Montreat). Our first bit of fun was dancing the electric slide in a parking lot in full view of the road.

          2. Wear outrageous clothing item. This may be the thing I get the most flack for but it was also the funniest. Now early on it was necessary that we set the tone for our trip—did we have chutzpah enough to fulfill this checklist or did we not? Were we men or were we mice? We drove past a yard sale stationed outside of a small business and hosted by several vendors. Before turning around to drive back, we affixed a pair of underwear to my head like a bandana, rolling the waistband under and sort of pulling it back with a claw clip. We drove back to the yard sale. It was kind of hard, let me tell you, to approach people with a smile on my face and act like I wasn’t wearing underwear on my head. Julia kept trying hard not to laugh because according to her, my headdress looked pretty ridiculous in the box. I don’t think anyone at the yard sale even noticed or perhaps they thought we were introducing a new style. We shot this photo before leaving. After this, we knew we were equal to almost anything.

          3. Carry/use a prop. Our next stop was at a really cute country store. We donned hats and I carried a fan and fanned myself like a Southern belle. The proprietor greeted us with a blunt: “What’s up with the hats?” Julia’s had crazy black and white feathers on the front of it so it was hard to ignore. The proprietor’s dog began barking at us soon after we entered, and the proprietor deduced that her dog was just barking at our hats. A little later, while perusing the store’s shelves, Julia overheard a male customer telling the proprietor that when he saw Julia’s hat, he thought it was a skunk and almost went to get his gun. Somehow I don’t doubt that this man’s gun was ever very far from his person.

         

          4. Play Chinese red light.

          5. Crazy car dancing.

          6. Sing loud and off-key at stoplight. Yes, we did these things but there’s not much to say about them…

          As I mentioned earlier, our goal was to drive into the mountains. For awhile, it seemed we were circling the mountain or that the mountains were moving as we tried to drive toward them. Finally, we saw a sign for Lake Lure and we followed the winding road up. By now it had taken us over three hours to meander up the mountain and we were hungry.

          7. We stopped and ate at a beautiful Italian restaurant overlooking the lake.

Here was opportunity for a little further fun. I pretended that I could only speak French. This meant that Julia did all of the ordering and speaking for us. I had trouble thinking of French phrases quickly enough but I do remember saying “Merci” a lot to the waitress. Since we never actually told the waitress that I didn’t speak English, I think she just thought there was something wrong with me. So when I would look up at her and smile sweetly, she would cut her eyes at me but then awkwardly turn to confer only with Julia. So I’m not sure if she thought that I didn’t speak English or that I had problems, but either way, I made her very uncomfortable.

          8. At Chimney Rock, we dipped our feet in a body of water which was on the list.

What was not on the list was my walking in on a father and son using the bathroom side by side. We were at a business that only had one outdoor restroom for both sexes. I opened the door wide and started to enter when I noticed that there was a man and his young son standing inside with their backs toward me. I said I was sorry and hurried away. When they emerged, the man was angry, not at me per se, but at his wife who apparently was supposed to be guarding the door (because it was too hard to latch it??). NOT on my list.

          As the afternoon wore on, we continued up the mountain, went back down, went back up again, followed signs that looked interesting, drove in and out of rainstorms.

          9. Walk with a limp. Yes, I’m strange but I had perfected a really funny limp where I kind of dragged one leg behind me in a ridiculously exaggerated way. When I say dragged, I mean I used both arms to pull the leg after me. When we made a bathroom stop at Hardees (indoor restrooms for both sexes there), I dragged my leg behind me to the door, then inside to the restroom, and back out again. It was not the Hardees rush hour so there weren’t many people around, but those who did notice weren’t impressed. I’ll need to practice it some more, I guess.

          10. Pretend to work somewhere along the way. We had ratcheted up our courage a good bit by now so we pulled over to a Dollar General and pretended (one at a time) to be greeters. So when a customer walked up (I was standing outside the door), I welcomed him or her cordially to Dollar General. After only the second customer, Julia hurriedly called me over. “I think that person you just welcomed works here.” It made sense--she was wearing a yellow shirt and she kind of laughed when I greeted her. Not long after, we were on the road again.

          11-14. We ended our adventures in Asheville and tried to knock out as many items on the checklist as we could: Take photo with a stranger. Take photo with something purple. Find interesting graffiti. Try a new food or drink.

 

where I met the "stranger" I took the photo with



          We ate at a very cool Mediterranean place where we sat on cushions on the floor.

I tried some new foods, like falafel. At this restaurant a belly dancer was making her rounds between the two rooms. Whenever she’d come dancing in, she’d have a different prop—some candles, a sword, a tip basket. It was one of those awkward situations where you don’t really know how to act or where to look, but above all you want to appear nonchalant and sophisticated. Here’s this woman dancing suggestively over your table and you don’t know whether to ignore her, smile and nod at her, or what. So I just filmed Julia looking awkward. (Sorry, Jules; you’ll notice I didn’t post the video clip J)

          15. Probably the most gutsy thing we did do in Asheville was that I pretended to be a caricaturist. We sat in a busy town square where lots of people were passing by and I opened my big notebook, which looked somewhat like a sketch pad. I spoke to Julia like she was a customer while I drew a head shot of her. Of course, if you know me, you know I’m a terrible artist and that was the point. People walked by, saw a caricaturist drawing someone, and did what was natural—looked over my shoulder (according to Julia). What they saw was a child-like rendering of something that looked nothing like Julia. And they kept on walking. I’m proud of that one.

          So, all in all, it was a successful roadtrip. Thirteen hours on the road, we didn’t get terribly lost, we finally found the mountains, and we stretched our normally shy, retiring selves in at least fifteen ways.

         

(Shout-out to Julia who is approaching her 30^th in a month!)