We recently returned home from a nice little weekend getaway to Asheville.  I absolutely love that town.  I feel like I really fit in there…..with all the hippies and carefree spirits, who may or may not being wearing a bra at any given moment.  The food….omg….puts me in a slight drunken state, giving me just enough sugar and fat induced courage to approach sidewalk poets, tell total strangers that they look “groovy” in their cat sweater, and compliment the dreadlocks on our waiter (while nodding my head up and down in a way that makes him wonder if I’m “all there.”)

A favorite stop in many quaint mountain towns, including Asheville, is the long-lived and long-loved Mast General Store.  I can spend an hour in there easily.  My husband always looks for his favorite Carhart carpenter jeans…which can only be found there, or perhaps at the local Ace Hardware.  I love looking at the toys….all the “old school” toys you just don’t see anymore….like Wooly Willy, Brady Bunch metal lunch boxes and those tin noise makers that mooooo when you turn them upside down.  And of course I always have to get a few Mary Jane candies, a big long rock candy on a stick, and a Sugar Daddy.

You have such a cozy feeling as you walk through the store.  It’s so family friendly and cozy.  You always spend more money than you wanted to….but it’s good fun stuff….empty calories of good memories, maybe a t-shirt with a little black bear on it that you know you’ll never wear, and those beloved old Carhart carpenter jeans.  As you check out, you feel good about your purchase….as you tell the cashier there’s no need to bag that rock candy…then you turn towards the door, and BAM–there it is.  The boob.  The Mother, who has decided to sit in one of the lovely hand-crafted Amish rocking chairs, to nurse her child.  Now, I know I could possibly be opening an extra large sized can of controversy here–I know there are lots of “I nursed in public” Moms out there, possibly reading my little blog.  But the shocking part of this–that caused me to completely stop in my tracks, stare like a child, and mumble a curse word under my breath, was the fact that this woman was completely exposed.  Completely.  She had no cover, no blanket, not even a freaking paper sack with the Mast General Store logo, covering her MASSIVE left breast.  The baby had apparently stopped eating for a second and she had lowered him down into her lap.  She just sat there with her large naked, bulbous boob just hanging there.  By the time I elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs so he could see it, she had raised the baby back up….so what he saw was a nursing Mother, which was shocking enough, due to the fact that “it” was just so huge….and that little baby’s mouth covered such a tiny part of “it”……but he didn’t see what I saw.  I think he secretly hated it too.  I grabbed my daughter’s head and just rubbed her face into my sweater while mumbling something about how much I love her….as she struggled to get her face off of me in order to breathe.  “What the heck, Mom??”  After convincing her I just love her so much I felt like smothering her face into my bosom (which seemed very small to me after what I had just witnessed), we escaped the family friendly General Store just in time.  This “escape” was not to hide our child from the boob.  She is fully aware of what breast feeding is, as she is aware that she was never breast fed by her birth mother.  From the way I have taught her about it, I’m almost certain that she considers breast feeding to be a very private thing. And our child is the most curious and outspoken creature you will ever meet. Had she seen “it” I was certain she would mumble a “really?”  or even a “Wow!  That’s BIG!”  or perhaps a “why is she doing that HERE?” that would spark a most horrific moment between us and the owner of that massive boob.  Our next stop was cheesecake, and nothing could slow me down…..not even that boob.

So yeah….I just love Asheville.  We’re already planning our next trip.   I will for certain, as I always do, go the Mast General Store.  But I will never EVER look at an Amish rocking chair the same way again.

 

I refuse to watch the news.  Some might think that makes me a bit immature….living with my head in a cloud refusing to have an awareness of all the horrible things going on around me in our state, country and world.  But I do have an alternative…I pray.  Refusing to watch the news doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the wars being fought, the people dying, suffering or being mistreated in ungodly ways….I just have this part of me that’s wired wrong….I can’t watch or listen to stories about these things without breaking down in a blubbering sob.  I tried listening to news radio once, as I was driving…and within three minutes I had pulled over on the side of the road sobbing into my steering wheel over a heard of goats that had been taken out to sea in Oregon during a horrible storm.  After a police officer pulled over to ask me if I was okay, I decided on that day that news radio would be deleted from my preset buttons.   So I simply pray, daily, for all of the heartbreaking things I should probably be more aware of.  I know they are out there….but I know a God who is bigger.

Now, I have tried an alternative method of staying up to date on a story or two…by checking sites such as NBC.com’s section of “weird news.”  The Huff Post also shares some unbelievable stories.   I will say, however, that some of these headlines leave me so speechless that I catch myself in a horrible state of worry over the world my child is growing up in.  One of today’s headlines, for example–“Philadelphia Jesus Baptizes Tourists in Love Park.”  I perused another interesting article about a man who woke up from a coma thinking that he was Matthew McConaughey.  After months of rehab, he is now training to become a barber.  I then moved on to a nice little article about a Middle School teacher being fired after taking some of her students for a ride in the trunk of her car.  I’m really glad I read that one….being a teacher myself, I am now aware that this behavior is frowned upon.

To go along with my fear of the “real” news, I also refuse to participate in anything made-up, specifically by Hollywood movie makers, that depicts the death or potential harm of an animal.  I won’t watch a Western….because, dammit, every time those opposing cowboys approach each other, someone’s horse goes all haywire and falls down to the ground.  I know, I know….professional trainers are supposedly involved.  But if YOU weighed 1,500 pounds and you fell to the ground on your side like that, reckon it would hurt???   Show me a DVD case with a dog on it, and I run away like a snake is after me.  A dog in a movie??  Chances are it’s going to die, or at least get it’s feelings hurt really bad.  Unacceptable.

So yeah, I’ll stay in my bubble and just enjoy news captions such as this:

A bit over a year ago….I wrote out a few New Year’s resolutions.  One of them was to start a blog.  By late January I had lost interest…but several times throughout the year I would come up with BRILLIANT ideas of clever topics to write on.  I would think of these things in the shower, while driving, while getting my teeth cleaned, perhaps even during a mammogram….but never when I could actually get the words written down.  Of course I don’t remember what ANY of those clever topics are now….but I thought WHY NOT, one year later, do what I set out to do.  A blog.  Definition for me….a place to share my opinions, observations, thoughts on life, and who knows….maybe even a good recipe.  I’m not the type to share a recipe that sneaks spinach and squash into brownies for those hard to please kids…and by God you SURE won’t ever read anything about politics… but maybe I just want to vent about the price of bacon, or rave about the chicken and waffles I got at a local cafe.  Perhaps I just need to tell you how much I dislike people who don’t use their blinkers, or how mad it makes me when people make broccoli salad and put raisins in it.

Whatever the topic, I’m certain I will only be followed by my Mother and perhaps a few close friends who have to read this in fear that I might bring it up in conversation.  But Hey–I did it!  Post #1 done.