Strawberries, and Carolina BBQ Pork

Two successes for the day. One, I bought a strawberry plant at the farmer's market this morning. I think if you had asked me to describe how strawberries grew, I'd have fumbled around trying to remember if they were a bush, or creeping thorny plant, or if the berries grew in clusters, or what exactly. But I know what a strawberry looks like, and when I saw a plant full of them, in various stages of development, I bought it.
Five bucks! The farmer who sold it to me promised it would produce continually until about June, or whenever it starts getting really hot. Then, he said, it sends out daughter plants! So I buy one plant for five bucks, get all its strawberries, plus the little baby plants it'll make. All I do is win.
Second success: pork! Specifically, Carolina-style pulled pork. I used this recipe, and a three-pound Boston butt roast I had in the freezer from Windy Hill Farms.
I covered the pork with its dry rub on Thursday night, Saran-ed it and left it in the fridge until this morning. I took it out, let it rest an hour, seared it, and threw it in a low oven for the long haul. So, while I graded students' work, ate a leisurely lunch (reading Omnivore's Dilemma), and took a nap in the grass outside my apartment, my pork cooked slowly into a mass of soft, flavorful shreds of meat. It was beyond falling-off-the-bone. The whole thing was so tender the bone actually fell out of the meat, and not the other way around.
Gorgeous. Generously doused in vinegar-based bbq sauce....mmm.


In other news, there are 13 school days left in the third quarter. And tomorrow I get an extra hour of daylight to enjoy after teaching every day. Summer is getting achingly close. Eight weeks of total freedom! I am so much more excited about the summer as a high school teacher than I ever was as a high school student.

Snow Day!!

Snow day!! At 4:45 this morning I was a little confused to see the voicemail icon on my cell phone, but that robo-call voice has never sounded sweeter. I went back to bed until 8:30. It was glorious. That may not sound very late, but compared to 4:45 (when my alarm went off) it is a spectacular time to wake up. I had some sweet potato chips for breakfast and decided to finally find this Little Sugar Creek Greenway that I keep hearing about. I cut through neighborhoods to King and Morehead, where the Greenway picks up with that clock tower thingy in the middle of the intersection. Then you go under a bridge.

There was a large, chattering bird flying in front of me down the creek for a little ways. He'd swoop low over the water, making a lot of noise, then swing up to a branch for a few seconds. Then fly down again, fuss at me, then find another perch. I wish I had a better lens. He looked like a kingfisher, but I thought they were more blue. Thirty seconds of Google Images when I got home revealed that he was, in fact, a belted kingfisher. Who knew.


I followed the Greenway until I got to Freedom Park, and then cut back up Queens Road West and walked home. (It occurred to me, as I neared the end of my walk, that I probably should get in shape if I intend to hike any part of the Appalachian Trail this summer.)




It was a beautiful way to spend an hour of my morning. Walking through the neighborhoods all the sounds seemed muffled. Kids were shouting to each other in their backyards but they all sounded far away. There were a few cars slushing through the streets, but only very few. And when you go out for a walk in a snow storm ("storm" is used loosely here, but I'll call it whatever the locals want to call it), everyone you run into seems to be extra friendly, because they've all decided to go out and walk in the snow too. I said hello to two men on bikes and a couple dog walkers. And as I walked past a woman standing at the end of her driveway, she said to me, "Amazing out here, isn't it? I'm surprised more people aren't out!" I agreed with her. I also saw a man on cross-country skis, which looked more than than a little ridiculous given that this is Charlotte, not Chicago, but he gets some points for dogged determination.

We have a "work at home" day tomorrow, which means I'll do a little planning, and then enjoy snow day number two. This diet thing sucks. These are the kinds of days I should be going out to eat, or reading a book and drinking coffee someplace. Thursday can't come soon enough.

A year ago...

It occurred to me today that a year is a hell of a long time. I started thinking, for no particular reason, about where I was a year ago. I had a life all settled in Chicago, had broken up with Ben a month before, was an emotional train wreck, was still working for Grosvenor, and a week or two before flying home for Christmas I had been suddenly hit with the thought that I might want to move to North Carolina.

Here's part of an email I wrote, almost a year ago today:

I wrote two emails this morning asking people to be my job references, and am filling out an application for the Southern Teachers' Agency (the people who got me my Queen Anne job). I can rent an f-ing HOUSE with TWO BEDROOMS and a YARD for like, 700 bucks in Winston. Screw this thousand dollars a month bullshit, geez. So we'll see about that, but I think I might do it. You've always told me to follow my dreams and what do I really want to do and so on. . . and I think I'd really like to live in the south and be near friends and family and have dirt to plant stuff in and open space to wander around in. So we'll see.

And in another email two weeks later...

Spent the first day of the new decade making art with my new pastels, cleaning old shit out of my house, and sending my resume to recruiters in NC. Juliet has given me all kinds of great reasons why Charlotte is an awesome city and I should totally move there. Nelson has good things to say about NC, but doesn't like Charlotte because it has too many southern people in it. Kristen's gonna call me back later and tell me all about TFA in Charlotte. And I, meanwhile, need to start applying for some other things in case TFA still doesn't want me. But, fact is, I can basically do whatever the hell I want to, wherever the hell I want to do it! I'm really excited and really hoping I get the TFA gig, but either way, I'm crossing that Mason-Dixon!

I guess it's just nice to look back on that, sitting here in my apartment in Charlotte, getting presents ready to drive home for Christmas (because I can drive now, not fly), steeling myself for two more days of rowdy teenagers who are just as anxious for break as I am...able to think hey, I started at Point A, decided I wanted to get to Point B, and here I am. Funny thing is though, all that does is make me think about what else I want to do... if I wanted to move to NC, decided to do it, and then actually did it...what else do I want to do?

(P.S. It sometimes snows a little here and it's beautiful!)

Christmas!!! (and pickles)

Me and my friend Sarah went to lunch on Sunday. The Atherton Mills Farmers Market had Sunday hours, so we went down to Southend to find lunch and then hit up the market. We ate at the IceHouse on South Blvd., and because it was Sunday (or just because I like fatty food), I got chicken and waffles, with sweet potato and bacon hash. I'd heard of chicken and waffles as a meal, but somehow always imagined it like, chicken and dumplings, or something with gravy involved. Nope. Piece of fried chicken, big ass waffle, little cup of syrup. Why not serve two amazing foods together with a sugary condiment? Fried chicken is not something I know how to make, but I might have to learn soon. (Dear family, I will be frying sweet potatoes and bacon together when I come home.)


The whole reason I wanted to go to the farmer's market was to buy meat. I got a Netflix trial last week, and finally watched "Food Inc." which increased the number of generally icky feelings I have towards our food industry. (Admittedly, not enough to turn down fried chicken on a waffle.) So I got some ground beef and eggs and bratwurst from the Windy Hill Farm guy and had a lovely conversation about the slaughtering regulations for assorted animals. (He can kill his own poultry and rabbits, but has to send his pigs, cows and lambs to a slaughterhouse in Greensboro.)

Then Sarah and I were enticed over to Pickleville. The friendly proprietor (a Jew from Philly who used to make pizzas and now makes pickles) let us try a million kinds of pickles, and I wound up spending five bucks on a tub of the most amazing pickles ever. I got half regular dill (light years beyond Vlasic) and half "half-sour" which I guess aren't pickled as long and so are a little fresher tasting.

Maybe tonight's dinner wasn't picturesque, but damn was it good. (Two kinds of pickles..!! Bratwurst from a pig who got to root around in the forest and eat real pig food!!)


And finally...the best thing to come out of my farmer's market trip? A Christmas tree!!!!!!!

Trout! (Pan-fried)

I bought trout at the Atherton Mill Farmers Market last week. It was caught in NC and was sold to me in a ziploc bag. I have never bought or eaten or cooked trout before, but the guy asked what kind of fish I wanted and when I said I didn't know but I wanted something I could fry in a skillet, this is what he handed to me.
First of all, isn't it beautiful? Fish are amazing to me sometimes, with their little sparkly rainbow scales. Like that kids book, right? Almost too pretty to eat. Except...not really.

For all my years as a fish-eating vegetarian, I know approximately one way to cook one kind of fish. I can pan fry salmon. That's it. So I wasn't entirely sure what to do with two whole trout, but I figured if I messed up the first one I'd still have a shot with the second. So I did what I always do when unsure how to cook something...I fried it in buttr!!

Pan-fried Trout

a fish (1 lb seems to be two fishes worth of fillet)
flour
salt and pepper
butter

Rinse the fish, and use a sharp knife to separate the two halves of the body from each other if they're still connected (mine were). Pat dry with a paper towel.

Mix a half-cup or so of flour with salt and pepper on a big plate. Dredge the fish in the flour on both sides.

Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet until it's bubbling, but not starting to brown. Put the fish in the pan, skin side down, and cook for a couple minutes (3? 4?) Flip the fish over with a pair of tongs and fry on the other side. Ideally, you only flip it once. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes (max!) to cook through. Yum.

Done and done. The result? The absolute best piece of fish I think I have ever eaten. Like, seriously. Not as the result anything fancy I did, but because I swear the little guy must have been swimming around the day before. I'm never buying fish at the grocery story again. I'm absolutely serious. If you're going to eat food, why eat the crap version?

I guess when you ask...

So I'd been feeling kind of church-less and un-rooted this week. I finally (yeah, should have done this sooner) prayed and asked God to find me the perfect church. I'd been going to this one for maybe two months or so, and it just hadn't felt permanent yet. I'd emailed someone about joining a small group and hadn't heard back, and I felt like everyone I met on Sunday disappeared the next Sunday to be replaced with more people whose names I wouldn't remember and whose faces I wouldn't recognize next week. So, I prayed. And hey, guess what happens when you actually DO that?

The day after I prayed I woke up and the guy had emailed me back about small group - they're just getting started but hope to start meeting this week or the next.

Then I find out that a friend from college who recently moved out of Charlotte went to Hope (this church) for three years and loved it and the people there. And he knows the guy with the small group and tells me he and his wife are lovely people.

Then I went to Hope this morning. The sermon was on this one idea that God has been pounding me with all week. The pastor reads the EXACT scripture that has kept popping into my head all week (Luke 12: 31). There's a baptism, and the dad reads this unbelievably beautiful "blessing" thing for his daughter that's, AGAIN, about the same idea. (And man, I'm a weeper when it comes to dads reading beautiful blessing things to their little baby daughters - sheesh.)

Then we sing two of my favorite songs at the end of the service (How Great is our God, and Be Thou My Vision).

And then the couple sitting behind me invites me to lunch with two more of their friends from the church. And they're just cool as can be and so friendly and legit, not friendly in a fake-churchy way.

Okay, thanks God, I get it. Church = found.

Lizard!!

So I'm sitting on my couch watching the news and eating my chili when I hear a sudden, soft thud from across the room and see something move in my peripheral vision. What is it? Oh, just a freaking LIZARD jumping onto my armchair.
The weather's gotten chilly lately and so evidently, my little anole friend (who lives outside by the recycling bins, and whom I recently spent a silly amount of time chasing off of my car) had decided to come inside where it's warm.

I'm pretty good at catching insects and letting them go outside. Unless it's going to bite me, or is a centipede, I usually try to just relocate any home invaders. (Cockroaches are another story; I went after one a few weeks ago with hairspray and Clorox bleach cleanser to no avail.) However, I've never had a lizard pop up onto my living room furniture fixing to make himself at home. It took me some time to find a box I could put over him without catching his ridiculously long and fragile-looking tail, but I finally managed to corral him into one of the big filing Tupperware we keep our students' work in.
As much as I'd love to have a little pet, I'm not trying to breed crickets, or fool around with heat lamps. While he waited patiently in the Tupperware, I did a little research and discovered that the Carolina anole usually hibernates in winter, hiding under wood or rocks or in other sheltered places. Apparently it's not uncommon for them to find their way inside when it gets cold out. It still is cool as shit to a yankee like me, however, as I've never lived anyplace where wild lizards show up in your living room.

I took him outside and set him out in some sunny grass. And then, because I'm a giant nature dork, I sat and watched him for a while. Everything on him is so tiny! He's got these tiny little eyes, and the pattern on his skin is so delicate and precise. I get a little blown away sometimes by things in nature that are beautiful. He was almost sparkly in the sun. He's shedding too, which you can see starting on his two back feet.
Anyway, coolest thing to happen all day. I get way too excited about wildlife, but like, how can you NOT be amazed at that? Does it ever just blow your mind how there are like, millions of kinds of animals and they all work perfectly and are perfectly adapted to wherever they live, and they're all completely, completely different from each other? Cause I get a little freaked out sometimes by just how insane nature actually is, when you sit down and think about it.

Fantastic Weekend.

This was a good trip. I’d been feeling nostalgic about Chicago lately, and missing parts of my life there, and contemplating in that back-of-your-mind kind of way what it might be like if I moved back some day. When I drove away in April I wasn’t leaving anything behind that I hadn’t loved for the time I was there. There were things I was moving away from, but not to escape them, just to grow up from them. So I was afraid that I’d get off the plane on Thursday, drive through the city, go for a drink, walk around my old neighborhood, and wish I still lived there. But I don’t, and that’s a really good feeling.

Since graduating from college I’ve felt kind of pulled from one place to another, without feeling like I could ever safely start to put down roots in any one place. Maryland was always a temporary stay, and although at first Chicago felt like it might be permanent, slowly that idea showed itself to be less and less likely. I told myself I wanted to move to North Carolina because I wanted to live in a place I felt could be permanent, but I’ve only been in Charlotte since July, and that’s not a lot of time for a place to really be home. Missing Chicago the last couple weeks was kind of unsettling, in an actual sense of feeling not-settled anymore, but being back for the weekend was just what I needed to feel settled again.

Everything was just as I left it – maybe some people had lost a little weight, my friends’ kids were six months bigger, new businesses had opened, new construction had started…but it was comforting to know the city was still there, and that my presence or absence makes very little difference. Comforting because it means I can go away for as long as I want to, and come back, and it’s still there. Nothing is happening that I’m missing out on. I think I’m always a little paranoid about missing out on things. Not that I really thought the city would disappear Brigadoon-style, but our egocentric selves have a tendency to imagine that if we can’t see things, they stop existing. It’s good to be put in our place sometimes. It’s good to feel small.

I heard a speaker talk last week about how we have such a hard time holding on to God’s promises to us, really trusting that he wants to give us good things. The guy was speaking in the context of relationships, and how often we hold on to relationships we know aren’t what we need, or even what we want, because we don’t really believe that God wants us to find the intimacy we’re looking for. We try to grab hold of what little of it we can get on our own. I think the same idea holds true in so many other areas of life, and I know for me it’s been a struggle to really hold onto the promises God’s made that convinced me to go out on the biggest damn limb ever and pick up my whole life and move it to Charlotte.

I had a great time this weekend, catching up with friends and spending time with people who mean a lot to me. I got pistachio gelato at L'Appetito with Shan.

We dressed up for Halloween (Shan was an owl, I was Mr. Rogers) but I failed to take any photos of our get ups, and will have to get them from Shan. I went to Covenant on Sunday, got brunch at the Bristol with my fantastic small group ladies and stopped by Pastoral later for some fancy cheese. I got to enjoy the 146, 77 and 50...none of which I can say I missed especially. Waiting for the bus though at least gives you the chance to look around and enjoy the outdoors...which was GORGEOUS and cool and the leaves were all yellow and blowing all around.

I think what’s even better about this weekend though was that God relented a little bit, and gave me a little reminder of why I really should trust him after all. I didn't freak out and want to move. I didn't notice all the things in Chicago I miss in Charlotte - in fact, I missed things in Charlotte that I realized I didn't have in Chicago. I’m still thrilled to be in Charlotte, I’m still excited for my future there, I’m still thankful for my time in Chicago and grateful for everything it taught me, and I’m still ready for whatever’s next!

A spelling lesson

Over the long Labor Day weekend, Toby and I paid a visit to the Home Depot and got some curtain rods. After much effort, plaster dust, paint flaking and dulled drill bits, we got them hung. Apparently you need a masonry bit or, I don't know, a diamond-edged spike, to put holes in my walls. Regardless, the place has gotten a lot homier over this past week, so for the benefit of curious family members, here are a bunch of new photos of 518 Willoughby:

Still needed are two barrel lampshades for my 60s golden pine cone lamps (on the end table). Also, some throw pillows. Also, a GFI outlet in the kitchen that can power the microwave without tripping the whole circuit.
Toby brought his turntable! He also brought a stool from the old Korner Diner in Newark (may it rest in peace). The stool make a nice, shiny side table, and its peely gray vinyl is still a comfy seat. Next up is re-covering the chair cushions. Midnight blue? Gold? Ideas?


A dimly lit photo of the dining room...but...I have a table! And four bentwood chairs. AND I have back the cuckoo clock I got in Germany in 10th grade! Although the damn cuckoo itself is so irritating I finally took the weight off the cuckoo chain.
These curtain rods were a nightmare to hang. This one is hung with a nail on one end, and a half-in screw on the other. There's a 5-inch circle of paint that popped off the wall when I tried to drill a hole, so that's held onto the wall with a giant piece of packing tape. Plaster walls are nice and solid and good for keeping the place well-insulated, but good lord they're a pain in the ass to hang ANYTHING on.

Still some things to pick up, hang up, and tidy up, but the place is looking a lot nicer than a month ago.

Teaching goes well. I think, to be honest, I had braced myself to be miserable and stressed and hate my life at this point. TFA even gave us a whole presentation about the phases of your first year of teaching, and how by October many people reach the "disillusionment" phase, or something to that effect. Apparently last year the Charlotte corps had more corps members quit after their first year than any other region. Yikes, right? I'm happy to report, however, that I actually very much like my job so far, and the people I work with, and our students. I'm also very thankful that it's my second year teaching, and that I'm not doing this straight out of college. Plus, co-teaching with someone who's been at the school for a year already has made a big difference in terms of the amount of work I have to do alone. Being able to divide up grading, or planning, or what have you makes things a lot less overwhelming. It's also nice to be living in a region where I have friends and family within easy driving distance.

As an addendum, one of my favorite kids (although one of the most obnoxious in class) stayed after school recently to get his homework done. He had to write sentences using vocab words from an article we'd read in class. He wrote one sentence with the word "wuz," and so I told him to spell "was" correctly. He erased "w-u-z" but then paused. He couldn't tell me how to spell "was." With some prodding, he figured it out, but it took a minute or two. "Man, I be texting too much!" he said, and then grabbed a dry erase marker and showed us how he and his friends spell things. "Dnt" and "Cmeing" and "Wut"... "Wen ru cmeing ovr?" I pointed out that "Cmeing" has just as many letters as "Coming," but somehow that didn't seem to be the point. Anyhow, it had never occurred to me that kids might actually FORGET how to spell words like WAS!!! because they write everything in text language. Even on facebook I see kids spell stuff like that. Sometimes I think there must be some contest to come up with whose spelling requires the longest amount of time to decipher.

Anyway, I was at the fabric store today, and I saw this:

Really??

My neighbor Genevieve

I'm getting ready to make some grilled cheese for Toby and me for lunch when someone knocks on my back door. An old lady with a red plaid shirt, and gray hair held in dangly coils with bobby pins stood in my back porch and introduced herself as Genevieve. Genevieve lives in one of the other buildings and had noticed that I liked plants (she pointed to my screen porch, where I have a couple two-foot-high rubber trees, and a spider plant on a plant stand). She has a number of plants on her porch and was going to be getting rid of some of them soon, and would I like some? I realized I wasn't sure which unit she lived in, so I offered to walk outside with her so she could show me. We walk across the parking lot and she points out a number of pots of soil she has stashed in the grass next to her porch. "I know when you move into a new place you never have pots, you never have good soil," she explains. "Would you like some of these? Here, this is good soil in this one." So she gives me a pot with soil in it, and a variegated ivy on a plastic hanger that she didn't want anymore. Then she asks if I want a cutting from an orchid she has inside. Obviously the answer is yes, so I follow her into her apartment and through to her screen porch where she just snaps a piece of stem off of a plant and hands it to me. "You don't have to root this at all, you just moisten the soil and put it in and it will flower in...around February."

Score. So I've got a variegated ivy, a cutting from some kind of orchid that looks like a cross between a begonia and a Wandering Jew, and she promised she'd let me know when she was ready to get rid of some more plants. She is 82, apparently, and from Paris. She studied at the Sorbonne. And she's living on her own with a screen porch full of bonsai, begonias and astroturf. And just happened to notice I had some plants on my porch.

I have located my camera charger. It's in Delaware. Once I repossess it, I'll be able to take some pictures of things again. Like my new (old) bike.

Pamela Ander-slam

This weekend I caught up with some Wake folks (Lauren Rico and Robin Dove!) and went to a roller derby. This is that thing that Drew Barrymore made that movie about recently. Girls in knee pads and roller skates slamming into each other around a track. I didn't see the movie, but the real deal was pretty ridiculous. It's not as rock 'em sock 'em as professional wrestling, or a NASCAR race, and the attending demographic skewed a little younger, hipper and more lesbian, but the event had a similar combination of spectacle and sport. Also, it had toothless men drinking PBR and hollering "Git 'er!!" at people going fast and hitting each other. And slightly scary, hulking women hollering the same thing (through a full set of teeth). Lots of tattoos, and chuck taylors, and white people.

Apparently part of the entertainment value is in the creative names the girls come up with for themselves. You can't see really read them here on the program, but I thought I'd share some of the best: Ella Titzgerald, Hands on Gretel, Puncher P. Hole, Shrimp Lo Mean (the only Asian), SexaQShunHer, Ovarian Cyster, and Amy Fister. Subtle they are not. Cringe-inducing? Absolutely. Half the fun? Yep.

Also part of the fun? The local ads included in the program.
In case you're wondering why this child appears to be wearing her underwear over her pants, that's because that's the outfit worn by a lot of the roller girls. Or, an alternate approach was to wear your underwear UNDER a short skirt, but then put something like "Get Back Wenches" on the butt of the underwear so you can flip your skirt up as you whiz past the opponents. Both looks are best accented with ripped fishnet tights or brightly striped leggings.

Basically, it was awesome and I want to go again.

Skink!

Updates.

The Cheerios I left out for the mice disappeared. I have some (as yet unobserved) new friends.

Time Warner Cable came, at long last, which means I can watch episodes of Mad Men without incessant buffering.

Consequently, when not planning for my classes, or going to training things, I have been watching episode after episode. After episode. It's not as bad as with Six Feet Under, or Battlestar Galactica, or Lost, because the website that hosts the Mad Men episodes only lets you watch 72 minutes of video at a time, and then forces you to wait 54 minutes before watching another 72 minutes. I have no idea how they arrived at those numbers, but as aggravating as it is to have the episode stop ten minutes from the end, it at least has forced me to get up and do things. For example, yesterday it got to be about 4:00 and after getting a hair cut and greeting the cable guy, I'd pretty much just made food and watched more Mad Men. So when my 72 minute limit kicked in, I decided to find a mountain to hike.

The actual mountains were farther away than I felt like driving at 4:00 in the afternoon, but Google Maps told me that Crowders Mountain was much closer, so I told Sack (my GPS) where to take me and she got me there in about 45 minutes. (It's about 25 miles west of Charlotte.) At 1,600-ish feet, the "mountain" itself not especially tall, but it's got its own state park and a bunch of hiking trails. I picked a trail at random and hiked maybe two miles and change. At the end of it (well, the middle really - I went one way then doubled back) was a steep, gravelly hill that led up to some high rocky bits, half of which were roped off with caution tape for some reason. I couldn't see beyond that. I had not planned terribly well for my little excusion, and so was lugging my purse over one shoulder (ridiculous, I know - I need one of those little, tiny backpacks that hikers always have) and was sweating to death and the water bottle that I SHOULD have lugged with me, I did not. But, in my experience, you rarely regret climbing to the top of something very tall, so I kept going up. I had to climb sideways in one direction, then sideways in another, and then suddenly, I looked up. And the rocks and the trees stopped and it all just dropped away. I didn't bring my camera, but I drew a picture:
As I was trying to get the best view I could without pitching off the cliff, I heard a scratchy, scuttling sound off to one side, and in my peripheral vision I saw something moving across the trunk of a pine tree. I backed gingerly off the rocks I'd clambered up on, and moved towards the tree. It was a skink! Ha! The only wild lizards I've seen are those little anoles in Florida; and that skink totally made my afternoon. He disappeared before I could draw his picture, but here's about what he looked like (thanks, Google!)
I was glad it was not a rattlesnake. There were warning signs instructing visitors that the local rattlesnake mothers would be giving birth to their live young in the near future, and to be careful of snakes around rocky crevices. Rattlesnakes! So cool! I mean, yeah, glad I didn't run into any, but seeing one from a distance would have been even more awesome than the skink. I miss my snake friends at the Nature Museum (like Connie here) that I got to play with.

Reason 37 that I love my apartment

It appears that the big shrub outside my screen porch is actually a gardenia bush.
In both Delaware and Chicago, gardenias are houseplants that you buy in small pots in the grocery store to give as Mothers' Day gifts, so it completely threw me when I noticed familiar-looking flowers on this giant bush. The landscapers recently were out pruning mindlessly with loud electric hedge-trimmers, so it's not exactly flowering profusely, but given as the bush is behind my porch and not near anybody else's apartment, I had no qualms about cutting one of the few flowers I did see.

Gardenias smell so incredible, and nobody's going to enjoy it out in the parking lot. Now my bathroom smells lovely. (See the charming bud vase? Formerly a flask from a hospital lab, courtesy of my mom.) I should probably clean the rust off the overflow drain - that looks kind of dingy.

In teaching-related news, I've been schlepping off to the Marriott every morning for the past week for more TFA training/Kool Aid drinking (I'm swimming in it these days)/planning for my class that I start teaching in THREE WEEKS! I stopped by my school yesterday to scrounge up a text book, and was able to talk to the woman there who does scheduling. She told me that for all three blocks I'm teaching, I'd be working with an '09 Corps Member who teaches Civics & Econ inclusion. (Inclusion is just the way they teach the Special Ed kids who aren't so severely disabled they need their own class. They're "included" in the normal class, and the whole class is then taught by a classroom teacher and a special ed teacher who work together.) I'm really excited about this because my co-teacher, Cliff, taught this class last year, and so has a much better sense than I do of what works and what doesn't. Plus, having a co-teacher means I won't have to struggle on my own to differentiate for kids at different levels while trying to teach the rest of the students. Plus, he's already done a lot of planning for our class, so it's just going to be a matter of getting together and getting on the same page. Plus, he's been at the school for a year so he knows who can help with what, who's in charge of what, and all that other stuff that you get to know after working at a school but can't possibly know when you're brand new.
Tonight I have a dinner scheduled with some TFA donors who live just down the road. TFA has scheduled all of us to go to a couple of these dinners as part of their development campaign. Basically, we get a free meal in return for putting a friendly face on the organization they give money to. Although I'm not the most naturally outgoing person ever, I really kind of enjoy getting to know strangers in smaller settings like this, so it should be fun. Plus there are a couple other corps members going too, so it's not just me and the donors. I was planning on walking, but it has suddenly started thunderstorming (the weather here goes from sunny to monsoon in about 20 seconds) so that might not work out. I did walk to Ben & Jerry's though (3 minutes away) and got a black raspberry frozen yogurt. I don't know what possessed me to get the 'healthy' option - real ice cream is way better. Next time it's back to something with plenty of fat in it.
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Dear Charlotte's city planners: Seriously?

I got back from the Marriott and TFA stuff by 4:00 today, so I had some time to run to the post office, make dinner, write some emails, and then I thought I'd go for a run. I'm not what you call "in shape" so I figured I'd go for 2 miles, 20+ minutes, easy peasy. This was the route I had in mind when I left the apartment. (I live by the "D".)

Not quite. Charlotte has the most confusing street layout I have ever seen. Roads change names 3 or 4 times within a couple miles, they zig zag, connect in bizarre intersections, and half of them are named 'Queens.' You can stand at what, to all appearances, is the intersection of Queens and Queens. And then Queens turns into Kings, which makes total sense. This is the route I wound up taking:
I have circled for you all the pieces of road that are called Queens. Every time I thought "Oh! This is Queens, I know where I am"...surprise!! It's the wrong piece of Queens and it actually just changed its name to Morehead. 20 minutes of pleasant jogging turned into 20 minutes of pleasant jogging followed by 30 minutes of incredibly confused and sweaty walking. Thank you Charlotte, for making the executive decision that I needed a harder workout.

Week One = Success

I think I'm going to love Charlotte. I knew I loved my apartment from day one, but I've been spending time this week getting to know this whole new city, and I think I'm liking it. To reiterate what I'm sure I've said before...it is so good to have a home again. Sarah stopped over for dinner on Friday, and even though I don't have any dining room furniture yet (arrives from Delaware in a month), we had a fantastic meal. A meal that wasn't cooked in the cafeteria at Delta State. Pasta with broccoli, and toasted garlic and breadcrumbs, with garlic bread and green salad. Plus strawberries were on sale at Harris Teeter, so that was dessert. Very classy, even if we had to use magazines as place mats on my coffee table.

An additional success this week was spending Friday night in Winston-Salem with some excellent people.

I drove up to hang out with Reed and Discepelo, only to discover Kate M. and Caroline T. were there too! Plus a bunch of other cool folks, some still in college (some younger than students I've taught!) some not. It was a fairly ridiculous evening, but a nice reminder that there's no need to start feeling old at 25 if I can still flip a solo cup and chug Bud Light. A good deal of the night looked like this:
After my brief return to college, I drove back to Charlotte the next morning, went to get lunch at a place called the Thomas Street Tavern. While there, I met a number of interesting people at the bar. I was sitting there with my Red Oak when an old man and his wife sit down one stool over. The man sets an empty pickle jar on the bar. I looked closer, and noticed the jar was not in fact empty. There were 15 or 20 spotted beetles crawling around inside it. The bartender (sexy) came over and apparently knew the guy and his wife (as well as everyone else at the bar) and beetle-man started explaining to hot-bartender that he'd collected the beetles from his garden to bring down to the guys over at the hardware store to see if they could tell him what they were and what to do about them. I asked if I could look at the bugs, and he began telling me how they were all over his yellow squash, just eating it to pieces, but that the guys at the hardware store told him they were spotted cucumber beetles and that he could spray them with [something I forget] to get rid of them. He'd brought them to the bar in case anyone else wanted to see what they looked like so they could identify them on their own plants. After showing the bugs around for a few minutes, he gave them to the bartender to throw away. The bartender asked, "Should I put a little whiskey in there? Give them a glorious end?" but beetle-man thought that would be unnecessary. So the bartender chucks the pickle jar, and then he goes and pulls out a plastic grocery bag of cucumbers from behind the bar! Some other bar patron had grown them and left them at the bar to be given out to anyone who wanted one. In retrospect, I probably should have taken one, but the pickle jar of cucumber beetles was bizarre enough already, and the production of home-grown cucumbers completely caught me off guard.

This is not something that would happen in Chicago. But I absolutely loved it.

Further successes this week include: Yesterday I walked to the library and got a library card, plus four books (on economics, the Revolutionary War and the Constitution), and a Belgian movie (Le Fils) that looked appealing. Then I got dinner in NoDa at Cabo Fish Taco with Taylor K. who came down for the evening and brought me muffins. This morning I went to Uptown Church, which I think I might go back to next week. It's not Covenant Chicago, but we sang a lot of the same songs (albeit sans the violin/mandolin/accordion/recorder/cello that made music at Covenant so great), and the sermon was some good, solid exegesis on John 15 (I am the vine and you are the branches). The building they meet in has some unbelievably beautiful stained glass and I'm a sucker for a beautiful church. Three people introduced themselves and were very friendly and sincere. Plus, it's a mile-and-a-half from my apartment, which means once it's not hideously hot, I could conceivably walk. Or ride the bike that will also be arriving from Delaware. And then, after church I caught up with Lauren R. for lunch at 300 East in Dilworth. So...all that to say...success! Charlotte's looking pretty fantastic!

Dear DMV...

Dear DMV on Idlewild Road off of Independence:

Here are some suggestions for making peoples' experiences at your establishment a) less than four hours long and b) not prone to causing violent thoughts.

1. I understand you have a very small office and a very small hallway. If people have to queue up out along the sidewalk in the heat for an hour or more, you should find some local school children to sell lemonade. It also might be nice to provide some benches. You could also move to a bigger office.

2. Patch up the three fist-sized holes in the hallway walls. By the time people get to the hallway, chances are they've been waiting an hour already, and don't need reminders that they really just want to hit something.

3. Clean the walls in the hallway. Seeing the visible accumulation of people's butt- and head-filth rubbed along the walls in parallel gray smudgy stripes subtly suggests that the DMV as a great place to catch communicable diseases.

4. Rather than have a lady pop out of the door once every two hours to remind people that this office doesn't do tags and registration, have you considered posting that in written form someplace outside so people can find that out before waiting in line for two hours.

5. Since you don't accept credit cards, or out-of-state checks, putting an ATM in your building would be smart. As a side note, the ATM at the Circle K across the street is out of order.

6. You might want to instruct your employees that, while friendly is better than surly, when someone has been at the DMV for three-and-a-half hours already, they would probably prefer not to have a conversation about Keanu Reeves movies if the employee perpetuating the conversation cannot talk and type at the same time.

Sincerely,

Me

Quick! I have internet!

I've been stealing some internet until I get my own (Friday!) and it's working right now! Which means I've got 30 seconds to write a quick blog post and then get some Hulu going. I'm not paying for cable, so I'm going to have to buy an antenna for my TV to get any channels. Toby was giving me all sorts of advice involving tinfoil and stripping coax cable, but I think I'll be conventional on this one. For now. I told him if he wants to deck the place out in tinfoil when he gets here, he can go for it.

I walked to the library this morning, but didn't think to bring some proof that I live here, so I couldn't get my library card. I'd go tomorrow, but the libraries here apparently had some big funding cuts and are only open four days a week. I'll have to wait till Friday before getting my L-card...which is probably more exciting to me than it should be. I've got to start bulking up on economics, government, politics, the Constitution, Founding Fathers, and so forth, so I have something to teach these teenagers in a month!

The place is coming together slowly but surely. I successfully hung a couple pictures in the hallway, and then bent a couple nails trying to hang pictures on the hardest plaster walls I've ever encountered. I like that my apartment feels solidly built, but it doesn't need to be that solid.

And tomorrow...I'm driving up to Salisbury to see my friend Jon Furr in a play! Why? Because he lives in NC too! It's wild to me that I can suddenly just get in my car and drive like, 30 minutes to see friends I haven't seen in ages. I'm liking being back east.

Point B

After starting my move at the end of April, I've finally made it to my new home. So far all I've really seen of Charlotte is the U-Haul storage facility, Wal-Mart, Food Lion and Panera, but psh, I've got time to see the city. What I'm really excited about is my new apartment. After living in dorms in Mississippi for five weeks, anything resembling a real home would be incredibly welcome, but my place here is absolutely fantastic and I love it. I loved my Chicago apartment, and loved the big open kitchen (my kitchen here is smaller and galley-style), but this place feels like a real house. It was built circa 1940, and is made out of real wood, and plasdter, and hardwood, like they don't build apartments out of anymore. No wallboard, no laminate "wood"....also no washer/dryer, but I have located a nearby laundromat and am being optimistic about that little adventure. My friend Sarah came over yesterday and helped me unpack (!!!) but I'm still surrounded by boxes and can't find my shower curtain. When my Dad drives down to move Hannah back into college, he's going to bring me some furniture from home my Mom's trying to clear out of the house. So until then, I'm without a dining room table and some other items, but whatever. I slept better last night than I have in two months...because I have my bed back! I have my tea kettle back! I have my books back! I have my couch and my coffee table back! I have my art supplies back! I've got a lot more unpacking today, and am going to go help Sarah buy a car this afternoon, but people have been asking for photos so here they are. I still have to write about my last week at school, about my amazing summer school students, and about the letter that my one student Faith wrote me which made things suddenly very worth it. But...another day, another entry. For now, enjoy some shots of my apartment! Once it's all decorated and tidied up, I will have to post some "after" photos. Take these as "before":
This first one is taken from where you walk into the apartment. Big double windows facing the street are to the right. Arched doorway goes to the dining room and kitchen, other doorway goes to the bedrooms and the bathroom.
Back hallway with the bathroom and bedrooms (one on either side of the bathroom).
My awesome retro bathroom. That subway tile looks strangely familiar...
My bedroom. Two windows, tiny little closet, and just enough space for me to put my rug down. I love it. Those radiators aren't functional any more, but they left them in the building because they look bad ass. There's a big one in the living room that will make the perfect shelf for plants.
My first dining room! Ha! The door leads out to my screen porch, which is just big enough for a couple chairs and a little table. (Or, for now, a kitchen chair and a cardboard box.) You go into the dining room and the kitchen is on your left.
Little galley kitchen, backdoor to a screened-in mud room/storage area/place where I can put my new worm composting that I want to start soon. I was standing in front of the walk-in pantry when I took the picture. There's a ton of cabinet space, but only one drawer in the entire kitchen. Where did people in the 1940s keep their silverware??

Okay folks, that's all! I'm stealing some internet from a neighbor, but it's spotty. Once I get my own I'll be posting more. I've got no commitments until next Wednesday, when TFA's "Round Zero" professional development/planning for the school year gets started. My plans include seeing Jon Furr in a play, hiking in some mountains, seeing what's to do uptown (in Charlotte, downtown is called "uptown" - it's very confusing), checking out another church Sunday, and spending as little money as possible because we don't get paid until September!

But man, I'm glad to finally be here.

Six Days Till Charlotte!!

I will miss my students here, but there are approximately 283 reasons why I can't wait to get to Charlotte. Here are some of them:

I haven't cooked my own food in five weeks. In Charlotte I will have a whole kitchen with a walk-in pantry.

I haven't had fewer than 10 mosquito bites on my body at any given time since I got to Mississippi.

I will have a bathroom with a bathtub and a window and 1940s subway tile.

I will have my big, wonderful, full-size mattress again. My Delta State mattress is pretty weak. And the bedframe is ugly brown metal.

My car won't get sprayed with clouds of mosquito-killing insecticide every night.

I'll have a fridge to put my beer in.

I can get up and drive my car to work every morning, instead of riding 40 minutes in an un-airconditioned school bus.

I can sit on my couch and watch tv on Hulu and make myself a white russian.

I can paint pictures again and have all my art supplies back.

I can drive to the mountains, and hang out in Asheville, and go hiking and camping and driving through land that isn't fields of soybeans and corn.

I can go to art galleries that are closer than two hours away. And I can get involved in a church again. And I can go to the occasional sacred harp singing. And I can eat barbeque. And buy a grill. And drink beer on my porch. And . . . my brother Toby is going to live with me!!!

Reporting from the Marriott...

No exciting photos today, I'm afraid. I have a pending post regarding Lexington-style barbeque that involves some tasty food photography, but we have no internet in our rooms here, so we have to come down to the lobby and the camera's in my room and my feet hurt...so, that will have to wait.

But a brief update! A) I'm 25 today. And I think I'm making my peace with the quarter-century mark, slowly but surely. B) I'm here in Charlotte for Day 2 of Teach for America induction. "Induction" sounds a little like we're shaving heads and passing out saffron robes, but it's really just orientation: to the city, to the school district, and some overview training on TFA's core values. Today was mostly spent at a meet and greet (i.e. short interviews) with principals. Right now there are three high schools hiring Social Studies teachers, so I met with all three. We all get jobs regardless, but I think the schools can express their preferences better if they've met us. The school district here seems to have a really great relationship with TFA, and the principals all seemed to want us, but they also asked a lot of questions about behavior management, working with at-risk populations, and being a new member of a team of veterans who already had a system in place (read: are you going to rock the boat too much?) It was nice though to actually meet real people who lead real schools with real student - it makes it easier to imagine this job as an actual job that exists in the real world, instead of a nebulous sometime-down-the-road kind of thing.

Tomorrow's going to be employee paperwork with CMS (the school district), signing up with UNCC for the masters program, and then some kind of cookout event at night. Then Thursday is the last day here before heading down to the Whiting's lake house on Friday on my way to Mississippi! And then on to Anjana's! It's been really great to catch up with so many friends the past month...I got to see Kristen this past weekend for the first time since we graduated!! And Taylor Kitz! And Alyssa! And Guts! And Nelson! And Mitchell! And Z! And Shan! With an appearance by Brian Locco! It's kind of fantastic having so many of my friends within driving distance. I miss Chicago a lot, but the east coast is starting to feel like home again.