Wooly Worms
It's
going to be a bad, snowy winter, y'all.
This fact
was confirmed for me yesterday when I ran across this guy.
Like most
country girls, I grew up with a whole lot of folk wisdom. Because so many
people in my town were based in a "grow it and eat it" farming
mentality, a huge focus was put on predicting the weather. Dogwood and redbudwinters. Indian summers. And the all-knowing wooly worm.
Now, in
case you didn't know, the wooly worm is the larval stage of the Isabella tigermoth. It can be brown or black, or a mixture of the two. Conventional wisdom
has always held that the more black the wooly worms show, the worse the winter
will be. The placement of the colors can also indicate weather patterns -- a
brown band in the middle of a black wooly worm means that winter will start and
end harshly with a warm snap in the middle. It's an old-timey tradition across
the mountains -- there's even a Wooly Worm Festival in Lee County!
My high
school biology teacher had more than a bit of country naturalist in him; he
taught us that a lot of natural phenomena that reach "folk wisdom"
status are often based in scientific fact. I've read that, while there isn't a
lot of scientific data to support the wooly worm's predictive patterns, their
color patterns are affected by moisture and temperature. I also know that the
wooly worm is usually right.
Did y'all
grow up reading the wooly worm?
November Quake
Yesterday,
as I took the dogs out for a walk in the hills at my parents' house, I started
thinking about how hard it is to characterize these first few weeks of
November. It's kind of still football season, and it's kind of basketball
season. Halloween is over, and you can't really drag Thanksgiving out into a
multi-week holiday. It feels ridiculous to put up Christmas lights already, and
yet I get so excited when I see the Christmas displays at department
stores. Maybe that's why there are so many November memes -- we're all trying to figure out what the month is all
about.
Recent
weather patterns here in Kentucky certainly have added to November's identity
crisis. It was sweater weather as my beau and I left Rupp Arena Monday night;
by the end of the week, I heard talk of tee times. Now, we all know that
Kentucky weather is unpredictable -- if you don't like it, stick around a day or two and it'll change. But, this is one crazy-assed Indian summer, even by
Kentucky standards.
Just when
I thought it couldn't get any weirder around here, November decided to throw me
for a loop. I was already a little on edge today. Deer season started this
morning and I awoke to shotgun blasts reverberating throughout the holler.
Then, around noon, I was standing in my parents' kitchen making lunch when I
felt a weird rumble. A ripple of vibration made its way
across the walls of the dining room and kitchen. The china cabinet groaned and
tinkled. At first, we weren't quite sure
what had happened. My dad swore he hadn't felt anything. My mom thought it was
just her imagination. But, soon enough, we confirmed it on our very favorite
news source -- Facebook.
Now, it
wasn't anything like the kind of quake they experience on the West Coast. It
was a 4.3 magnitude earthquake in Whitesburg, which is about 45 miles away from
my parents' house. There's no significant damage to be found. Around here, my
aunt suffered a few cracks in her walls. The KSP post for Southeastern Kentucky
told the Herald-Leader that they'd received reports of "people's pictures being knocked off the wall, and ceramic figurines being broken." Nothing devastating, but certainly a
memorable flourish on a pretty late autumn day.
I guess
November just wanted to be taken a little more seriously.
NaNoWriMo
November means a lot of things.
Basketball season begins. Football season gets interesting. The world is divided into those folks who decorate for the holidays before Thanksgiving, and those who don't.
For some reason, November's internet brings a plethora of memes. For the guys, there's No-Shave November and its weak cousin Movember. For the Facebook crowd, there's Thirty Days of Thankful. And, for the writers among us, there's NaNoWriMo.
National Novel Writing Month, despite it's horrid acronym, is a writing project that operates under a very simple idea. You have thirty days to write a book. Don't take forever, don't overthink it. Get it done. Get out of your head and write.
The HerKentucky writing team were all over the place when asked if they were participating this year. Megan W just finished a round of revisions on her existing book and is, as my granny would say, "wore plum out" with writing. Sarah's undertaking a November challenge of her own -- she's slowing down, taking control of her days, and "Saying No in November." Lydia is knee-deep in big life changes. So, in short, a lot of us just don't have time right now.
Emily and I are both writing in November. Emily tells me she's a "NaNoWriMo rebel", as she's writing non-fiction rather than a true novel. I have a good outline from the idea I developed while attending the Southern Festival of Books; I don't know if it'll take off into a full-size novel by December 1, but I'm certainly giving it a try!
What about y'all? Anybody else doing NaNoWriMo? Or No-Shave November? Or some awesome November meme I don't even know about?
HerKentucky Adoption Series: Kathy's Story
HerKentucky is celebrating National Adoption Month with a collection of stories from Kentucky moms. Today, we're hearing from Kathy Ponatoski, my college classmate and Words With Friends nemesis. Kathy lives in Lexington with her husband Jeff and their sons Drew and Kai. -- HCW
I was 33 years old when I became a mother. It was in a room with concrete floors, 7000 miles and 13 time zones from my home in Central Kentucky. A nanny handed me a gorgeous infant boy who looked at me through curious, confused almond shaped eyes as dark as coal, before empting the contents of his stomach onto my freshly pressed blouse. In that moment, we were a family.
It was three years before when I received the phone call confirming what I had long suspected: that I would be unable to have biological children. As painful as that moment and the months that followed it were, they felt like a distant memory that morning in Taiwan, and more like ancient history as I write these words. The few months following were a sad range of emotion. I processed the anger of seeing people on the news sent to prison for child abuse and neglect. I endured a seemingly endless number of lunch dates, girls-nights-out and water-cooler conversations with other 30-something women where the conversation seemed to center exclusively around either the euphoria of pregnancy or the horror of childbirth. And perhaps most painfully, I grieved the loss of someday knowing what the combination of Jeff and I together would look like.
In our search to determine the right path, it’s safe to say that we never considered infertility treatments. They were among the options available to us, obviously, but it never seemed to appeal to either of us. I became aware during those few months of the number of families I ran into that had adopted: at the grocery, at our favorite Thai restaurant, at church. My good friend from work had just returned from China with her second daughter. We also became involved during those months with a group of adoptive families we met through my friend from work. Each family had a unique story… one had adopted twice domestically and were in process for a third child. One family had a daughter born in Russian, and another a daughter born in Guatemala.
Every family we talked to seemed to say the same thing. Call Adoption Assistance in Danville. After a preliminary meeting with them, it was easy to see why. We were blown away with what a tremendous resource was available right in our backyard to help us navigate the entire process. A few months later we had a completed home study, and were on a list a few months after that. We flew to Taiwan for Drew in January of 2008.
This past March, four years after my first trip across the Pacific, I was back in Taiwan to bring home Drew’s brother. Beautiful baby Kai turned one year old this week and is the perfect completing piece to our family.
Last night our family was out to dinner at Ramsey’s . I was reminded of how much fun it is to watch a baby explore new foods when Kai touched a fried green tomato to his lips and at first looked confused, and then horrified. As we were finishing our meal, (i.e., Drew was inhaling a piece of combo pie at record speed) a nearby patron stopped to say: “My goodness, your family is so lovely.”
When I talk about adoption, I often say that it’s the advice you cannot give, because people must arrive their on their own. Together.
I’m glad that Jeff and I were able to dream together of just how lovely our family could be.
___________________________________________________________
Adoption Assistance now has offices in both Danville and Louisville, with social workers serving all regions in Kentucky. They offer home study services for all private domestic and international adoption programs. They also provide insight on available programs and preferred placement agencies. They are on the web at www.adoptionassistance.com
Maker's Mark Hot Toddy
The classic bourbon cure for what ails you.
I've had the worst cold, y'all. The kind where you don't really want to do anything but lie around in your pajamas and watch bad TV on Netflix. And drink a hot toddy.
I made a batch of hot toddies the other night, and I swear my fever broke just after drinking one. At the very least, they kept us all warm and happy on a cold night!
Maker's Mark Hot Toddy
- 1 oz bourbon
- 1 oz steaming-hot water
- 1 lemon
- honey
Put a kettle of water on to boil. Drizzle honey in the bottom of coffee mug. Pour in one ounce bourbon, or to taste. Squeeze juice of 1/4 lemon into mug. Pour in hot water. Add additional bourbon and/or hot water to taste. Warm up. Feel better.
Cheers, y'all!