Here it Comes

Because our school's main parking lot is closed for the next two years, I parked in the tiny far lot and schlepped all my stuff up to the back door when I went in to work on curriculum today.

Guess I better get used to it.

(But only if I can find a space in the mornings!)

Give it a Week

Being away from home is fun, but coming back is fun, too, especially at this time of year. In addition to hugging our cat, going through the mail and packages, and sleeping in my own bed, this morning I headed straight for the garden to check on my vegetables and flowers.

I was not disappointed!

City of Looms

It's kind of a thrill when you're on a road trip and your phone GPS flashes those three magic words: faster route available. Despite no evidence of congestion, I eagerly exited I-85 when that happened just north of Charlotte this afternoon. As we cruised up the ramp, I spotted a backup on the road ahead that stretched as far as my eye could see, and so it was with glee and the knowledge that I was saving time that I navigated the local byroads. And secure in that knowledge, it didn't bother me a bit to stop at this light or that intersection.

"Kannapolis?" Heidi read the town welcome sign at one such stop. "Where did they get that name?"

"Hey, Siri!" I called, and soon we were treated to a Wikipedia article about the history of that little burg. It seems that over a hundred years ago, it was a company town built around a textile mill owned by the Cannon family. From there it gets a little fuzzy as to whether it was named after the mill (Cann-apolis) and changed, or whether it was named for the Greek kanna (reeds or looms) and apolis (city).

Personally, I favor the second on poetic principle, but either way it's a great story, and a little while later we were back on the highway with time to spare.

Search Term Success

There was a little bit of a hubbub across the way in WH Stiles Fish Camp as I waited in line to order lunch at Ponce City Market this afternoon. Lights, cameras, and reflectors surrounded a shiny-headed gent seated at the u-shaped oyster bar.

"Who is he?" the people around me asked as they craned their necks to watch the action without losing their place in the slooooooow moving line. He looked vaguely familiar to me, too, but I couldn't place him, so as other diners dodged onto the makeshift set to snap a selfie I used my phone to Google  bald food channel guy. The first hit was Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods fame, and that's exactly who it was.

Around that time? It as my turn to order, so I never did find out what strange dish brought him there today, but our Vietnamese salad with crispy fish and steelhead trout poke was 😋 delicious!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

There's no other word but 'bustling' to describe the scene at the mall near my sister's place in Atlanta today. Shoppers were nearly at holiday numbers, so many that entering and exiting the flow of foot traffic required some serious merging maneuvers. And why not? It is a holiday of sorts for the parents, if not the kids, down here.

School starts on Tuesday.

This Friday Night

"Do you guys have any dances in middle school?" Heidi asked soon-to-be 6th grader Richard the other day.

"I think maybe one or two," he answered.

"How many do our sixth graders have?" Heidi turned to me.

"Two," I replied, "but they have that mixer in the beginning of the year."

"What's a mixer?" Richard asked.

"It's a thing where they have a variety of activities," I explained. "There is some dancing, yes, but also games and contests, like donut eating."

"Donut eating!" both Richard and Annabelle repeated.

"Yeah," I said, "we tie Krispy Kremes to strings and hang them from a pole. Then the kids put their hands behind their backs and see who can eat one the fastest."

They looked at each other in stunned amazement.

"Why don't we try it while we're here?" I suggested, and it was easy enough to purchase a half-dozen classic glazed the next time we went to the grocery store.

AND, that's how we found ourselves out on the driveway this evening with four donuts hanging from a broom

Oh my gosh!

I have not laughed that hard in a long time!

Richard had the edge going in, but he quickly lost the advantage by chewing too thoroughly and chasing his donuts in circles trying to get the biggest bite.

Annabelle was the tortoise to his krispy hare-- she methodically consumed her donuts until the point where gravity took control. On donut one, she caught the last bite in her mouth, but when the second one hit the pavement? So did she, eating fast enough to stay within the five second rule, and handily defeating her brother who was still pirouetting around his second.

And their mom caught it all on camera! 

I. De. Clare. Fun

Growing up in the South Jersey in the late 60s and 70s meant lots of muggy summer days with no air conditioning. To be honest, it was barely a hardship, especially since we didn't really know any different. Once it got so hot inside that the box fans in the windows weren't enough, we moved away from the TV and its game shows ans soaps and out to our shady side porch to read or play cards and drink iced tea with lemonade.

These days I spend most of my time in climate-controlled spaces, and there are many summer afternoons when I walk out of school or home with flesh so chilled that the blast of heat and humidity almost, almost, feels like a nice little hug. And even during the laziest days of summer, TV and card games are rarely on the agenda. 

Even so, today when the sweltering blue Atlanta sky turned thundery, Heidi and Annabelle and I took the dogs and headed out to the front porch. Torrents of rain spumed up into clouds of spray on the roofs and sidewalks as we played first War with an incomplete deck of Star Wars Hero-themed cards, and then Corn Hole with just one board pushed all the way to the end of the railing.

It was a perfect summer afternoon.