Lack of Interest

Last week, I was greeted with an email message from my high school 20-year reunion committee stating that the reunion had been canceled due to lack of interest.

Lack. Of interest.

And I'm not surprised. My high school class was never known for being on top of things. The reunion was scheduled to happen in less than two weeks and we had all been notified of the impending event last August. Lack of interest with ten whole months to plan, buy reunion tickets, take time off from work, book the flight, lose 20 pounds, get Botox, rent a convertible, rent a date, sign up for hair implants, and buy the perfect dress/suit. What this says to me is that most of the class of '90 would rather stay home, or go on summer beach vacations, or do anything at all than spend a weekend with people we either loved or hated two decades ago.

I have to admit, I was part of this "lack of interest." I had been stewing for ten months about whether to go and make a week of it. I haven't been back to my home state in four years and thought I would use the reunion to visit family, meet up with a couple of West Virginia bloggers, and see all my old haunts. But, I was also thinking of every possible excuse not to go. Whenever I would check the reunion site to see if anyone had updated their information, I would cringe over a new reunion attendee I'd rather not see.

I really didn't enjoy high school. My transition from junior high to high school was horrendous. I left one school with many friends and entered the other 90 days later practically friend-less. Fickle female teenagers can be such heartless bitches. By the time I'd regained my footing and new friendships, it was my senior year and all I wanted then was to graduate and get the hell out of Dodge.

One of my fellow class of '90 mates suggested we get the "cool" people together for a separate reunion, that we ignore the official activities and do our own thing. I considered that for about 24 hours, even compiled a list and sent it to her, then I shut it down. That would have made us no better than those little pricks who had ignored us and made our lives miserable 20 years ago.

I realize that it's entirely possible that most of these people, with whom I spent my formative years, have changed for the better. It's also entirely possible that had the reunion happened, and had I attended, I would have been miserable.

I'm thinking about visiting my home state this fall, driving through the mountains during the peak of autumn color. When I do, I'll probably email that small group of Black Eagles I cared about and who made those three years a smidge easier. We may gather at a local restaurant, huddled over a yearbook, and recalling all those wonderful and horrible moments that made up our teen years. No hundreds of dollars spent on clothes we had to hire a trainer (or plastic surgeon) to make fit or sports cars we rented to make false impressions, all just to gather in an overpriced hotel ballroom with a dry chicken dinner. Instead, maybe we'll wear our best-worn jeans and reminisce over cheap cups of coffee, all the while flashing each other with pictures of our kids.

Maybe.

Der's Day Out*

For over a month, I had been looking forward to an outing with my friend/sorority sister Toni,


and her husband The Fart Master** John.


Yep, that's right. We were at Sheffield Mine in Franklin, North Carolina, hunting for native rubies:


All those buckets right there? Full of dirt from just over the hill. This mine was owned by Tiffany & Co. back in the 19th century. And today? People are still finding rubies hundreds of carats in size.

Gentlemen? Sign me up.

I paid my $15 for two buckets of dirt (and later signed up for a third bucket) and began five hours of rock-grinding, mud-slinging, and many, many laughs:


Oh, yeah. I was ready to find a Honker and vowed that if I did, I would smear mud on my face. So, the search began. Mike, one of the mine's employees, would stop by from time to time to help with identification or show off his favorite ruby finds:


That? Is a BFR with bits of ruby crystals scattered throughout. Just gets the blood pumpin'!

Suddenly, there it was, my big find of the day. A 23 carat "Squeaker." It wasn't the Honker I was hoping for, but close enough:


I'm seriously thinking of opening a spa at the end of the flume. "Come to Sheffield Mine! Get a ruby and a facial!"

And here's my baby:


Not very big:

(Yes, that's a saucer, so you get an idea of scale.)

But it's all mine! Now, I just need three more to have a ring, earrings, and necklace set.

Guess I'm going back! Who's with me?

*Among a handful of my friends, my nickname is Der. It all goes back to a friend's son who, as a toddler, couldn't say "Heather" but could definitely say "Der" and so the nickname stuck.

**Dear John, I love you. Der. :)

The Particular Sadness of My Kitchen

I recently read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake* (A pretty good book with an interesting story line that will keep you engaged if you can overlook the staggering lack of quotation marks, which, quite frankly, made me want to RIP OUT the author's larynx. But, I'm cool. It's aaaaallll good.) and wondered what people would discover about me through my cooking.

And that's when I remembered... I don't cook! I suck at cooking. My cooking? Bad for your health.

OK, OK, I'll be honest. There are a week's worth of meals I know how to cook without making people gag and run for the hills. But? Overall? I'm not good at it. Deep down, I'm a recipe-literalist. If a recipe says 1/4 teaspoon of this and 1 cup of that, then I'm putting in 1/4 teaspoon and 1 cup, no more, no less. I don't experiment and I certainly don't know what spices or vegetables make which meats taste better or worse. I'm clueless! I'm at the mercy of the recipe and what it says goes for me. It drives me nuts when my mom, a.k.a. Martha Stewart, Jr., will tell me "dash" of salt or "pinch" of nutmeg. NO! Absolutely not! Don't give me that bovine crap. Do you know I actually found measuring spoons that are labeled pinch, dash, and smidge? Yeah. That's how desperate I am. I use a kitchen conversation piece in my mother's cooking.

And when I get excited and try a new recipe that my loved ones deem Meh, could use more 'insert ingredient here'. I lock up. What's the point in slaving over a stove full of new-recipe-food, after a day of herding kids, laundry, dishes, and toys, when the end result is going to be Welllllll..... I've even tried the simple pot roast. Easy, right? A slab of meat, some salt, pepper, dry onion soup mix, water, brown that sucker on all sides, put it in the crock and pot and GO! Wrong. Turns out dry and tasteless every time, no matter what combination I attempt. After all that, the kitchen is then trashed and everyone's taste buds go to bed unimpressed and I couldn't care less if I ever touch another cookbook or skillet again.

So, if I actually did cook on a regular basis, and any of you had the talent of the young girl in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, you would most likely taste the following:

frustration - that I have to cook
irritation - that I've spilled yet another ingredient on the floor
fatigue - that it's the end of the day and I wish some one else would fix this food
anger - that it's all going to turn out Meh after all that work

Anybody want to send me some flash-frozen casseroles?

*BTW? Not a paid post. So, suck it FTC!

Scumbag!

Three weeks ago, I was commiserating with Rob, my scuba diving mentor and my kids' swim teacher.

Rob: Jim (fellow scuba buddy and co-owner of Atlanta Scuba & Swim Centers) is in the Caymans.

Rob and Me, simultaneously: Scumbag.

Me: When does he get back?

Rob: Sunday.

Me: Total scumbag.

Rob: Yep.

Doesn't matter if I had been scheduled to fly to the Great Barrier Reef the day after the above conversation, Jim was still a scumbag and I, of course, would have shared the title the next day. The week before, nextdoorneighbor Jodi's teen son was diving in the Keys. Yep. Scumbag.

Where am I going with this? I'll tell you. Even though this has nothing to do with scuba diving and even though I chose not to attend BlogHer and instead decided to thumb my nose at the whole thing from the comfort of my suburban-Atlanta home? You're all scumbags. (You, too!)

In a loving, caring sort of way, of course! HEY! It's tradition!

And when I go scuba diving in Curaçao in October, you may all scream SCUMBAG! in my Inbox. Pinky-swear.

Summer Doldrums

In nautical terms, being in the doldrums means being in an area of the ocean where calm winds prevail. It's a place where the winds may even completely die down, where you and your sailing ship become trapped with no escape until the winds return. Used in language, "being in the doldrums" means existing in a static state, one of listlessness, boredom, a slump.

Thus far, summer has been all of the above for me. Except for J-man's broken nose, this summer has been calm. There has been none of the angst or ridiculousness of last summer. Also, I haven't been sick. After spending two months of the summer of 2009 attempting to cough up both of my lungs (I now lovingly refer to that time of my life as Consumption '09), this summer has found me with nary a whisper of fever, sniffle, ache, or pain.

This summer has so far been one of slumpiness. I have a room full of pictures to be scrapbooked, a box full of fabric to be stitched into Christmas gifts, two stacks of books to be read, a TiVo full of NCIS and Deadliest Catch, and I just don't care about any of it. Working up any sort of excitement about, well, anything, takes work.

Honestly, I feel a little like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Wake up, dress kids, make beds, fold laundry, eat, drink coffee, get kids outside to play, shower, eat, get kids to swimming lessons, one naps while two watch a Disney something, eat, entertain kids, bed.

I don't know. I think it's true that in times of adversity and hardship, we humans are at our most creative. At least, that's true for me. When shit's flyin', I'm all over the place. When everything is calm, I sit like a lump. I'm not saying I want a plane to crash into my house, I'm just saying I wish when everything is ticking along like clockwork, when I'm in the doldrums, I wish I could be as creative, as active, when life is in the middle of a hurricane.

You know?

P.S. It's frakking July already? Seriously, I've got to figure out who's shooting me through these wormholes 'cause it's getting old already.