Asheville in May

I spent Memorial Day weekend in Asheville. Oh, south. With the smell of wild jasmine carried up through the open windows and poppies growing field-size on the side of the freeway and mountain laurel framing everything, including itself.

The house in Black Mountain is just a few months from livable. I got the grand tour on Saturday and I kept saying, "I can't wait to move in!" Come on, Peewee, let's go south. It'll feel good on your old bones. We'll just show up one day with all our belongings, or maybe just the TV, and say we're home, mumma, we're home.

My grandma was down there too, enjoying the winding mountain roads and cliff drops. No, she's a flatlander. Still, Saturday we drove to Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi. I love driving the Parkway, and stopping at the lookouts. Driving is a pleasure on the Parkway. There's nothing like that here.

Sunday I spent with Amy and Cheri. We had breakfast downtown, then stopped at their church/the Orange Peel so Amy could greet the second service. Then Cheri let me and Amy pick out food for lunch. We drove to Lake Lure and had a picnic on the grass. Amy and I snuck in St. Pauly Girls. Then they took me spelunking in a nearby cave. Now, I knew we were going spelunking, but I thought we would just, like, drive to the mouth of a cave, roll out and stroll comfortably through the dark with generous head lamps, lead by a cave expert, maybe step over a few rocks, no big deal. I guess I'm a city girl now with city-girl ideas. The hike to the cave made me sweat through my shirt. Inside the cave was pitch black, and we had three-in-a-pack flashlights from Ingles. It was just us in the cave. I was a little scared. We squeezed through and crawled up tight spaces to the outside of the cave—to a beautiful view of Lake Lure and the mountains. At one point we had the option to climb up a wall of stacked rocks using a rope, in the dark. Cheri climbed up, no problem. But Cheri can do anything. I watched her, scared, then decided to try it. I kept imagining my foot slipping and then falling and cracking my head open, and maybe the rocks avalanche on top of me and I die. What would Bear Grylls do THEN? So I stopped half way up the rope and came back down. I did like spelunking, though. It was an adventure.

That night we all had dinner at the rental house. On the way up the mountain to the house we saw a baby bear at the side of the road! I saw my first bear! For dinner Robert made his famous ribs, and Miss Bobbie came up for the night to take Grandma back down to South Carolina the next day. I spent the night at Amy's and Cheri's house. Amy played her music for me and it was a great moment. She's really good and makes me feel talentless. Although lately I'm REALLY good at finding the best summer reality shows to watch (look for my inevitable ode to So You Think You Can Dance/Mia Michaels). The next day my mom, Robert, and I went back to Creston and had lunch on the top balcony of the house. They took me to the airport and Amy waited with me at the gate. It was hard to leave, maybe harder than it's been. Life just seems to feel better down there. Not so traffic heavy and rushed.

Entering the cave.

Cave knees.

Reply to all

The other day we received a company-wide email that said we have to create a "secret question and answer" for system access when we call the IT help desk. Apparently it's a new precaution to prevent fraud, but I think it's just IT's plan to find out everyone's secrets. For example, my secret question is "Were you ever arrested for being drunk and pantsing that cop in front of Barnes & Noble on Grand River, even though he deserved it because he called you 'Ma'am' and you were 22, who the hell calls a 22 year-old 'Ma'am'?" Answer: "Yes."

The email also said to send our secret question and answer only to the woman who sent the email. I thought, Well, this can't be good.

Today everyone in the company got this hilarious chain of emails:

"Name of pet you did not like? POLLY."

"Poor Polly"

"Do not reply to all when sending your secrete question!!!"

"Why am I seeing this?"

"Why am I receiving all these emails? Im confused lol"

"ITS ALL BECAUSE SOME ONE WAS NOT NICE TO A SILLY BIRD."

"can i please be removed from the email list? thank you"

"NO. Your seeing this because the Reply to All button is right next to the Reply button and we only read what we think we need to. And Mariza. You need a new secret question, because all of quill now know yours."

"I think this is going to a bunch of us who don't need to be receiving these."

"Why I do I have all these e mails?"

Weekend

It's street festival season now in Chicago, so Friday night Russ and I went to Mayfest in Lakeview. It was in a really small space and crowded, so we just bought million-dollar hot dogs, did a walk through the sweaty band tent, and left. Then we went to the wine bar for a bit. The DJ wasn't playing good dancing music, so we walked a few blocks to another place. It was salsa night and we were the only two white people. Well, Russ was the only white person. I'm obviously very Mexican looking, so I fit in right away and picked up the salsa moves like a quarter off the floor. We went BACK to the wine bar, then, and danced some more. The wine bar is more my pace than most bars—the pace of a much older woman.

Yesterday I went with Russ to Humboldt Park, a mostly Puerto Rican neigborhood on the northwest side. She had to do an anthropological observation of the people in the park for her class. I don't know what she observed, besides my Olympic soccer skills. We kicked a soccer ball around for a while until my tricks started to embarrass her. And by tricks, I mean kicking myself in the foot.







I wanted to get a picture of the suit in the background taking a camera-phone picture of the geese.




I don't know if you know this, but I was a high school soccer star. Hollywood even made a straight-to-video movie about me called Kick It! which then inspired them to make that gymnastics movie, Stick It!

Mother's Day

For mother's day I sent my mom a giant box of Better Made chips, because she can't get them down south, and by the way she talks about them you'd think they were her life source. She said she saw the Better Made box at the door when they were coming up the driveway and didn't want to get her hopes up in case it was a joke. I guess like the time I wrapped her Christmas gift in a giant Kotex box and said, "The box doesn't mean anything." I also sent her this, which made her laugh so hard she cried.

I called my grandma for mother's day and we discussed where her tattoo should go. You know, the usual. My grandma wants to get a tattoo. Of the word "Sisu," which in Finnish means to have guts.

You remember my grandma:



Not a biker grandma, not a prison grandma, not a Miami grandma. And just a few weeks ago she was telling me that Carly Smithson on American Idol needs to cover up her tattoos because she looks like something out of the "hippie 50s." But my grandma visited her brother in the hospital last week and saw that he has "Sisu" tattooed on his arm. He had it done up in the Yoop. So now she wants one. I told her she should get it across her knuckles, so when she punches someone's lights out they'll see the "Sisu" coming. Or on her lower back, so she can show it off when she wears tube tops and low-rise jeans.

Saturday ride

Weekend

I finally saw Baby Mama. It was okay. I love Tina Fey. I think she's the funniest person on network TV, besides Kathie Lee Gifford (thank you, hour 17 of the Today Show, for letting me say that again). But because she didn't write Baby Mama, it was just okay for me. I would recommend it just for the part where her boss, Steve Martin, rewards her with five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact.

It was beautiful here yesterday. I figured out how to jam my bike in my pod car and drove to the Lake Shore bike path. It feels so good to ride by the lake with the city view in front, and stop for breaks on the beach. I'm looking forward to summer, when I can just jump in the lake when I get too hot. Or have to pee.