Last Days of Summer

So yeah, school is right around the corner. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm thrilled that pretty soon I won't have to worry about the whole secret double life thing, but I am less than thrilled to be going back to isolated College Town. Also the girls in the dorm last year wouldn't ever shut the fuck up. Maybe it'll be different this year. Either that or I'll have to introduce them to the wonder that is Tylenol PM.

Despite having the last week and a half off work (gotta love being a contingent), all I've managed to do is pack up two boxes for back to school, totally messing up my room in the process. Oh yeah, thanks to my mother's Swiss-made food chopper, one of my fingers is a little bit shorter than it used to be. My accomplishments are few, but massive. Because hey, lets face it, only the massively clumsy can manage to slice off 1/8 of a pinky finger. And only the massively lazy can boast about having packed up two boxes. After I found my IPod ("missing" since early May), I lost interest in the packing.

Since I didn't have anything better to do last weekend, I decided to go home. Relax, eat some good food, get my dad to buy me stuff, the usual. Traffic was absolutely horrendous. So horrendous that I'm not sure I want to go home again if it means having to put up with it taking a half hour to go 3/10 of a mile. I'm not a very patient person, and rush hour traffic tends to bring out the worst in me. No, I'm not a dangerous driver, I just like to scream "GO!!!!!" a lot. Usually at the car in front of me. Like they can go anywhere.

I'm beginning to view my parents as a source of entertainment instead of annoyance. They're getting older, bless 'em, and I guess I've never really noticed it before. They like to argue about the nitpickiest little things, and I think its hilarious. Like when the neighbor across the street fixed his roof. "Forget about the neighbors' roof Jim! When are you gonna fix our roof? I'm sick of my ceiling leaking everytime it rains!" Note: it's "hers" when it, whatever it is, breaks, stops working or leaks. It only becomes "theirs" when she can't fix it.

When I finally got back to school, I found out that I missed two things. One of them was snow, which I didn't mind missing. In fact it's the reason I went home. The second thing was finding out about AK's engagement (Mazal tov, AK and Dan!). I found out about it from Facebook. Not the best way to hear about your friend's engagement. And its the second time that its happened. What is it about senior year that makes people get engaged left, right and center?

You got a problem with that, honey?

Ok, so I'm sitting here, waiting on it to start snowing. The weather people have been saying its going to snow today all week, and yet there isn't one snowflake in sight. Hell, there isn't even a cloud in sight.

Earlier this week, I was having lunch with Nicole, who is just about the sweetest girl on the planet. She's one of the few people that I've really opened up to about my desire to convert, but that's a different story for a different day. Nicole, like me, had the good fortune to be born in North Carolina. However, her life began several hundred miles west of mine. To hear me talk, it isn't immediately apparent that I'm an NC native. With Nicole, it's unmistakable. I often find myself wishing that I hadn't been brought up in a big, diverse city, and that I don't feel the need to hide my accent when I'm back home, especially at work. But that too is a different story for a different day.

The other day at lunch, Nicole and I were approached by this guy that wanted to know if the table next to us was taken. Nicole politely replied that "Yes, that table is taken, sorry." The guy, apparently unable to understand Appalachian English, made Nicole repeat herself several times before stalking off. Damn Yankee.

Now, I'm not going to turn this into an anti-Yankee rant. First of all, there's no point, and second of all, I don't want to alienate one-third of my readership. But the whole Southern stereotype thing is getting pretty fucking old. To hear some of my classmates/coworkers (who thought I was from Washington State for whatever reason)/customers talk, we Southerners are nothing but a bunch of ignorant, Jesus lovin', beer drinkin', snuff dippin' rednecks, and that there is nothing to do in the South but go to county fairs. Let me point out that I will (hopefully) have two masters degrees five years from now, I am on my way to becoming a JBC, I hate (most) beer and the only tobacco product I've ever tried was a cigarette, and that was just stupid. And for the there's nothing to do part, those people obviously haven't visited downtown Asheville, any part of Atlanta, or Charleston.

My sister-in-law's mom, a Carolina girl if ever I met one, moved up to BFE, Michigan a few years ago with her husband. Upon arrival, she was asked "Don't you just love it up here? This place is really thriving!" My sister-in-law's mom then replied "I'm from Charlotte. It's one of the biggest banking centers in the country. That's thriving. You people don't even have a movie theater."

Maybe, being from Charlotte, I'm not really qualified to talk about stuff like this. Still, it's something I felt like addressing.

Five down, two to go

Another semester over. I'm back at home, and I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I get to be near the fam, eat food that won't make me sick, lose the incredibly pronounced accent I've picked up over the last few months, and on the other hand I get to spend 8+ hours a day in a department store, putting up with Christmas carols and annoying people, and I'm really gonna miss all my intro class and Saturday morning people. I already miss my friends. At least I got to spend some quality time with them before I left. Feeding marshmallows to ducks (it's hilarious-- try it sometime), chasing those same ducks around the park, sitting on the side of a country road in a car with a flat tire, watching Sex in the City and then having a minor nervous breakdown during the commercials (I don't wanna go home! I'm not ready to tell my mom that I'm converting!)... these are the moments I live for. Well, maybe not the nervous breakdown. I so could have done without that.

Gobble?

So I'm home again. Awaiting the arrival of the family. Am actually excited about it. Our version of "Dirty Uncle Sal" might not even show up. Hooray, I will be spared the embarassment of him asking me if "those things" (my boobs) are real after he's had a couple beers. I will also be spared the task of having to knock out his one remaining tooth if he asks. Sound extreme? Well, I'm sick of it, and no one else in the fam ever says or does anything about it, so I'm taking the matter into my own hands. However, I am going to have a good time. My mom cooked enough food to feed an army, and I plan on eating a lot of it. Bring on the turkey! Bring on the cranberry salad! Bring on the deviled eggs! Bring on the ham! Nah, screw the ham. But do bring on the pumpkin pie!