Author: halfnutswilltravel

NOLA

| halfnutswilltravel

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I landed in New Orleans in time for lunch.   On the drive in to the French Quarter I saw that the city has cleaned up an awful lot since my last visit,  4 years ago.
I started getting a sinking feeling when I arrived at my hotel on Iberville St.  I noticed the FQ has cleaned up, too.  no more crumbling brick.  No more rusty Louisiana lace.  The stucco is fresh and new and all the buildings are now…whats the word?…plumb

I spent the afternoon looking for signs of apathetic decay, but they are seemingly gone.  Later, I met up with my husband and his work folks for dinner and a little alcotainment (alcohol + entertainment) down on Bourbon Street.  Walking the dirty mile,  there is a noticeable police presence.   Some joints have security staff.  There are actual trashcans lining the sidewalks.  When I noticed that all of the hookers and club girls are now wearing panties, my fear was confirmed; The French Quarter has turned into the Epcot version of itself.

There is a Build-A-Bear next door to the Hustler Club.  OK,  not really.  Yet.

One thing has not yet changed.   It still smells like jumbalya and sugar by day and piss and garbage by night.

I’ve got the day to myself to explore some more.  I’m going to go hang out down in a cemetery and lament the good old days with those guys.

Father’s Day

| halfnutswilltravel

I went digging through old albums looking for my favorite photo of my daddy for father’s day.  It’s the one where you can’t tell I’m actively peeing on myself.

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My daddy invented laughing until you can’t breathe.  Ignore the cigarette; I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

My mom taught me how to use my words, but my daddy taught me which ones to use.  Then he pleaded for leniency on my behalf when they got me into trouble.

A few pages before I found that photo, I ran into another early childhood gem and it reminded me of one of the more important lessons I learned from my daddy.  Here it is:

There are bad days.  Acknowledge them, curse if it makes you feel better, then move on.

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Here, I’ve got one of my earlier, self-inflicted bang trims, my mother has dressed me in what appears to be a quilt top she gave up on, and I am sitting, bare-assed, on hot, gritty concrete.  If you look closely, you’ll see I also have a bloody knuckle.  It was a Well, Damn kind of day.

But better ones followed.  My hair grew out, I got a job and stopped letting my mother dress me.  I learned how and where not to sit while going commando.  And I always knew I could count on my daddy for a good belly laugh.

I miss him.

Perspective

| halfnutswilltravel

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For the last five days I’ve been slogging around the damp chaos of a flooded house, listening to the deafening whir of dehumidifiers and gigantic fans.  Today, the hardwoods were pulled up and I’ve been told to expect to live without floors for the next six weeks or so.

You know what all this is?   Training!

In seventeen days I leave this lunacy and head up a mountain that I know with certainty will greet me with monsoon conditions.  I will live outside in the dirt and mud where for ten whole days I will rise and fall with the sound of bagpipes and drums.

I can’t wait!

Franklin Graham Pisses Me Off

| halfnutswilltravel

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Franklin Graham needs a publicity advisor.  That, or a good friend whom he will trust when they tell him to shut up.

My standard disclaimer:  I respect the right of all people, including Graham, not to engage in homosexual acts of passion or commitment.
I also respect the motives behind any individual who chooses to do, or not do, business with a company for any reason.  (Aside: I don’t believe that’s a two way right.  If you’re a business you damn well better be willing to do business with any paying customer.)

But Graham just took to the gay-friendliest social network to announce he is moving half a billion ministry dollars because Wells Fargo has a touching commercial that happens to feature a same sex couple.  He threw some shade at Tiffany Jewelers for the same reason.

Graham is quoted in the News & Observer, “…a bank should be promoting the best interest rates they’re going to give me and what they can do for me as a business.  But they should not be trying to get into a moral debate.”

First of all, good freakin’ luck finding a new financial institution that will publicly share your beliefs, Frankie.

Secondly, these businesses of yours; aren’t they tax exempt charities?

Why, in the name of all that is holy, do you have Half.A.Billion.Dollars (and who knows how much in other assets) of tax exempt donations sitting in a freaking bank?

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There are hungry people at your own back door.   There are hungry people no more than 25 steps from every single destination your jets can reach.  I ask again, why is that money in a bank?

Mr. Graham did manage to say one thing I agree with yesterday.   I don’t think he should be shopping at Tiffany’s, either.

So, A Southern Belle Walks Into A Beauty Shop… or Sophia Lauren is a Bucket of Shit

| halfnutswilltravel

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I spent last weekend in Boston’s south shore enjoying the company of some fun, friendly people that I’m so happy to call family.

The occasion was a wedding and many of the lady-folk made appointments in Hingham to have their hair and makeup done. I planned on doing mine myself, and did end up doing my own makeup. However, as the primping hour approached I was feeling less motivated about standing four hours with my arms in the air, taming and teasing more volume into my sea-induced afro.
So after lunch, Mr.Me and I walked across the street from our resort to a salon and asked if they had time for an up-do. The latter-middle-aged, Italian stylist, who was picking the thin hair of an octogenarian through a plastic cap told me to go back to my room and change into a button up shirt and come right back. The other latter-middle-aged stylist on duty peppered Mr.Me with questions; where we were from, where the wedding was taking place, who his family is, where they live.

Twenty minutes later I returned by myself, shirt changed and braced for the fog of hairspray I was about to inhale. The octogenarian was sitting nearby, bedecked with aluminum foil antennae and had been joined by a contemporary receiving her weekly blow-out from the other hair dresser, who asked the room in general if any of us had seen Raquel Welch lately. She’s always been beautiful, was the consensus.

Grandma Blow-out was finished off and sent out the door with a “See you next week,” while Nana Foil-head took to the sink to have the poison rinsed from her scalp.

While my hair was being teased by the Italian dresser to heights I’ve never before reached, Nana Foil-head, in a poorly hushed voice, asked the other stylist, “What’s going on with Linda?”

There was no air between the question and reply, “Oh, you know she’s a little bit wackadoodle, right? She only dates younger men.”

At first I braced myself: I am gossip-averse. I have no qualms about bitching and complaining, but I learned long ago that people who will gossip to you will also gossip about you.

“Oh, is that right?”

My Italian dresser joined in, still back-combing the hell out of my hair, “The man she is seeing now is forty!”

The other dresser says, “And you know her daughter likes them older, right? She’s with a fifty-six year old, or something like that. I don’t know what’s wrong with them! ”

But Nana Foil-head knows! “Well they’re fucked up!”

Now, where I grew up, little old ladies don’t say, “fuck.” This partially accounts for my distrust of them, I’m sure. But I clearly don’t know these people and I began to relax into their catty judgment of others.

“I sure wouldn’t wanna hafta be nobody’s teacher,” one or the other of the two dressers said.

This gave me pause. I am forty! There’s more to learn? ?

Grandma Blow-out surprised us all by exiting the bathroom, saying her goodbyes, collecting her belongings from a corner chair, and leaving just like we all thought she had already done.

I don’t know if Grandma Blow-out knows Linda Cougar-pants or maybe (God, I hope so), might actually be Linda Cougar-pants, but while she was in our presence the subject was changed back to Raquel Welch. The other stylist brought me a new-smelling magazine to show me Raquel’s latest wig ads.

Wait. Didn’t they first begin talking about Raquel Welch when I re-entered the beauty parlor?

I look at the ad and concur. She is stunning! Appreciating her curves, I tell the dressers and Nana Foil-head that my mother once told me that when Raquel was just starting out Hollywood didn’t like her because she was too scrawny. Her mother sent her to Italy to fill up (and out) on pasta and meat and cheese. In almost perfect unison both hair dressers corrected me, my Italian one just a little too excitedly for my comfort with a hot curling iron now in her hand. “That was Sophia Loren!”

“Oh! Yes, probably that was Sophia Loren! That would make more sense,” I concede.

My Italian dresser comes to life when she says, not caring who can hear her, and perhaps hoping everyone can, “Sophia Loren is a bucket of shit!”

I think my throat made a noise as I actively tried to keep my jaw from dropping. Latter-middle-aged ladies where I grew up also don’t say “Shit.”

She went on.

“You remember when I saw her in the Rome airport that time?” She gestures towards the other dresser. “She is a bucket of shit, I told you! She had her two little boys with her and they are adorable but she is a bucket of shit!”

“I remember that,” says the other dresser, sounding like she wished she didn’t.

“And then I saw her out in California and she was still a bucket of shit! You know her mother married her sister off to Mussolini. When I saw her in the airport in Rome she was with some of them from that family. She’s still friendly with the Mussolinis, you know that?”

I was still nervous about the ethnically-prescribed hand waving with the curling iron around my face, so I tried to change the subject. “You’re making my hair so pretty! I feel so glamorous! I’m a mom and I don’t ever get to play dress up!'” I fib.

The other dresser takes my lead and feigns interest in my kids. How many? How old? 6 total? Oh, 3 didn’t come out of your body! How old are you?

Now, that should have been a straight forward enough question, but now I’m inexplicably scared of becoming gossip fodder myself when I leave. They’ve met my husband; he walked me in on my first visit. He not only looks significantly older than me, he kind of is. What if that makes me just as fucked up as Linda Cougar-pants?

It’s not like I’ve not already wrestled this aspect of our relationship into the ground (and won!), but there I was, nearly paralyzed with fear of becoming the gossip-ee, as if I hadn’t already sealed that fate when I walked in off the street with my southern accent, asking for big hair.

“Cat got your tongue, honey? How old are you?”

“Forty-seven,” I blurted out while furiously trying to do the birthday math in my head in case I’m challenged. It’s a reflex leftover from my under-age days, apparently. 1968. Whew, got it. Wait! Who was president? Goddammit! I’m experiencing test-brain. Who the hell was president in 1968? It was an election year…my birthday fell before the vote. Shit! That makes me almost 48! Shit! Shit! Let’s see, Ford, Nixon, Johnson. Johnson. Or maybe it was Kennedy? Holy hell, I’m in Massachusetts. They’ll catch me lying about my age because I don’t know when Kennedy was president. Wait, yes I do! He died in 1963. I went to Dealey Plaza last year. And the moon! We went to the moon in 1969 (thanks, Even Stevens!).

I’m not sure how that last fact actually helped secure Johnson as my final answer, but I tuned back in to the beauty shop around me to find nobody was actually questioning my age. I was passing for 47 goddamned years old.

Nana Foil-head was still smiling at me through the mirror and her hair was now beautifully blown dry and curiously the exact same color as Grandma Blow-out’s.

“Where’s the weddin’,” my Italian dresser asked as she began the endurance bobby-pinning phase of this event.

“At Black Rock Country Club,” I answer, pretending she hadn’t just punctured my skull.

“Where’s that?” She asked through the unoccupied corner of her mouth.

“I dunno,” I answered like the tourist I am.

The other dresser helped out. “It’s over there where Belichick lives. Are your family friendly with the Belichicks?”

“Will Bill Belichick be at the weddin’?” My Italian dresser is getting excited again.

“I don’t know. Nobody mentioned that. Maybe?” I was now worried that if the head coach for the Deflatriots was also a wedding guest any conversation of balls would be off the table for the entire evening. How can I really be expected not to mention balls at least once during what my mother-in-law dubbed a fancy-pantsy country club wedding?

“Do you like the Patriots?” My Italian dresser asked?

“Probably not, she isn’t from here,” the other dresser helped. Then she thought again, “But Carolinar doesn’t have their own team and she has to like somebody. Who do you root for, honey?”

I thought maybe it would be rude to simultaneously point out that she was wrong about Carolinar and explain how I don’t count the Panthers as a real team anyway, so I laid my football heart bare. “I used to be a huge Miami Dolphins fan, but I’m not anymore so I’ve kind of lost all interest in football.”

Nana Foil-head looked at me sympathetically. “Dan Marino?” It was like she could see my heart.

I nodded.

“It’s okay, honey,” the other dresser comforted me.

“When you’re ready, you’ll find another team,” consoled my Italian dresser just before launching the hairspray assault that would keep her masterpeice beautiful and on my head all night.

I paid the very reasonable thirty dollars for the new ‘do and tipped another $10, hoping a 33.3% gratuity might buy me a kinder, gentler gossiping when I left.

The weddin’ was the most perfect I’ve ever seen, from a bride so exquisitely beautiful she should grace every bridal magazine cover, to a rainbow custom ordered by her smiling grandfather in heaven.

I’m happy to report that Belichick was, in fact, not in attendance and I was able to freely discuss balls all evening.

Who Are You? (I really wanna know)

| halfnutswilltravel

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My parents are deceased.

Conveniently my mother left behind a sister with a nose for decoding public records and a binder full of her paternal genealogy entitled The Hampton Book, which traces that ancestry back to 16th century England.  I keep meaning to ask if such a detailed report exists for my grandmother’s Greer(e) heritage, but I get busy,  make excuses not to call,  and generally convince myself that the precious resource that is my Aunt Bonnie will always be there.

What I’ve been told
Just about one year ago I learned that I am Scottish via my Greer grandmother. Indulge me while I butcher some European history.

Once upon a long, long time ago there were some rowdy Highlanders by the name of McGregor.  They found themselves double crossed by the Campbells and lost all of their land and were outlawed.  Figuring the wicked King an idiot, they changed their name to Gregor.  The ruse was unsuccessful,  so they changed their name again – this time to Grier, or Greere, or Greer, or some variation.   It worked, they lived,  and somehow found themselves in rural Appalachia where, according to family lore, one of their descendants boldly and drunkenly rode, standing horseback, into an Indian camp and stole himself a bride.  The end.   But not really. 

Now that I’m aware of this burning Scottishness inside my soul,  I have vowed to keep the traditions of my people alive.  So far,  that means buying kilts for all of the family members and drinking scotch high up on a mountain once a year.   I’ve yet to learn of my other cultural obligations.

Unless you count my deep and sincere gratitude for small pox vaccinations, I never felt a close connection to my Native American roots. I’m not fond of casinos and I can’t get my hair to lay silky flat to save my life. I like to think I’d object to being stolen by a drunk-assed hillbilly, though.

About The Hampton Book – I learned from this that the first ancestral Hampton to make his way to North America was a wool merchant.  Given my fixation with most things fiber,  that’s pretty cool.  I suppose I’m honoring that heritage every day by knitting and spinning like a crazy woman.

But except where alcohol or sheep are involved, (said the Scot)  it’s the unknown that draws and holds my attention and imagination.

What I don’t know
I want to know my dad’s history, and that is proving to be elusive enough that I’m just about to declare myself a descendant of sasquatch. His impressively luxurious back hair only strengthens this growing suspicion.

My research in this direction has been, until recently, greatly hindered by having no point from which to start; I only had what I’ve come to accept is probably legend – which started unraveling when I began binge-watching every documentary about everything, ever on Netflix.

I first learned that his family could not possibly have come through Ellis Island when he said they did. I learned concentration camps were liberated long before his mother was said to have been freed. I learned that some of his more illustrious stories about his time served in Korea just don’t hold up on the conflict time line. I also learned that the United States has never lost a war in which mules were used. That’s not relevant to my story; I just want you to think about that a minute and what that might actually mean for the War on Drugs.

Anywho, that my father was a story-teller does not come as any surprise. But that his whole autobigraphical account could have been the working script for Tim Burton’s Big Fish? I’m gobsmacked.

Not so conveniently, he left behind a brother who was more interested in doling out cryptic, but tantalizing tidbits about my dad’s criminal and promiscuous past than directly answering any questions I had about our family history. But when that uncle passed away, he left a son who has so helpfully sent me pictures still stored in his family home: including a snapshot of the family Bible – a curious possession for a Jewish family, no?

The front of the Bible held names (but no locations or dates) going back several generations beyond my grandparents, as well as a unique spelling for my father’s first (known) daughter. I’ve been just as curious about who he begot as I have been about who did the begotting before him. New searches using the new spelling have so far turned up nothing.

What I do know
In March, curiosity got the best of me and I ordered my Ancestry.com DNA test. While interested in where in the world I come from, I was also excited that I may be matched with other family members who’d taken the test.

My results yielded some surprises; the first being that my ethnicity estimates totalled more than 100%.

The greatest of my components is Great Britain at 42%. Ireland/Scottland came in at 25%. I’m a respectable 14% Scandanavian and 9% Iberian Peninsulian. I am 3% Eastern European. At 2% each, I am equal parts Western European, Middle Eastern, and Nigerian. I am only 1% each Italian/Greek and European Jew.

What next stood out the most to me is what I am not.

I am 0% descended from Eastern Asia. That makes sense since I’m not Chinese anymore (another day, another story). But I’m also 0% Native American. I don’t know who Pappy McGregor kidnapped, but she wasn’t one of my foremothers.

While surprised by the low, low percentages of Nigerian, Middle Eastern, and European Jewish blood, I initially assumed it was paternal. That’s one really frustrating aspect of Ancestry.com DNA testing; while it tests both sides, the results are not differentiated. Still, the lineage at least matched my father’s stories even if the abundance did not.

But not so fast. My hope of being connected to a long-lost relative was realized almost immediately when I was contacted by a Mr. Fred Moretz.

Fred, he says, had ancestors who came up out of North Africa, traveled to the Middle East, then into Eastern Europe, settling in Czechoslavakia before eventually resettling in Todd, NC.

Dad, while claiming to be an immigrant, grew up in Kentucky. However, you could throw a cow pie from my mom’s birthplace of Aho, NC (yes, that’s a real place) into downtown Todd, NC. It would seem that all of my DNA of color, if you will, is accounted for right there on my mama’s side.

I speculated to my Aunt Bonnie that this supposed Indian in our family lore might have had darker skin for another reason entirely. Aunt Bonnie, being of a certain generation, categorically denies this possibility. She does admit it’s strange nobody ever specified what kind of Indian she was and concedes such an incident would surely have started a war significant enough to have been mentioned in local court records. How ’bout that.

That’s entertaining and all, but I still don’t know where I come from – or more precisely where my father came from. But see, here’s the thing: I knew my dad, or at least the last, most recent iteration of him, my entire life. My parents were married from anywhere between 1973 and 1975 (again with the fuzzyness!) and remained so until my father died in 2007. And despite any number of possible other reasons why this might be so, I still think not knowing his history is why, at 40 years old, I still feel I don’t fully know who I am. I think it’s probably safe to say that I’m not the Jew I’ve always thought I was.

I’m in no danger of running off with a band of gypsies (whom ethnic testing suggests could be my kin) or joining a cult to find myself, but I am on a quest.

So now what?
I’ve been spending the last couple of weeks sitting at home with very little else to do besides seek wise answers from the oracle that is Facebook Quizzes. In the absence of reliable oral history or discernable DNA test results, whaddaya gonna do? Despite learning what TV mom I am, what gem I am, what country I am, what movie star I am, what dog breed I am, and what my theme songs from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s are (Carol Brady, Diamond, Italy, Bette Davis, Chihuahua, Good Vibrations, Bohemian Rhapsody, Born in the USA, and Only Wanna Be With You), I somehow don’t feel any closer to unraveling the mystery. Got any better ideas?

Find the guru atop the mountain
A few years before Mr.Me and I were married I tossed him this wonder of mine: “Bill Anders said we had to go to the moon to discover earth. How far do we have to go to discover ourselves?”

For several moments he was silent. Finally, and without looking up from his book, he replied, “To the top of a very tall mountain.”

“You mean to ask the guru?”

Another few moments of silence before, “No. They have full length mirrors up there.”

He thought he was putting an end to my interruptions, and he was right, temporarily. But he might also have been onto something.

Last year I returned to my homeville to attend my first ever Grandfather Mountain Highland Games. On the second afternoon of camping my cousin invited us to climb to the peak to watch the sunset. There was, actually, a guru already there and waiting for us when we arrived. He looked confused when I asked him who I was. He looked even more confused when I coincidentally ran into him again in a lowlands pub 200 miles and 7 months later and excitedly pointed and exclaimed, “That’s the guru!”

But that night, way above our camp, I found a beauty I’d never seen there before and I doubt exists any other time of year. My cousin and his buddy began to play their pipes and the sun fell behind the mountain. I’ve never felt so at home in my life.

This year I’m giving all 101% of me ten whole days of self discovery back on the same mountain. If that’s not enough to make up for 40 years of wandering through the desert, or even if it is, I know I can never not return.

My Poop Story

| halfnutswilltravel

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Sixth grade is a hard time to be a girl,  especially a relatively new one (new to the school,  not the gender).  It would still be another four heartbreaking years before my tribe of wild women started assembling.
I was a freelance friend back then, if you will, and on this one particular day I accepted an invitation from some Horrible Little Girls who were never going to like me anyway.  I won’t use their names because they probably grew up to be lovely women and I don’t want to drag them through the muck of their own adolescence.

HLG 1:  I dare you to write cuss words on this piece of paper.
ME:  Bitch, please. (Scribble, scribble, scratch, fold)
HLG 2:  Mrs. Eggers, Serena wrote bad things on this piece of paper!

I have no qualms about using the teachers name.

Their betrayal taught me a lot that day.   I learned that you can stop a religious zealot mother in her tracks by claiming the devil made you do it and asking the Lord Jesus Christ back into your heart.

I also learned the power of provocative writing.  While waiting for my mom in the principals office,  I watched the secretary hand my folded piece of filth to each teacher who came through her door.  I was astute enough to understand that I’d be seeing those scowls again,  every single time we passed in a hallway, or at recess, or in the lunch room.   Granted, “Fuck a dog” was not my best work (I’ve gotten better with so much practice), but on that day I became Super Inappropriate Thing To Say Girl.  I’m still working on the name.

I tell you this because I have a poop story that,  up until the Percocet wore off,  I was successfully being coaxed to share with you.   This time not by a horrible little girl,  but by one of those Wild Women I’ve accumulated in my tribe over the years.  There’s a good chance that she’s just trying to get me back for any number of things I’ve egged her into over the last 25 years – but I know her heart is in the right place.

So that’s it folks.  That’s all I’m saying.  If you actually want to hear my poop story I’ll be more than happy to share it with you, in private, after you buy me that drink.

Cheers to maturity,  such as it is!

I’m Here To Redeem My White Girl Points.

| halfnutswilltravel

Hi.  My name is Serena and I’m a lifelong Caucasian.  As such, I have unwittingly been the longtime recipient of white privilege.  Upon being enlightened by this factoid I first hoped to practice mindful humility; however, I was informed that was just the white man’s guilt talking.  So screw it.  I now plan to enjoy all the perks of my elite social status.  Who knows, maybe it’ll offset the vagina tax to which I’m subject.

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The above image was the catalyst of a bizarre debate this week.  While I, and no doubt the originator, believed it was an expression of equality, others saw it as identity erasure of target groups.

If I still had an opinion it would be invalid because of aforementioned Caucasionism.  It would be very easy to become apathetic over the whole issue.  Easy for me, any way. I’m the privileged,  remember?  But I think the simplest and healthiest approach to this applies to most things in life:  If there are two ways to view something, chose the one that makes you happiest.

If feeling victimized is what makes you happiest then I’m sure there is some target group out there that’ll be pleased to have you.

Accepting Rides from Strangers

| halfnutswilltravel

llamacarWay, way back a very long time ago in May of this year I attended my very first knitting retreat.  I was supposed to go with my local knitting buddy, but just hours before we were to leave she had a real, honest to Dog family emergency.  Mr. Knitting Buddy had a ruptured appendix.  I know, right?!  But don’t worry.  He recovered nicely.

Had everything gone according to plan, I was going to ride with my knitting buddy to Winston Salem to meet up with two of her knitting buddies and then we were to caravan to Tennessee.  With my knitting buddy (and therefore, ride) out of the equation, I was fully prepared to just stay home and garden for the weekend.  We’d been having some unusually cool weather, just perfect for a pansy like me to work outside.  Plus, I think I may have developed some very mild social anxieties in recent years.  Or possibly I’ve just gotten lazy and really like hanging around the house in sweat pants.

My pronouns are about to expand and this story is going to get ridiculously difficult to tell if I don’t start giving these people actual names.  My knitting buddy is Karin.  Her two knitting buddies that we were to meet in Winston Salem are Tracey and Tracy.  Actually, giving two of them the same name might not have decreased the confusion factor, here.

I’d met Tracey and Tracy exactly once, for a Sunday morning knitting brunch.  Hearing of Karin’s family emergency and realizing that left me needing a ride, Tracey put her noodle to work immediately to figure out how she could get me to Winston Salem to ride to the retreat in Tennessee with her and Tracy.  Through what I now know to be a vast and complicated network of knitters, Tracey was aware of another lady in Winston Salem, named Kristin, who was going to be carpooling with a lady from Raleigh, named Faith, whom no one else I’ve named yet even knew.  All Tracey had to do was get in contact with Kristin to see if she would contact Faith to find out if I could ride along.

I have to say, I was not comfortable with this plan.  At. All.  I didn’t like the idea of inconveniencing anyone and I was kind of stunned that people I’d met once, but couldn’t even say I knew would go to so much trouble to get me to a knitting retreat.  However, my attempts to make sure nobody felt bad about me staying home so that I could – just stay home – fell on unhearing ears.  Tracey and Tracy and Karin were intent on me going to Tennessee.

A short while later, it occurred to me that maybe another reason I should have been uncomfortable with what Tracey and Tracy and Karin were trying to arrange is that I would have to accept a ride – a long ride – with a stranger.  But this didn’t actually cross my mind at first.  While I’m sure there must be cases where knitters have picked up strangers, strangled them, and left them covered in leaves in a ditch somewhere, I am pretty sure they don’t do this to other knitters.  I’m not aware of the existence of a Knitters Code of Conduct, but I think this is probably just an unspoken given.  Thou shalt not commit stranglery or other heinous acts against thy fellow knitter.

But like I said, none of that crossed my mind.  What did cross my mind was that this poor woman had no way of knowing that I didn’t have a long string of dead, leafy bodies in my past, so she really should decline this request (if it ever made its way to her).  A short time later, Kristin e-mailed Tracey, who texted Karin, who called to give me Faith’s phone number.  I think by this time Tracy had left the confusion and gone to bed.  And when Faith and I finally spoke, her voice did not sound burdened with the guilt of murdering random strangers.  But she did sound young and my motherly instinct half wanted to scold her for agreeing to give me, a stranger, a ride!  Instead, after we hung up I texted her a very awkward assurance that I was not a criminal.  In hind sight, I bet many actual criminals would say that, too.

Early the next morning, Faith showed up at my door.  It turns out I don’t just accept rides from strangers, I also very much enjoy talking to them, too.  And if she’d offered me candy, I totally would have taken it (even at 7:30 in the morning).  Our ride was over before I knew it.  She unpacked into Kristin’s car and I transferred to the Tracey/Tracy-mobile, where I learned so much more about this vast and complicated network of knitters.

More on that, later.