Depressing sights

Most Durhamites know what I’m talking about when I mention “the abortion truck” of Durham. It is a truck parked on the edge of an elevated parking lot in front of Mt. Zion Christian Church on Fayetteville St. You can’t miss it as you’re driving down Fayetteville Street before you get to W G Pearson Elementary School and Beechwood Cemetery.
Now this truck is distinctive in that it has a billboard-sized, anti-abortion graphic printed on both side panels. The graphic shows an aborted fetus – blood, guts, and all. It’s disgusting, it’s depressing and it’s offensive, and I have to drive by it every day on the way to work. I can’t close my eyes and ignore because that would make me an unsafe driver.
I just don’t understand how it is acceptable to allow advertising of something so graphic. Little children can see this thing. When we rent movies that include graphic images there is a rating system enforced that warns us of what we’re about to see. That system protects innocent eyes. We are given the choice whether or not to view the image.
This truck robs us of that choice. I just wish there were some way of applying a movie-rating-like system to real-life situations. Or how about a more likely solution? How about the city of Durham forces them to remove this truck from plain sight? Maybe park it behind the church so that only willing members of the congregation have to see it. Just a thought…

Speak no evil

I was hanging out with a friend of mine and her four-year-old daughter the other day on our way to see the Nutcracker in Raleigh. We had been on the road for almost 20 minutes listening to a Barbie cd, and more importantly, listening to her daughter sing the songs, which was cute to no end. The lyrics are still stuck in my head, but that is beside the point.
Her daughter was enjoying herself in the backseat, jibber-jabbering along to pass the time when she suddenly said, “I don’t have no hands.” The improper grammar stung like a wasp. I figured, hey, she’s only four and is highly adaptable at this age…I should correct her grammar.
“I don’t have ANY hands,” I responded to her with a smile and giggle. She just laughed at me, fully aware that she had said it wrong the first time. About 5 seconds later she yelled out, “I don’t have any hands!” Little genius! I wish we adults learned so fast.
Of course I knew I was taking a risk by correcting the grammar of someone else’s child. I don’t know if it was the right or wrong thing to do. I just felt obligated. The child’s mother responded kindly with a lighthearted, “Oh you know any child of mine ain’t gonna speak right.”
Based on what my friend Bridget (a speech therapist at the elementary school level) has told me, in the professional world you are not allowed to correct syntax related to dialect – consider a child who speaks Ebonics – unless the parents request such corrections be made. I think the same may apply to Southern dialect as well. Not sure.
So going forth knowing that, I think I’ll try my best to only correct my own children’s grammar. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday my own mother correcting my grammar at every turn. Her obsession with speaking properly may be a result of having learned English as a second language when she came here from Cuba during her adolescence. My obsession with speaking properly I blame on her! Thanks Marmie.

The king of trees

As I sit here snacking on divine chex mix homemade by my Tia Irene, I instantly miss my family. Hubby and I just got back from celebrating Christmas in Tennessee with my mother, sister, brother-in-law, niece, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It is tradition to spend Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) at my Tia Irene and Uncle Sam’s house in Jonesborough. There we feast until all hours of the night on pork, black beans and rice, dessert, beer, wine, eggnog, billiards, and the song “Christmas in Dixie.” For some odd reason, my mom likes to play that song on repeat and attempt clogging to it.
We typically finish dinner around 9:30 and head into the den/parlor and gather around Tia Irene and Sam’s 12-foot Spruce Christmas tree. There we play a ridiculous game of Dirty Santa/White Elephant and continue drinking and eating desserts. The men then retreat into the sunroom to play pool until about 4 am while the women sit around dancing, singing and talking, all of these activities fueled by alcohol.


I spent a good portion of the evening staring into the tree, which has ornaments strewn upon every available square inch of space. I can’t imagine the patience it takes to decorate this monster. Each ornament tells its own story, and many are passed down from generation to generation.
Tia Irene was kind enough to give me the ornament play-by-play, an activity I’m sure bored her to no end. Only a small number of the ornaments are fairly recent purchases that don’t carry much significance. Each year a brand new ornament is placed on the tree, hoping to capture a moment in time. This year’s new ornament is a ceramic mouse that says “Bob: 2008,” in honor of their new cat Bob.

Other ornaments include:

Two Santa Claus ornaments from 1895.

Delicate painted glass birds from the 1910s

A glass beaded ornament from the 1940s

A little elf from the 1950s

Bubble lights: replicas of ornaments from the 1940s/50s

An array of wooden ornaments (like birds and Mr. skier man) from the 1970s when Tia Irene said she was a hippie and had an entire tree of wooden ornaments.

A number of bleached sand dollars we found on the beach at Kiawah Island about 10 years ago.

A bead spider given to Tia Irene by one of her students

Ah, the 3 monkeys. She once mentioned that she collects these monkeys. She hasn't stopped getting monkeys since.

A cat ornament made in Aruba. My mom gave this to Tia Irene. She says she got it at Ten Thousand Villages (best store ever for ornaments!!).

A fabric angel made by a close friend. This angel is bigger than my head.

Looking at this tree really puts mine and hubby's to shame. I guess some people just have a talent for tree decorating and some people don't.

Rise and shine

I awoke this morning, five minutes before the alarm was set to go off, to the ever-pleasant sound of my cat puking up a hairball. Pinto the cat does this about once a week. I figure it is a small dose of training for one day becoming a parent. Oh, the sweet taste of unconditional love!
As I heard Pinto’s 15-second dry heaving session come to its grand finale, I decided to open my eyes and face the messy present he had left for me. But what struck me – even more dramatically than the puddle of puke on the floor to my right – was the sunrise forming outside the bedroom window. The curtain was bright red, as if on spotlight from the sun. I envisioned the sky on fire.
I rushed to capture it on film because I knew there was a limited window of opportunity for snapping a photo. Sunrises, like sunsets, change so fast. The sublime beauty of them can be over in less than thirty seconds.
I was scurrying about the house in the dark, carefully leaping over slimy mounds of cat barf, throwing layers of mismatched clothes on, all the while trying to convince Paxton the dog that this excitement was not at all about him getting to go on a walk.
I opened the front door to disappointment. Well, disappointment and a 20-degree blast of frozen air. The sky was already losing its scarlet glow and quickly fading into muted orange. Nonetheless I found a chunk of salvageable sky and snapped a photo.

I then went back indoors to assess the damage to the carpet, the vomit permeating every fiber. Sunrise, cold air, and cat puke. The perfect way to wake up.

First class dogs

I must have missed the memo on this one, but since when are dogs allowed in public places?! Yesterday I spent the day running last minute Christmas errands…a day of that began at Kinkos. As I stood before the cash register organizing my copies, a girl walked in to ship some luggage. In her arms was a fluffy little Maltese. As customers came in and out, most ignored the puppy. Only a few made comments. Even the Kinkos employee said not a word about the dog being in his store. I guess this is acceptable now. And here I thought dogs were only allowed in Petco and PetSmart.
I brushed this off and headed on to my next few destinations: Home Depot, Lowes, detour to Advance Auto Parts to replace my car battery, Harris Teeter, and lastly Southpoint Mall, otherwise known as heaven.
After I finished browsing Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret, and after I had plucked myself out of the puddle of drool I’ve created in front of the Godiva store, I made my way toward Nordstrom to exit the mall. Normally as I near Nordstrom’s entrance, the first thing that catches my eye is the shoe department, shining like a beacon in the night. But yesterday it was different. There was a lady sitting on a bench at the Nordstrom entrance with something furry in her lap. As I got closer, I noticed it was her dog, voraciously licking water out of a cup she was leaning toward its mouth.
Nordstrom allows dogs?!?!?! This is supposed to be the high-class hub of Southpoint Mall. Next time I go to the mall, I shall bring Paxton, an 85-pound pit-bull-esque dog. Let’s see if that flies. Wish me luck.

Celebrity Sightings: Part II

I was browsing through my photo collection (which basically takes up an entire room of our house) the other day and discovered an assortment of “celebrity sighting” evidence that I cannot believe I omitted from my previous celebrity sighting post.
These celebrity sightings far surpass the last batch in that these are celebrities I actually got the chance to take photos of. (My sister Michele refuses to let me whip out my camera in Los Angeles.) These are also celebs that I have seen within a 30-mile radius of our very own Durham.
Very, very exciting stuff, unless of course you happen to be someone who is completely unfazed by seeing famous people, in which case I apologize for boring you to tears. I’m sure it is not the first time, nor will it be the last.
So without further ado…
Christina Aguilera. I adore her. And yes, seeing her in concert at the RBC Center counts as a celebrity sighting.

Stuart Scott, the anchor on ESPN's SportsCenter. Hubby and I saw him at the Jimmy V. Celebrity Golf Classic. Did I know who he was? Absolutely not. Hubby had to explain to me why I should take his photo.

Kelly Packard, an actress who hasn’t done any acting since 2005, but who I remember as Tiffani Smith on California Dreams, a show I grew up watching during my early teenage years. A couple of you may remember her as April Giminski on Baywatch.

The final trio of celebrities is from the set of One Tree Hill, during an episode that was filmed at the RBC Center on which my friend Jeni and I were hired as extras. Mainly I remember needing chapstick the whole day.
Here are the two of us during our 15 minutes of fame. In reality you can only see us for a brief 2 seconds during the entire episode. But I got some great photos out of it.


Chad Michael Murray. Plays Lucas Scott on One Tree Hill. He has also been in movies like Home of the Brave, House of Wax, and A Cinderella Story. During the 12-hour shoot, which was filming the cast’s basketball state championship, Chad was required to play a lot of basketball. He really cannot shoot at all. We, as the crowd, had to cheer and scream and holler as if he had made many a 3-pointer. I don’t remember him making a single shot. Oh well, he’s not paid to play ball.

Hilarie Burton. Plays Peyton Sawyer on One Tree Hill. She has also been in The Secret Life of Bees and Solstice.

Sophia Bush. Plays Brooke Davis on One Tree Hill. She has been on Nip/Tuck, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and in a few other movies. I love her because I think she looks like my sister.

And that’s all for this latest installment of Celebrity Sightings: On My Pole edition.

Catnap

My eldest son Pinto the cat is almost 7 years old. The first year I had him I tested many cat indulgences on him. I soon discovered that unlike other normal cats, Pinto doesn’t chase little furry mice, he doesn’t care for catnip, and he hates human food. Instead he plays with string, ice cubes, and bath water.

Pinto in the bathtub.

His favorite pastimes are rubbing his paws against flat surfaces and humping a little stuffed animal that was given to me by an ex-boyfriend; I think it’s being put to good use.
The other unusual thing about my dear cat Pinto is that he never liked cat beds. Most cats love to curl up in a soft, cushy bed and sleep the day away, but not him. I even handmade him a number of beds that sat in the corner wasting away collecting dust and were eventually thrown out.
When 3 years ago I decided to introduce a second cat, Jean, to our home, a few of these Pinto quirks took a shift. He suddenly liked catnip, because Jean does. He suddenly liked eating tuna fish, because Jean does. And Jean’s ability to curl up on any cozy surface to take a nap has unexpectedly worn off on Pinto as well.

Jean curled into a cozy ball

For instance, I brought home a cat bed the other day as a gift for sweet little Jean, assuming she’d be the only one to get near it. Instead, rotund behemoth Pinto has taken over it. I personally think he is doing this so that Jean is deprived of it, and also because it is a bed into which he doesn’t quite fit.

Pinto in Jean's cat bed. Look how satisfied he is with himself for stealing her bed.

Anything slightly too small for him he sees as a challenge to pour himself into it.

Pinto on our desk, his dunlop hanging over the edge.

He is the Mariah Carey of cats.

P.S. - I love Mariah Carey.

Backwards way of cooking

While hubby was preparing our scrumptious what’s-left-in-the-fridge dinner of chorizo, rice, and veggies (asparagus, onions, carrots, peppers) last night, I was concentrating hard on dessert. Pathetic we are in that we came up with the concept of dessert long before we considered preparing something substantial like dinner. And brownies were the dessert in mind. We would stop at nothing to get them.
Similarly to our dinner situation, we searched our cabinets and worked with what was available. We had no cocoa, so plain old chocolate brownies were out. Instead I found a recipe for Blondies in The Joy of Cooking, which called for absolutely no chocolate at all. The recipe included pecans, making the dessert a stretch from our originally desired brownies. I decided to substitute semi-sweet chocolate chips in place of the pecans.
I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and lined an 8 x 8” glass baking pan with greased aluminum foil. I then mixed together 1 cup flour, ¼ tsp baking powder, and 1/8 tsp baking soda. The recipe called for 1/8 tsp salt, which I now realize I forgot to add (honestly, I didn’t miss it though).

In a large saucepan, I melted and then boiled 1 stick of unsalted butter until light golden brown. After it appeared golden brown I removed it from the heat and added 2/3 cup light brown sugar and ¼ cup sugar. I set this mixture aside to cool to lukewarm.

Once cooled, I added 1 egg, 1 egg yolk, 1 tbsp light corn syrup, and 1 ½ tsp vanilla and stirred until well blended.

I then added the flour mixture into the combined ingredients.

Lastly, I added ¾ cup of chocolate chips.

I poured the batter into the pan and baked for about 30 minutes.

We let the blondies cool while we ate dinner and drank a beer.

The beer was more of an after-dinner indulgence. We split a bottle of Founders Backwoods Bastard. This beer was recommended to us by Seth at Wine Authorities. It was malty with a distinguishable bourbon flavor, and was an excellent segue into dessert.

Our post-dinner, post-beer feast of blondies brought to mind a chocolate chip brownie with a mild pecan pie flavor. They were not overly sweet and were quite easy to make.

Magic Touch

Yesterday evening after work I had the privileged experience of getting pampered by the hands of Kellie Herron, certified massage therapist du jour. The massage was an anniversary gift from hubby that I just now got around to redeeming – one of those gifts that is so good it must be savored and held on to for the perfect moment.
Kellie, who moved here from Atlanta this spring, works out of her downtown Durham town home, which I am utterly in love with, and that’s not just because of the rosemary plants lining the front stoop.
Kellie invited me into her massage room, which has a door straight out of a 1940s detective film at its entrance. Tea light candles were flickering throughout the room and soft piano music was playing in the corner. She spent a few minutes “interviewing” me on my trouble areas, even asking briefly about my exercise regimen to gauge what muscles might be tight. She also asked if I had any nut allergies…she’d be using almond oil otherwise.
I wanted her focus to be on my neck, shoulders, and lower back. I also asked her if she’d throw in a head massage (sounds weird, I know, but it is HEAVEN).
After I disrobed and tucked myself under the comfy sheets of her massage table, Kellie re-entered the room and began warming her hands with the almond oil. She began the massage with a delicate, above-the-sheets full body rub down. It was uber-relaxing and without a doubt an invitation for my body to be subtlety prepared for tactile stimulation.
Kellie then headed straight for my trouble spots with some intense deep tissue therapy on my shoulders and neck, literally pressing the pain out of those body parts. She’s the first massage therapist I’ve had that wasn’t scared to really dig deep, and she spent a lot of time on those areas.
She continued on to my legs, which she suspected would need work based on my recent swim. It felt like she was massaging with her elbows, and putting a lot of weight into it. As I lay there, I tried to get a mental picture of her movements for the sole purpose of memorizing her techniques to be later used on hubby. I’m sure my reenactment will be nothing short of humorous for him.
It’s funny when being worked on what areas feel the best, often ones you would never assume need attention. Kellie spent time on areas like my toes, my scalp, my earlobes, and the fleshy pocket of skin underneath my thumb – all areas I would ignore during a massage, but areas that cherished the extra indulgence.
Kellie had me flip over onto my back for the head massage, during which she gave even more deep tissue attention to my neck. It seemed almost as if she were piercing trigger points on my neck with her fingers – actually I shouldn’t begin to assume I know what she was doing; she obviously knows her stuff. She did additional full-body work on my arms, legs, feet and hands.
After about an hour and a half massage, Kellie wound down by smoothing the sheets over my arms and legs with another delicate trace. She suggested I lay there after her departure from the room till I felt ready to move about and get dressed. She was in no rush to hurry me out, which in fact was a blessing because I felt as if I had melted into the massage table, a feeling akin to the serenity I often experience after finishing a session of intense yoga. I thought I might have to call her back in the room to peel me off the table. Much to my body’s disappointment, I managed to remove myself from the room I now call home to the best massages in Durham.

Wolfpack Newlyweds

The wedding I attended this weekend – that of Kristina Gardner and Hunter Hinshaw – was anything but traditional. It was the first time I’ve ever seen an NC State/Christmas themed wedding. The bride and groom were very true to their desires throughout the planning process, making it a day I’m sure they’ll remember fondly.
The colors were NC State red and white. The entire wedding party was decked out in said colors. The ceremony music was Christmas music played on the piano. Much to my delight, the bride walked down the aisle to “O Holy Night.” The couple even had their 2 dogs walk down the aisle as part of the ceremony. The minister went through the 10 commandments of marriage, Kristina and Hunter exchanged vows and rings, and the newly married man and wife exited the ceremony to the NC State fight song.
Their wedding favors were quite original as well – they had a Christmas tree decorated with handmade NC State ornaments (each guest got to pick their own ornament off the tree). Mr. and Mrs. Wolf (the NC State mascots) served as the couple’s cake topper.
I am also pleased to say that I had another celebrity sighting at this wedding. The couple had asked Dave Matthews (the bride’s favorite singer) to serve as the guestbook attendant.
It was a beautiful ceremony and I wish the newlyweds a wonderful honeymoon in Italy and a happy life together!

Kristina & Hunter (The newlyweds!)

The groomsmen (decked out in red and white)

My sister Melissa (Matron of Honor)

Christmasy Floral arrangement (actually, the photographer let me use his macro lens for this one – I believe he offered to teach me all things camera related if I promised to never shop at Wolf Camera again)

NC State ornament-wedding favors

A very Wolfpack-decorated Christmas tree

Kristina on her journey down the aisle

The doggies

Cake topper

CAKE TIME!!!!

Dave Matthews, guest book attendant

I took it upon myself to adjust Dave's tie.

Hubby and Dave

Hubby and me

Hubby and Bryce (my brother-in-law)

We were all desperately blowing bubbles on the bride and groom as they left the venue, however the bubbles must have been old because they didn't seem to cooperate with us. Kristina and Hunter had a bubble-less exit.