Sunshine on a gloomy day

I admit it: I have been wallowing a bit lately as I reflect on the last four years living in Georgia, whining about my lack of success in making friends. You will be happy to hear that I am officially done whining and wallowing - aren't you relieved?

Conversely, I have had tremendous success in making friends via Ravelry, the online knit and crochet community (one friend's daughter calls it "My Knitting Space"). That is no surprise to any of you who have my posts before. I now count the friends that I have met via Ravelry to be some of my dearest friends, even though I have not met most of them in person. It doesn't matter; we connect via Ravelry, Facebook and email, keeping up with each other's lives, sharing in each other's sadness or disappointments, and celebrating each other's successes and joys. These women make me laugh, make me cry and make me feel valued.

I was so excited to see an unexpected package in my mailbox today, and even more excited when I saw it was from my friend Noelle in the Motherhood Later group - I knew it would be good. She knows me well, because she sent me coffee beans and a coffee mug cozy! I can't wait to try the coffee (even if it came from Ann Arbor - it's a running joke between us) and the cozy is adorable. Noelle made the cozy out of hemp, if you can believe it, and the buttons were reclaimed from a Peruvian-made sweater. She also enclosed a terribly cool "Handknit Heroes" postcard.




My coffee will taste extra delicious tomorrow morning and my coffee mug will be better dressed than me, all thanks to a dear friend with a generous heart.

Well excuse me

Cats are so very subtle. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that Spenser wanted some attention. Laying on part of the laptop is a very effective means of communication!

(Sorry about the demon-possessed looking eyes. Spenser really isn't possessed by demons, although the Mother Ship does call to him from time to time)

Four years

Four years ago today, we left our home in North Carolina to move here to Hooterville, Georgia, which never has been nor apparently will ever be home. What I wrote about this anniversary two years ago is almost exactly what I would write again today. For reasons too numerous and tedious to mention, we just don't fit here and here doesn't fit us.

We are celebrating this anniversary in the best possible way by making steps to leave. James arrived safely in New York and is getting settled in his bachelor pad, and hopefully Aidan and I will be able to join him soon. My fondest hope is that on 28 August of 2010, I will not be marking the passage of another year in Georgia.

On his merry way

James started his epic journey to New York yesterday - well, epic only to him. You would think that he was crossing the Rockies in a covered wagon and trying to beat the November snows, to hear him talk! Actually, his Outback did somewhat resemble a covered wagon in that it was practically loaded to the ceiling.

He left a few minutes after Aidan boarded the bus for school. We tried to downplay James' departure as much as possible...really really tried to minimize the drama. And Aidan did great until just as he got ready to climb on the bus and he got a little weepy. I fully expected a bad report from school but he did fine and we had a good afternoon/evening until bath and bedtime. He was tired, he missed Daddy and he just got a little obstinate. All in all, however, the day went far better than I anticipated.

James drove as far as his parents' home in the Charlotte NC area yesterday and stayed overnight with them. Today he will drive as far as he reasonably can, then complete the drive into Syracuse tomorrow. He starts the new job next Tuesday, so he will have a few days to move all his stuff into his apartment, set up utilities, buy a bed and computer desk, and procure the other little things that he either forgot or could not fit into the car.

As for me, I am fine. I am enjoying a little bit of space right now, but I am sure that it will hit me in just a few days that I miss James terribly and that I really loathe being a pseudo-single parent.

Short timer

Although we have no prospective buyers for our house, we have been starting to sort through all of our possessions in preparation to eventually move. We really have only started with James' specific items, since he will be packing up and moving ahead of Aidan and me to New York. I am waiting until he has left to launch a full-scale attack on the closets in the house.

In the meantime, I did some email contacts clean up this past week. It was liberating and sobering all at the time to delete from my contacts those people located locally with whom I tried to form a friendship, but failed miserably. I was amazed at how many names I deleted, names of people with whom I thought would become friends. I was astoundingly wrong in so, so many cases.

When I do leave here, there is probably only one person with whom I will keep in contact and whom I consider to be a friend. Four years in Georgia and just one friend, and a few good acquaintances. Sad.

Living here has dealt a severe blow to my self-esteem. I have never had any difficulty making or keeping friends wherever I have lived. I have gone out of my way here to seek out potential friends, to get together with them, to share interests...but in every case except the one, I have been rebuffed.

It is impossible for me to not take it personally and wonder what is wrong with me, why people here do not like me. I am no closer to an answer now than when I first started asking why. What is it that I am lacking? Do I live in the wrong neighborhood, drive the wrong car, look or sound the wrong way? Is it my opinions, my politics, my tastes, my clothes? Is it that I am not enough or, as I suspect, too much?

So I guess I don't care anymore. I have mentally checked out of Hooter County Georgia and am merely occupying space until I can get where I belong and where I can make some friends. In some ways, a weight has been lifted from my shoulders: I no longer care whether I meet people I like nor do I care if they like me. After all, I am just a short timer.

Gifts in the mail

Since last Friday, I have received not one, not two, but three lovely gifts in the mail from fellow knitters. Last Friday, my talented friend Laura from the Motherhood Later group sent me one of her awesome felted vessels:


Isn't it cool? Laura is the person who suggested that we send RAKs to each other in the Motherhood Later group to celebrate our group's anniversary, and she told me that she had me in mind when she made the suggestion. And what is really cool is that she is the person to whom I sent my anniversary RAK!

Yesterday, a nice, soft envelope from my friend Kelli was waiting in the mailbox. She sent me a copy of a pattern (a free pattern, people - no copyright laws violated); I had admired a market bag that someone had made for her and she tracked down the pattern. She also enclosed three skeins of Nashua Handknits Painted Forest in a luscious Jewels colorway, not to make the market bag but perhaps a warm hat for those cold New York winters ahead! It was so kind and so typical of Kelli to send such a thoughtful and unexpected gift.

Then today another envelope arrived, this one from Florida. It was from a person in the Handmade RAK group and she made a Pokemon card holder for Aidan in his (current) favorite color of orange:


As you can see, he is delighted with the card case! Let's just hope it cuts down on the number of stray Pokemon cards that I find throughout the house.

Three gifts in one week, which makes me wonder: are knitters the most generous people on earth? Or do I just happen to know wonderful people? Yes, and yes!

Meet the teacher

Yesterday afternoon, we met Aidan's teacher for the coming school year. It started at 4 pm but Aidan was so excited that he started asking to leave around 2 pm! I managed to hold him off until the reasonable departure time of 3:50, although we still got there quite ahead of James, who was coming from work.

The school was the usual Meet the Teacher chaos of parents, children, bored and/or crying siblings, teachers and staff. We found Aidan's class easily and met Mrs. Corley, who will soon be our darling's new favorite person, at least until the first time she disciplines him. Mrs. Corley seems like a good combination of warmth and steel. Aidan was delighted to find that three of his classmates from last year will be in this year's class, and I was delighted to find that one child in particular from his class last year is NOT in his class this year.

We delivered the bag o'supplies, filled out the requisite paperwork and took home more paperwork to complete. At the transportation desk, we were thrilled - ECSTATIC, really - to learn that the World's Greatest Bus Driver, Mr. Kemberling, will be Aidan's bus driver again this year. Mr. Kemberling is punctual, reliable, watchful and careful, all wonderful qualities to find in a school bus driver. He is also friendly, an added bonus.

James and Aidan then left, and I went to help sell school spirit wear: t-shirts, pencils, jewelry and those ubiquitous car magnets.

Side note: There are enough things about my station wagon that scream "mom!" without adding a stupid school magnet.

I enjoyed chatting with a few people and seeing some of Aidan's classmates, but our table stayed quite busy the whole time and we had to hustle to keep up. I am amazed at the amount of money that some parents dropped to outfit their children in school t-shirts! Six pm was a happy sight; we packed up the goods, stored them in the PTO workroom and I was free to go home and enjoy that well-deserved cocktail.

And thus begins another school year.

News

The good news: James has accepted a job offer in another state! We have been living on his reduced salary for over a year - 80% since spring - so going back to a full salary plus a raise will be lovely. He will be the General Manager for a freight forwarder and we will get to move away from Georgia...

The not-so-good news: The job is NOT back in the Triangle (North Carolina), which we would have loved. We wish we had never left Raleigh back in 2005, but the fates right now do not have us moving back.

Good news to us: The job is in Syracuse, NY. We are looking forward to living again in a small city with a strong university presence, and it is a lovely area of NY. Yes, I know that they get A LOT of snow each year, it will be very cold in the winter and it will be a major, major adjustment.

More not-so-good news: While the hiring company is paying to move us, they will not buy the house. James starts his new job on 1 September and will live in a small apartment, but Aidan and I will stay here until the house sells. Let's hope it doesn't take too long to sell the house; the idea of living apart is not appealing, but we don't think that leaving a house empty to sell is a wise idea.

James resigned yesterday and, surprisingly, his current employer handled it professionally (it was a concern, believe me). Our lives are going to be absolutely nuts for some time, but we are thrilled that James has such a good opportunity in a lousy job market and that, in the long run, we will be out of Georgia. Georgia is not a bad place, it is just not a good place for us.

So...anybody want to buy our house?

A day in the ATL

Today we drove into the city from Hooter County and enjoyed some uniquely Atlanta experiences.

We started the day at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, which has been our favorite place to visit in the city. We haven't been there in quite some time and wow, have they made changes in our absence...and, in our opinion, not necessarily changes to the good. There is a fancy schmancy new parking deck, Visitors Center and entrance plaza, and fancy schmancy new prices. It was a bit of a shock to have to pay to park when we have always parked for free.

But we still enjoyed the frog sculptures, the beautiful plants and the artwork that is, well, artfully placed throughout the grounds.





It was time for lunch, so we drove over to The Varsity, for our monthly allotment of greasy food. The food was okay, but the atmosphere and people watching were out of this world. If you ever visit Atlanta, you really ought to get yourself on over there - it is unique and a unique experience.



We then drove west on Ponce de Leon Avenue to the Virginia Highland neighborhood - a very, very cool area. Our first destination was Knitch, a lovely yarn store that was everything I thought it would be and more. Aidan was thrilled to help one of the marvelous sales people wind a ball of yarn using a swift. My knitting friends will be shocked to hear that I bought no yarn (gasp); it is still difficult to buy yarn when I do not have a specific project in mind. But I did buy a Knit, Drink, Tink t-shirt and petted lots and lots of luscious yarns.

Next stop was Highland Woodworking, where James happily browsed tools, tools and more tools. I really can't tell you anything more than that, although he did make some kind of purchase (not nearly as cute as my t-shirt).

Our last stop was Centennial Olympic Park, a 21 acre park that was built for the 1996 Olympic games. James and Aidan enjoyed the Olympic rings fountain, and then we rambled through the park, enjoying the downtown views and, again, the awesome people watching.


And a good time was had by all!

Enjoy a few more photos of the Atlanta Botanical Garden: