La Meridionale Ballerina

The only downside to Southern friendliness?  Sitting next to its embodiment on an airplane.

I have a head cold.  Nothing major, just a stuffy head, an achy neck, and a scratchy throat.  But being on an airplane with a stuffy head is not fun.  Whenever the cabin pressure changed I had to hold my earlobes over my ears.  Partly because I hoped to reduce the searing pain, partly because I was afraid my eardrums would burst and I didn’t want to bleed all over myself in public. 

(I really hope I don’t have a medical emergency in front of people.  Or if I do that it knocks me unconscious.  In a graceful, Victorian-fainting-couch-reach-for-her-smelling-salts kind of way.)

(And God forbid I go into labor in a public place - my children would be motherless.)

I spent much of my flight home holding my ears, sniffing, and hoping to land (in Baltimore).  I’m not the best flyer - yet - so I actually spend a lot of my time on planes strategizing about how I can throw myself onto my seat cushion in case of an emergency water landing (I still don’t get how that’s supposed to happen in 2 cubic feet of space, so my strategy usually goes: 1) realize we’re in an emergency water landing, 2) discover hidden super powers).  I also read about expensive vacations to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion I’ll never take.  And I completed the airline magazine crossword puzzle (I finished the "Challenging" one in 20 minutes.  This is a rare occurrence - those Diamondback crosswords I did in between classes really paid off!  So did that Greek and Roman Mythology course - you always have some minotaur or Trojan war clue, and what better way to spend $15,000 in student loans?   I could be a famous crossword puzzler someday, people!  Do you realize the meaning this would bring to my life?  Or at least how much easier it would be to explain my job?  More on that later.). 

As friendly as I am (though some readers of my last post would disagree), I was really not in the mood to talk. 

Not only that, I couldn’t talk.  It was the end of the day with a scratchy throat and I had lost my voice.  So I planted myself in the seat closest to the door, leaned my head against the window, closed my eyes, and held my ears.

Of course, I had planted myself next to The Guy.  And he wanted to talk. 

"Are you goin’ to Baltamore, or are you goin’ on te Raleigh?"

"Are you goin’ ha-ome fer Thanksgivin’?"

"Do ya live en Nashville?"

"I’ll bet yer real glad you have sech a short flight ha-ome."

This Nashvillian quality is actually one of the things I’m starting to love.  The friendliness, the approachability, the openness.  It makes you let down your guard and start to trust people.  It reminds you how to socialize and makes you feel confident.  It leads to friends (please?).  It is a quality I hope to acquire everyday, one I aspire to obtain, one I think of when I wake up and hope to myself that the longer I live here the more down-to-earth I will become.  When I encounter it, whether in my ballet class, in a convenience store, or at a restaurant, I feel so uplifted I drive home reading the highway signs to Memphis or Louisville or Old Hickory or Goodletsville and thinking of all those towns with all those friendly inhabitants and think to myself "I really like it here.  I really, really do."

Okay, so maybe I read those highway signs because I’m trying not to get lost, but the sentiment is still there.

This was the first time this friendliness was anything but wonderful.  I felt guilty for wanting to shut him out.  I felt like I wanted to be the embodiment of anything but Southerness - of Northerness?  Of callousness?  I felt horribly coldhearted, jaded, and almost cruel.

Then I felt I really just wanted to get a blanket, curl up under my emergency water landing floatation device, and cut off my ears (in private).

Besides, he kept trying to copy my crossword puzzle answers.  The nerve!

Pet peeve of the week?  The commercial for this product.

You know it.  The two women sitting around in robes in a spa eating Yoplait Chocolate Whips yogurt.  And then they start with the awful similes…"This is like chocolate body wrap good," blah, blah blah.

Now, I am aware I most likely view the commercial in a disproportional amount because, well, I watch the Style network like it’s going out of…no, sorry, just can’t do that to you.  And I hate almost all the shows on that network!  But I can’t stop watching!  You have to see how the makeovers turn out!  Damn you, Finola Hughes!  Damn you!  I hate your show and only watch it everyday after ballet!  You must emit some sick, air-born drug out of the TV because that’s the only reason I watch you and your "accomplices" (like you would ever want to mingle with us commoners…that’s right, I said it, you British snob) degrade people and pounce on their self-esteem like a German Shepard on a Kong. 

Why does this grate on my nerves so much?  Chocolate body wraps?  Chocolate bubble baths?  Chocolate covered heels?  No, people.  Chocolate is a food.  It goes in your mouth.  Anything else is a violation of health codes.  Unless this is some weird marketing ploy to make us imagine these two girls slathering each other in chocolate goo and acting out some crazy male fantasy (they are, after all, costumed in matching bathrobes with the implication there is nothing underneath)…but no, this is aired on the Style network and they’re talking about shoe shopping - not two turnons in my understanding of the heterosexual male.  This is supposed to make me want to buy chocolate yogurt, but it really just makes me want to go take a shower. 

And these women are at what looks to be a fancy spa.  Why on earth are they eating 69 cent yogurt?!  I understand the marketing geniuses at Yoplait are trying to say their product is good enough to eat at a spa, but damn it, if I’m playing $75 for a facial and $100 for your freaking "ultimate pedicure," - plus tip - you’d better have some fancy spa chef with the fancy chef hat making me grilled organic eggplant and zucchini served over a bed of spring greens and quinoa.

Some might say I dislike this commercial so much because it encourages me to buy whipped yogurt, which is really just regular yogurt whipped with air so you buy more air and less product.  But until you give me Jean André, his fancy chef hat, and my quinoa, I’m still going to say "eww."  And take a regular bath.  With soap.

After realizing my ballet teacher is the same height and has the same bone structure as me but weighs about thirty pounds less, I’ve decided to go on a diet.

(It’s completely weird, by the way, to be the "biggest" person in class.  Over the past 5 months I’ve lost about 12 pounds and I’m back to my high school and college weight of *normal*, which makes me super proud.  I’ve got my body-image issues - okay, I’ve got body-image issues, but I’m of the thought that 96% of women have some mild form of an eating disorder.  Mild!  I said mild!  And come on - when was the last time you ate too much of whateverdoodles and then felt bad about yourself?  Told yourself you couldn’t eat x, y, or z because you’re going to a party/you’re getting married/it’s New Years/it’s Monday?  Ever looked at your Lindsey Lohans of the world and thought "sigh"?  Eww, Lindsey Lohan - okay, your Jennifers or your Angelinas or your Kates?  I thought so.  That, my friend, is an unhealthy relationship with food, aka an disordered relationship with eating, aka an eating disorder.  If you don’t have some mild version of it, call me because I need to know your secret.  And so does everyone else.)

(Okay, so maybe eating disorder isn’t the best term.  Let’s say a disordered body image. You happy?)

(Oh, yeah, back to being big.  So I don’t think of myself as big, generally.  I’m pretty okay, I think.  But I have, by far, the broadest shoulders of the group.  Oh, and my chest?  Let’s just say this is the only time in my life I have ever felt I needed a sports bra.  Which is kind of a cool feeling - go me!  Of course, that could stem from my teenage birthday present of a homemade lotion dispenser that my well-endowed mom appliqued "Kissa’s Miracle Grow Chest Enhancer," complete with a picture of a Care Bear.  Which she gave to me in front of my entire family.  For more on my slightly twisted, in a quirky-but-not-serial-killer-way-I-swear, childhood, see later entries.)

Here’s my progress for the day:

Breakfast: Mini bagel with low fat cream cheese. 

Snack: Banana

Lunch: Salad with low fat dressing, low fat organic frozen burrito, 12 Wheat Thins

Snack: Mini Three Musketeers bar left over from Halloween

Dinner: Piece of frozen, super-veggie-no-meat-healthy pizza (can you tell neither of us has time to cook?).

Snack 10 minutes later: Another piece of pizza

Snack 5 minutes later: Another piece of pizza

Snack 15 minutes later: Remaining sliver of pizza - I swear I only had 2.5 servings total, which adds up to 650 calories and 17 grams of fat, 6 grams of….

Oh, [expletive].  I give up.

Sometimes you feel like a right-wing nut job.  Sometimes you don’t.

There is no denying that I live in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.  Nashville is the Vatican of the South.  It hosts the national conventions for nearly all the Protestant churches.  While these are facts, they remain abstract and difficult to get your mind around.  Until you see it.

We went to Matthew’s girls soccer banquet last Thursday night (you’ll remember my fretting over what to wear to - oh my gosh! - meet new people.  I decided on a black sheath dress I had in my closet and felt surprisingly fabulous.  Probably because it was free).   

Matthew coaches girls and boys soccer and boys basketball for Beech High School, the local high school about 15 minutes from our place (this is the primary reason he a) does not sleep more than five hours a day and b) we are awake at the same time and in the same place for about an hour a day).  He loved coaching these girls and always talked about how well-behaved and sweet they are. 

The banquet for this *public* high school was held in the venue across the street: Long Hollow Baptist Church.

First off, can you imagine the stink this would have caused in Montgomery County, Maryland?  Case in point: the controversy sparked this summer when MoCo wanted to host a high school graduation in a non-denominational church because it had the best parking and was the best venue for the price.  Parents went into lawsuit mode and the graduation was moved somewhere smaller with no parking. 

I have never seen anything like this.  This church is not a church, but a single campus of a church.  It is a huge complex.  It has an auditorium-like worship area (seriously, it’s creepy.  Call me a traditionalist, call me crazy, but shouldn’t a church have something in the architecture referring to God?  There isn’t even a cross inside this thing).  It has two playgrounds.  It has classroom after classroom after classroom, followed by portable classroom after portable classroom.  It has volleyball courts.  They are building two full-size basketball courts.  We were in the Dome, a venue set up for catering and gatherings that could easily seat 200 people.  3,000 families attend church every Sunday.

There is also Wednesday night dinner and services, which everyone participates in here, so much so that there are traffic jams around 6 pm every Wednesday night with people going to services, and then by 7 pm the roads are deserted.

My church at home (my parent’s church, I suppose), approximately 2,000 people attend church.  The annual budget for the church is a little less than $200,000.

Long Hollow Baptist, Inc.?  $5 million.

Now, I suppose I’m being unfair.  But it’s just all so different to me I can’t help but think it’s a little weird.

And it gets weirder.  Before the basketball banquet itself starts, guess what we do?  We pray.  Yes, at this school function somebody gets up in front of everyone and says the name Jesus.  I went with Matthew to his basketball chili dinner the next night and the same thing happened - a senior basketball player got up and prayed with everyone. 

I have such a knee-jerk reaction to this.  People say the word "prayer" and I immediately start looking around to see if anyone is having convulsions and shouting "get a lawyer, stat!"  But it doesn’t phase a single soul (pun intended).

At the same time, there’s something really…great about it all.  The girls got up and thanked their senior co-captains, exclaiming, "we jus’ wanna, like, thank y’all for being such great players, and jus’ wanna, like, ya know, letcha know y’all are such great Christain leaders."

(Try combining Valley Girl and Southern Belle, mixed with a splash of TRL, and  served in a public speaking venue.  It’s a wacky linguistic combination!)

When was the last time you heard someone praised for being a good person?  When was the last time you heard teenage girls telling someone they admired them for their faith?

It’s refreshing, is what it is.  And you can see it in the kids.  The cheerleaders are cute, fresh-faced cheerleaders.  They look nice.  They don’t look like the Junior Stripper Squad.  The basketball boys are sweet - they stand up straight, they tuck in their shirts, they come up to you and ask "Coach Holmes, is this yer lovely wafe?" before they introduce themselves - complete with proper handshake.  The moms look like moms - you know, they have their hair frosted to cover up the greys, they wear Beech Bucs sweatshirts and sport mom jeans (the light colored wash, tapered kind with high elastic waistbands).  Have you been to a high school football game lately?  The moms dress as slutty or sluttier than their teenage daughters.  And if this is what happens when you talk about being a religious person, than gosh darnnit, that’s okay.

Funny thing is, it’s not like these people (can I use that phrase?  Stat!) don’t realize they are an anomaly in this world.  I got into a conversation about it with Matthew’s co-coach of the basketball team (who, by the way, is really nice and seems to like me.  Potential friend?  Cha-ching!).  He said he feels they even overdo it sometimes, just like I feel we at home overdo it in the opposite direction so you can’t even talk about it, and get sued if you do.  He said it’s great Long Hollow does so much for the school for no cost and that they’re such a big part of the community, but it sometimes feels awkward.  He wishes, like me, there were some balance.

And, as he so wonderfully put it, "ain’t no separation."

Once again, I had a driving adventure.

I had to miss my ballet class last Thursday to attend Matthew’s soccer banquet (more on that in another post.  I promise), so I made up that class last night at the other ballet studio in Brentwood.  I left at 6 pm to get to a 7:30 pm class, leaving ample time for the 40 minute drive.

Of course, I got lost.  Again.

I got off the Interstate (incredibly proud of myself for not causing an accident and of my car for actually approaching 60 mph in a 70 mph zone).  I turned right, as my directions instructed.  I spotted the lefthand turn - across 6 lanes of traffic.  So I had to continue to drive to turn around.

Side note on why this simple task involving three turns was so complicated: I am cheap.  Why print out Mapquest directions on expensive printer paper when you can hand copy them in cryptic handwriting on a dark green Post-It note stolen from the office that is too dark to read in an unlit car?

So I drove through the suburbs for a bit.  Only these aren’t ordinary suburbs.  This is where the Nashville elite live. 

Now, I come from an affluent area (of course, I myself am not affluent and indeed had to apply for assisted housing just to be able to afford to live in that affluent area.  I’m still adjusting to the idea of affordable housing, which is such a mind-numbing process that whenever Matthew talks about buying a house I break out in hives).  I’ve seen plenty of million dollar houses.  Except the housing market is so ca-razy in DC they look like biggish normal houses.  I’ve never actually seen, in person, a mansion á la The Fabulous Life.

I did last night.

We’re talking castles.  We’re talking marble everything.  We’re talking huge gates.  We’re talking custom designed to look like treble-clef and notes gates.  It was unworldly.  I kept driving just to look around (digging myself into a bigger and bigger directional hole).  I passed private schools (Brentwood Academy).  I passed a country club.  People, I was so impressed and astounded - and this was at night. 

The sick thing is I felt kind of like I was at home.  I’m so used to seeing big houses and development everywhere and a Borders on every corner.  One shopping center in the vicinity (hey, I was driving around lost for a long time, okay?  Even rich people need their mocha lattes) even had a version of a Whole Foods.  I mean, the talk of the town last week was the fact that we’re getting a Tiffany’s and a Louis Vuitton store right next to the Cole Haan in the fancy mall.  This, my friends, is not Hee Haw Land.  It’s kind of sad, actually, to be transplanted into a place that feel exactly the same.  I don’t feel that way out in Cracker Barrelville, where our apartment is.  It still has stores and restaurants I haven’t heard of and don’t know exactly what I will order the minute I sit down.  And I like that.  I like seeing moms at Matthew’s basketball games that look like moms (more on that in another post).  I didn’t like going to the fancy mall and seeing everyone with the same Coach bag - it feels like we’re losing something and don’t care that it’s slipping through our fingers.

I finally found the studio at 7:15 pm, feeling a little overwhelmed, a little sad, and a lot poor.

Matthew talks in his sleep.

No, really.  He has sat up in bed, looked straight at me, and asked "Are you my Monday Night Football announcer?  What’s the score?"  And then he goes back to sleep.

We have a running joke that when I go in to grab a sweater or something (it’s freezing in my office!), I’ll pat him or give him a kiss and he’ll complain in his sleep.

"Stop."

"Come on, let’s go."

And, my personal favorite, "Get lost."

Obviously, this is not intentional, especially considering how dilusional he can sound when he’s sleeptalking.  So whenever he wakes up he asks me quite earnestly, "Was I nice to you today?"

And, of course, I relish days I can tell him he actually told me to get lost.  I think it’s funny.

(Side note - never laugh at Matthew Holmes’ sleeptalking - he gets even more mad.  He’ll scowl and say, "It’s not funny!  Why are you laughing?"  Which sends me into fits of laughter.)

I unfortunately took his advice Monday night.  I got completely lost.

I took my first independent trip to Opry Mills, the shopping mall next to Opryland (which I have not been to yet and am not sure I will ever step foot in).  I’m looking for a dressy outfit to wear to Matthew’s soccer banquet where I actually get to meet people!  So, in my consumer-driven head, it is essential I buy something that makes me look fabulous.  I might actually get to make some friends!!

For the curious, I’m looking for a simple black skirt and nice, rather conservative short sleeve top or a black sheeth dress.  You would think I’m looking for…I don’t know, Paris Hilton’s modesty.  It is a frustrating proposition.

The directions to this mall are easy: Drive through the apartment complex, enter the main interstate where people drive 70 mph (this nearly gives me a heart attack on a regular basis), drive until the exit with Opryland on the sign, exit, turn into mall.  And driving there was, excuse the pun, smooth sailing (unless you count almost exiting on the wrong exit and having to pull back onto the parkway, causing some huge van to swerve across three lanes to avoid hitting me.  I may or may not have crossed myself 60 times).

The mall expedition itself was rather dull.  I’m on this complete anti-spending trip (dropping several hundred dollars at Tiffany’s will do that to you…sigh), so everything I saw I talked myself out of buying.  I have since remedied this behavior with a trip to Old Navy, which has a huge sale going on.  Oh, that feels sooo good.

Driving back, however, was not so pleasant.  Of course, I miss the sign and continue toward Nashville, realize my mistake too late to turn around, and continue on.  "No biggie.  I’ll just exit at the next exit and turn around."

Wrong!  The city of Nashville has decided to rip out every interstate in the surround metropolitan area and replace it.  Only they are replacing it with, I don’t know, bricks they carve into perfectly interlocking shapes á la the Incans.  It’s been like this for five years.  But don’t worry - they’ll be done this summer. 

So I can’t turn around.  For three miles.  I finally turn around in some neighborhood, only to find I can’t go north, I can only return to the road and continue to travel south.  Sigh.  So I do.  And I exit again at the next exit. 

Nope, can’t turn around to go north here, either.  Left with no other choice, I stay the coarse.

This is all complicated by the fact that I know the names of exactly two roads in the entire city of Nashville.  Two. 

I have no idea where I am or where I am going.  I am in a car that I fear will spontaneously explode or die at any moment, just for fun.  And I’m entering an area of town I’ve never heard of.  I pass six barbeque joints, seven truck repair garages, two railroad tracks, multiple dead end roads that end in a barbed wire fence (shudder). 

I finally find myself in somewhat familiar territory ("37th street sounds like D.C….so that’s good…right?"  And "okay, that looks like a bridge, and I should be around the Cumberland river…eventually").  And then - miracles!  I find one of the streets I know - Broadway.  I only know this because I have to take it to go to ballet because the shorter route was way too complicated. 

I take Broadway allllll the way through the city, and back to driving-really-fast-next-to-speeding-trucks-and-jersey-walls interstate.  And that all the way home.

(Except I miss my exit home and have to turn around.  Again.)