Spring in February

 We're having a lovely early spring. Most of the garden looks pretty rough but there are some pretty spots. Here is the Lady Clare camellia we planted this fall. It is also putting out new growth. Very promising.

At week 6 of the fitness program I've lost 13.6 lbs. and am still putting ice on my knees. I'm meeting the group tomorrow afternoon for a workout at Waterfront Park under the Ravenel Bridge over in Mount Pleasant and Duncan is going to the Sierra Club's Oyster Roast where the menu is oysters, hotdogs, and Ben & Jerry's ice cream. He looks forward to this all year.

The Oldies, Sweating

Duncan and I are doing this 12-week kamikaze fitness program over at MUSC and it's about to kill us.

I've never seen it, but there's a TV show called "The Biggest Loser." Yes, well, this is based loosely on that. We are on a "team." We have a "trainer," Ryan. We have the run of the health center at the Medical University.

 The Cardio Room at the Harper Center -- Sunday afternoons are a good time to go, most people are taking their day of rest. Treadmills, Ellipticals, Stair machine, and Bikes -- all have individual TV monitors so you can plug in your earphones or ipod. Watching Jeopardy definitely makes this time go by faster.

We are supposed to workout with our team Monday and Wednesday nights, do something on our own every other day of the week, and on Thursday, all the teams come together for a "weigh-in" and then stick around for a big class that features others' wild success stories and a nutritionist urging us away from processed food.

So, our weeks have become working, going to the gym, thinking of things to eat, fixing things to eat, packing things to eat to take with us because WE ARE NEVER HOME and when we are, we are exhausted and have piles of sweaty, smelly laundry to do. We are at the end of week 3 and Duncan has lost 10 pounds and I have lost 7.5.

The pool. Who thought I would like water aerobics. But it's better than jogging and "running stairs" - which when I do it, is "trudging stairs." My knees hurt, I have taken to icing them when I get home, and it's just easier to work hard in the water than is on land. The first time we did a water aerobics class on a Saturday morning, we were in bed by 8:00 PM that night.

When we work out with our team, it's a combination of laps around the track, working against the resistance of these stretchy bands for arm strength, walking up and down 4 flights of stairs multiple times, and doing a few yoga moves I've never been good at - The Dancer, where you reach back and grab your foot and bend  forward while you lift your leg back and your other arm forward - and The Plank, which is down on the floor like you're going to do a push-up but your forearms are down and your weight is divided between your toes and your forearms. Do that for a minute. This is supposed to be the new great thing for your 'abs" - now thought to be way better than old-fashioned sit-ups or crunches. What good fun we all have together.

Here is Duncan catching his breath on the evil stairs. I just flat-out won't do them anymore. I am beginning to trust this skinny, young, trainer just a bit because he is thinking of things I can do to strengthen the muscles around my knees rather than to just keep pounding on them. If I am going to exercise regularly, I am going to have to do it around these knees. I'll probably never be a runner.

We are heading into week 4. It has not gotten easier. It is hard to find time for all of it. Stay tuned. This was our Christmas present to each other! How crazy is that? The idea is to stop our descent into our retirement years as fat, tired, old people. Apparently, to feel good, you have to sweat. So, who said life is fair.

Girlfriends' Weekend 2010

I'm getting my stories out of chronological order here, but in early December I went up to Virginia and spent a weekend with long-time friends Kathy and Lee at Kathy's house in Manassas. This is our annual get together that always features fabulous meals by Kathy. My favorite dish this year was Quinoa Black Bean Salad with Smoky Lime Dressing. We keep telling her she really should write a cook-book.

 On Saturday, we ventured out and went to the Torpedo Factory -- which at one time was indeed a torpedo factory, but now is three stories of art studios and showrooms down on the waterfront in the historic district of Alexandria.

Almost immediately we encountered Tanya Davis who, along with her watercolors, was selling origami snowflake ornaments. She took the time to show me how to fold one right there. It isn't easy, but between her help and You Tube videos, I'm going to master this one.

This woman has the largest loom I've ever seen and she wove these huge tapestries with wool and some metallic elements. She had family in Mount Pleasant  and I think would have happily come home with me

There was some kind of Scottish Heritage Festival in the area so there were men in kilts everywhere we went. These dancers were on the lower level of the Torpedo Factory. We watched them for awhile but no one asked us to dance so we went on down the street and had dinner at a pizza restaurant. 

The rest of our weekend together was several other good homemade meals, talking, watching movies, dog walking, and playing Bananagram! It's always fun and so comfortable to be with them. We are thinking maybe wait a little longer for next year, and they will come to Charleston in February or March 2012. Boy, that sounds a long time away!

Christmas 2010

 

While everyone we loved was getting snow, it was a pleasant day on the beach this year. Sunny. Not windy. We arrived at low tide and had plenty of beach to walk on. Not as many people and dogs as in the past. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. 

 We took a nice leisurely walk and picked up shells and were perfectly, perfectly content. We discussed if we had become "old people."

In the next 24 hours the temperatures dropped significantly and on Sunday, snow fell even in Charleston. Our plan to join Mom and the Parkers at Green Peace in Black Mountain shfifted to joining them in Winston-Salem. They had a good bit of snow there, but the roads were clear, so we just enjoyed looking at it and being with them.

Thanksgiving, then Christmas

I tried to illustrate my list this year with watercolor pencils, and ended up leaving important things off the list. We've enjoyed Tai Chi on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7 AM (I see my dad shaking his head. . .) and we have jobs and are whole and solvent in all ways. And then, there's Sandy Witman who keeps gently encouraging me to sketch with watercolor pencils. Friends make life good.

Upstate Roadtrip

Last week I went traveling with my co-workers for the express purpose of seeing small, Upstate South Carolina towns during the pretty time of year in the mountains. There wasn't much color in the trees and it didn't feel as much like being in the mountains as I usually do in North Carolina, but sometimes we would get a view and I knew I was definitely on the crest of the Blue Ridge.

Generally, I found small towns in the Upstate to be more prosperous than small towns in the Lowcountry. Here is the pretty B& B we stayed in in Lyman which is on the road between Spartanburg and Greenville. These days it's about the only thing in Lyman, but back in the day, (the early 1900s) it was the home of the owner of the textile mill. 

 The Walnut Lane Inn in Lyman, SC

Textile mills were huge in this part of the state -- as were classic mill villages. Say what you will about "paternalism" but many people worked in otherwise lean times. During the Great Depression no one had money, but the mills gave you "script" you could spend at the company store. It was better than nothing, which was another option of the day..

Here is my theory -- I'm sure those more learned than I can argue, but, from what I've read, it seems that maybe white people in the Upstate were not as dependent on slaves as they were in the Lowcountry prior to the Civil War. They had them, but they worked on farms, not the vast "plantations" more common on the coast. After the War when slavery collapsed,Upstate farmers were able to downsized their operations until they were manageable and pretty soon the railroads starting bringing business to town -- and then those textile mills got going. 

People in the Lowcountry couldn't manage the huge indigo, cotton, and rice operations with just family. They certainly weren't going to go wading out in the swamp and fight the mosquitoes, so they mostly just wrung their hands and despaired. Really, not much helped until air conditioning and tourists came along and if you were inland from the coast, you still aren't in great shape.

So, there you go, a one-minute overview of South Carolina, past and present.

Here is one more odd little happening on our trip. We met this Blue and Gold Macaw by the name of Co-Pilot at a restaurant in Landrum where we were having lunch on the patio. Apparently everyone in Landrum knows him and he goes out to eat frequently. He had just returned from a vacation to Dollywood (definitely fall under the category of "You can't make this stuff up.")

When Co-Pilot realized we were friendly, he moved right in on us. Below, Kerri's daughter Katie is standing beside her mom with her arms crossed while Co-Pilot checks out our leftovers. Katie's chair was Co-Pilot's quickest path between his own table and ours. She decided she wasn't going to stand between a parrot and the potato chips.

 It's good to be home. The next thing we're looking forward to is Mom's visit next week.

Personal Grounds

A friend and I went downtown today and saw Personal Grounds, an exhibit at the City Gallery by Susan Lenz, a fiber artist who lives in Columbia. I was much more intrigued with the ideas in the exhibit than I was in the art process, although, this woman is definitely very creative, talented and prolific. She must stitch  in her sleep!

Personal Grounds was a series of nearly 100 portraits -- photographs transferred to muslin with hand embroidery, embellishments, and stitched text -- each representing a decision that person made.

To be confronted with such a large number of individuals who made one choice or another somehow honors the integrity in making a clear choice. Sometimes one person's decision was the exact opposite of the decision represented by the portrait right beside it (Atheist - Born Again Christian, Refused to Put My Father in a Nursing Home - Placed My Father in a Nursing Home). The whole exhibit brought awareness and personalized the huge number of the big and small decisions we make all the time.

Here is one of the first portraits and choices that grabbed me. . .

I've always had this thing about "Voting as a Feminist Issue." Now here's this woman with very little time or energy left in her life, and she chooses to spend some of each casting her vote, having her say, influencing the future. Wow.

This one is called Illegal Immigrant. Susan's notes said all the portraits were taken from photographs, obviously, of real people. This man is shielding his face because it would be dangerous for him to be recognized. As an American, I can't even imagine that going to another country and living there illegally would offer me more opportunities than staying here. Wow.

Many of the decision points illustrated were related to health issues. . .  mastectomy rather than chemotherapy, pursuing aggressive treatment, opting to end treatment, a man going public with his battle with breast cancer   I like this one, called Warrior, about choosing to do everything possible to stay healthy after a battle with cancer. Look at how complicated life gets for a Survivor Warrior:

Other big areas of decision included choices about family -- to marry, to have children, to marry when one really wants children and the other really doesn't, to adopt, to give a child up for adoption, to search for a birth parent. . .  Other decisions didn't seem as big -- one woman choose not to have a television, someone else chose not to own a car. Lots of choices related to personal appearance -- hair dying, head shaving, losing weight, a drag queen. . . here's a woman who chose tattoos. . .

All that body art is done with machine stitching.


There were several about ways people chose to do good in the world. A volunteer who gave 3 1/2 hours a week to a museum for something like 34 years, a woman who visits and writes letters to prisoners, a very moving one about a child who declared, after noticing her mother's driver's license, that she too, wanted to be an organ donor. She was killed in a car accident when she was 11, and her organs saved the lives of seven other people. Fittingly, this one was called The Gift of Life and the portrait included everyone in her family.

I like the representation of the blood donor with the little red sequins mounting up the frame.

There was more. In the middle of the gallery, all these sheer panels hung from the ceiling with questions stitched on them -- all the little questions that run through your mind all day every day. . . should I wear the dress or the pants suit for my court appearance?, send a letter or an e-mail?, let me daughter go the party when I haven't met the parents?, decaf or regular?, Mac or PC?, how can I say this tactfully? This list is endless -- there were about 30 panels, two stories high, each with probably 25 questions. . . See what I mean? When does this woman sleep?!

I'm glad I got downtown to see this one.