What’s a Girl to Do?

It's not often that one gets a chance to redefine oneself, to start from scratch as it were. This is certainly true for a cautious soul like myself who generally avoids upheaval like the plague! Yet there are times when change is thrust upon even poor little old me and I must carpe diem!

If I don’t feel exactly capable of “carpe”ing anything right at the moment, I am at least attempting to awkwardly catch—girly style, two handed to the chest—and not embarrassingly fumble said “diem.”

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where I want to go next with my life and, as a result, doing research on massage therapy programs in the area. My dream (realistic or not, I’m not yet sure) is that massage therapy might make it possible for me to work part time while still pursuing, but not being supported by, my creative endeavors. I hope that it might also be a fulfilling way of helping others in a more relaxed setting than the law office!

After visiting a couple of newcomer programs last week, I spent all day Sunday at an orientation workshop at what seems to be the grand old man of Carolina massage therapy schools: Body Therapy Institute in Siler City, http://www.massage.net/. (How early in Both the massage and internet phenomenons do you have to be to get www.massage.net?!)

It’s a beautiful drive out to BTI on twisty back roads through forests and the most picturesque farms imaginable. The school itself is on a working farm and it’s a gorgeous place to learn. During the excellent lecture and hands on exercises in “body mechanics,” “presence” and “quality touch,” I would glance out of the windows to see hawks swooping low over the fields and occasionally stooping after a small furry dinner. After class I took a walk through the fields myself, around the pond and past radiant yellow irises and fragrant honeysuckle (another delightful new floral experience for someone from honeysuckleless Chicago—but I shall keep my gushing to a minimum).

I am most tempted by this beautiful, supportive place and by this potential career.

At the very least Dan is going to be one happy, relaxed fellow for the next year or so if I go for it…

Magnolias Revealed…

In Chicago I always thought of Magnolias as exotic spring flowers. Here they are common as dirt, much to my Midwestern delight. With great anticipation I’ve been watching the buds on my backyard magnolia tree grow from the size of green beans to fat little pears. Looking out my bathroom window while brushing my teeth, I Willed those tantalizing buds to burst open as I felt they surely must at any minute… The magnolias, for some mysterious reason, were stubborn and refused to open at my mental command despite the hot breath of summer breathing down their proverbial necks.

I commented on this to my Tarheel friends, “I thought magnolias were a spring flower?” “Well, late May usually…” And it hit me that late May Is spring in Chicago but down here? Well, it’s just on the cusp of summer a rollin’ in.

I am happy to report that my patience has been rewarded and my magnolia blooms are finally popping. A few fuzzy shells have split and sloughed off and the fleshy petals underneath have spread to expose the most interesting apparatus. The top of which is covered with little hooks and the bottom with tiny petalish things that shed to show a crimson center. So many things I had never noticed about the make up of a Magnolia bloom before. I suppose in future years I will not have the same delight in such mundane moments as the opening of the magnolias but for now I am relishing each new discovery.

Previously in Lee's Big Adventure...

I have discovered a fabulous way to generate blog posts... Copy from past e-mails! :)

So if this looks strangely familiar... There is a reason. But the following escapades were in effect the first entries of this blog and so I am attaching them hereto:

April 25, 2007

Hello there! I thought I should send out a note saying "Hey!" and filling you in a bit on what's up with me so far post-move.

I've had many adventures since I saw you all last including, but not limited to, two eight hour Mega Bus rides up to Minnesota and back to visit friends and family over Easter, a number of days spent in the Rockford Memorial NICU with my very good friend Tina's premie (7 weeks early!), and a 13 hour drive over the mountains with a car crammed full of stuff. With all my travels I didn't actually arrive down here until last Tuesday and I came in to find our tiny house filled to the gills with boxes...

I've still got a lot of unpacking to do! But today we got my desk reassembled and I am happy to be making real progress getting things dealt with, either tucked away or unpacked.

The end of last week was very hectic with the iO South Improv festival Dan was running. Fortunately it was very successful and Dan is exhausted but happy. I'm not sure that he wants to go through it all Again quite yet... But once he has recovered a bit he might feel differently.

Last Sunday was the first real free day I had since the drive down here. Dan was teaching class all day so as I was somewhat at loose ends anyway and longing to get out exploring I went on a Long ramble around Durham and the Duke Campus and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens http://www.hr.duke.edu/dukegardens/index.html. The garden was quite a popular place as you can well imagine on a perfect Sunday afternoon, high of 85, nice breeze and not a cloud in the sky. There were an amusing number of brides and grooms being photographed around every bush and tree and shrubbery in the gardens and I also happened upon a very serious woman with a ferret on a leash which I found rather striking.

Durham is not exactly designed for walking, not like Chicago at any rate. Sidewalks come and go in a rather haphazard and mysterious fashion and those that are present are often rather patched and more vertical than horizontal. (I was actually glad I had not found my sneakers yet and had been forced to wear my boots!) Still it is quite charming wandering around my neighborhood. The campus is beautiful and everything is green and lush in a way that you simply don't find in the city. Huge trees are everywhere, bird songs sound all day long and somewhat unkempt yards gush forth all manner of greenery and flowers. The azaleas are almost embarrassingly fecund to the point that even our sadly abused and untouched yard sports a huge bush covered in salmony pink blooms.

I suggest that you all come visit in the next 30 seconds before it gets too hot to enjoy... Oops. Too late.

May 6, 2007

Sundays are good days for adventures...

Saturday was gray and rainy and cold so I stayed in and thought serious thoughts about my future and looked at job ads and recoiled in horror at the thought of pursuing any of said jobs and thought about going to massage therapy school and researched related job prospects and training programs and worried about how I would pay for such a thing and kept Dan up until 2:00 worrying about the logistics involved and then dreamt one of those dreams where I was at school and I hadn't been to class all semester and hadn't even looked at the syllabus and not only was my room a mess so I couldn't find any information on where or when my final was but it was crazy with pop bottles exploding on everything and water running through it and...

And then today it was a Glorious day. I walked outside to say good bye to Dan this morning and knew that I must do something outside or I would never forgive myself for being such a chicken that I couldn't manage to leave the house by myself when it was so perfect. I had read in the paper about a wild flower hike organized by the Eno River Association so I girded my loins (i.e. printed out some Mapquest maps) and left myself an hour to find the place. 15 minutes later I was twiddling my thumbs in the parking lot of the Occoneechee Mountain State Park wondering if I had made the right choice...

I think I did. At first I thought I might be annoyed by the chatter of the other hikers, mostly retirees, but as we all grew a bit more winded and spread out on the trail that didn't bother me and I enjoyed the camaraderie with the other hikers. We did not see all that many kinds of wild flowers but the Mountain Laurel was just coming into glorious bloom and was everywhere on the mountain. It's a beautiful flower that grows in big white clusters. That's lovely enough from a distance but when you get right up close to it you can see how amazingly engineered it is. The buds look like shooting stars and when they open up the stamens are trapped bent back against the petals. When a bee or some such critter gets close enough to disturb the stamens then they pop out. We had some fun exploring these mechanics ourselves.

Mostly I just enjoyed the trekking through the woods on a perfect day with the golden green light spangling down on me through the glowing trees, sometimes through relatively open areas where the ground cover was bracken fern and sometimes down narrow trails with huge flowering mountain laurels on either side. At one point our guide took us out of the public area on an overgrown trail back to an area called "Panther's Cave" where there was indeed a huge rock outcropping with a cave in it and a delicate little streamlet of water chirruping past. We also visited both the top and bottom of an old railroad rock quarry. The view from the top was quite lovely but the view from the bottom was more striking. The bare stone had weathered into strips of different colors with some recent rock slides providing a jagged contrast. Very grand and lovely.