Nancy Drew and the Vanishing Signs

I am, by definition, a Southerner.  I was born and raised in Louisiana, came of age in Arkansas.  I have the accent and everything.  I love sweet tea and ceiling fans and festivals named after whatever random critter/crop/nickname you can think of.  But I recently relocated far away from my home, and as such have been abusing the hospitality of some of my very good friends.

Now, I have always been of the opinion that having houseguests is a lot like having a large parasite attached to your skull:

With two major differences: you can get rid of a parasite with medications, and houseguests usually smell better.  (Although as I can unfortunately tell you from experience, this is not always the case.)

I've been trying to keep to myself as to stay out of the hair of these generous people who have so graciously agreed to let me invade their lives for a while.  In fact, some days I think I hide away too well.  These are the days I get text messages like this:

Host Friend has been so great to me, but I think I baffle him.  He gets very agitated when I tell him that I don't have plans for my days off.  Granted, I imagine his brain looks a little something like this:

So naturally, my lack of planning is something he doesn't seem to understand.  I'm beginning to think that I may give him an ulcer or something by the time I leave by virtue of my seeming refusal to plan anything more than a few hours in advance.

The other thing I'm dealing with for the first time in my life is traffic.  Now, where I come from, a traffic jam is caused by a cow in the middle of the road or a large piece of agricultural equipment is being moved up the highway at top speed (4 MPH).  Our highways are at most three lanes going each way, and most aren't even that big.  Speed limits range from 40-70 MPH and are strictly enforced.  Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.  Sure, you'll get pulled over for speeding, but generally once the cop reads your ID and realizes that he knows a) you or b) your mama, he'll generally let you off with a warning.

There are more people in this strange new city than are in the entire state of Arkansas.  Which means that when I commute into the city, I'm driving mile for mile with more people than live in my entire town back home.  And while the posted speed limit is like 55, the traffic is moving at 80, and even going that speed, I routinely get passed by state troopers.

The other thing I've noticed is that down south you see this:

And it is repeated about nine times before any lane of traffic ends.  Whereas up here, the lane just mysteriously vanishes with little to no warning.  Maybe it's the whole Southern hospitality thing, but I really don't think it would kill anyone to put up a sign or something, instead of leaving it unmarked and watching the cars veer and swerve suddenly when the lane ends abruptly.  Or maybe it's a vast conspiracy by whoever it is that gets paid to clean up the mess when someone wrecks on the highway.

Once more unto the breach

I got to visit my favorite alley again today.

See, for my profession, there are two base credentialing exams: the CRT and the RRT.  I took the CRT back in January, but in order for me to actually graduate in May, I had to take my RRT exam today.  Well, today and yesterday, to be specific.  I was lazy and didn't feel like cramming the entire thing into one day.

Anyway, this time I had someone drop me off so I didn't have to venture passed the vagrants at the bus station, which was nice.  Instead, I got dropped off by an elementary school playground that looks ridiculously out of place in the area.  This section of town isn't horrible, but it's not the nicest.  In fact, there's a large-scale urban renewal project going on all over the city.  Which will make it lovely in about ten years, but for now it's still a mess of broken concrete and abandoned buildings.  And this shiny, brand-new elementary school playground filled with shiny, brand-new playground paraphernalia, all of which was being completely ignored by the schoolchildren in favor of huddling by the fence trying to shield their iPods and cell phones from the monitors.

Anyway, after wandering passed the children, I found myself facing the alley once again.

I took pictures this time, because I felt like some of y'all didn't quite believe me last time.   Here's some of the poorly-executed graffiti:

And the door, which has since been marked, to an extent:

I can't really say much about the tests themselves - other than I think our professors were intentionally giving us practice tests that were harder than the real thing.  I mean, they scared the bejeesus out of us when we were preparing for them, and they wasn't nearly as bad as I thought they were going to be. And all that matters is:

Erin the Great, RRT.  I kinda like the sound of that.

The elephant in the room

It has been over a month since I graced this site with my presence.  Over a month.  I mean, I did so good in January with the posting, and then I just disappeared.  Poof.

See, I kept sitting down to write something, ANYTHING, but I kept getting interrupted by the stupid elephant.

This stupid elephant has been stomping around my room, demanding my attention.  I've been doing my level best to ignore it, but it just won't leave me alone.

Cleaning, writing, driving, no matter what I do, the elephant is there.  I tried hiring some ivory hunters to get rid of it for me, but they informed me that 1) ivory hunting is technically illegal and 2) this is an untusked elephant, so they couldn't really help me anyway.  I brought in a bunch of mice, hoping that they would scare it off, but no such luck.  And the mice were chased off  by the ancient cat that lives in our garage, anyway.

So really, the only way to make the elephant go away is to talk.  To tell y'all that I found out that I was pregnant at the beginning of February.  I was... I don't know what I was.  Terrified?  Excited?  Stunned?  A little of each, I think.  I couldn't concentrate for anything, and was absolutely EXHAUSTED all the time.  I was getting used to the idea of being somebody's mother. 

I went to my doctor's appointment and had an ultrasound.  I got to see my baby.  Or what would become my baby.  The doctor took some measurements, and announced that my baby was 5 weeks, 5 days old.  I was supposed to be 9 weeks, 6 days.

The doctor had me come back a week later to be sure, but there was no change.  My baby had stopped developing. 

To say that I was devastated is an understatement.  I felt every horrible feeling imaginable.  I felt angry and depressed and upset and betrayed by my own body.  I didn't want to do anything but lay on my bed and cry for hours. 

A few days later, I was scheduled for the surgery that removed the 'products of conception' from my body.  The procedure itself was fairly quick, and I spent the following days in a haze of painkillers and sleep.  My pregnancy symptoms gradually started going away.  I wasn't sad to see the last of the heartburn and gas, but I kinda miss the ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

So that's my elephant.  That's why I couldn't post anything.  I didn't want to talk about it.  But I have to talk about it.  I have to put it out there, because this was a real and terrible thing that happened to me.  It happens to a lot of people.  And it's universally devastating.  But I will go on.  I will wake up in the morning, and I won't cry.  I'll be able to be happy for other women when they have their babies, and God willing, I'll be able to have one of my own someday.  And the first thing I'll buy him (or her) is a stuffed elephant.  To remind us all that life goes on.

Brought to you by the letters C, R, and T

So I have a couple of new letters to add after my name.

I took my CRT exam today, which is the entry-level certification for respiratory therapists.  I was supposed to have done this several weeks ago, but the snow happened, and I had to reschedule.  I was afraid I was going to be the last person in my class to take the stupid thing, but I was actually testing today with two of my classmates.  Not that it made any difference, because we were expressly forbidden from speaking to each other.

Anyway, I got a little apprehensive about the whole ordeal when reviewing my confirmation email this morning.  Not because of the test - I mean, it's a big deal and everything, but we've been taking practice CRT exams at the end of each semester since I started school, and I passed them all - but because of the instructions on how to locate the testing center.

The first thing that stuck out to me was the instruction to park in a parking deck across from the bus station.  Now, I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but there are a lot of very sketchy people that hang out at this bus station.  It's a very lovely building, but it's kinda hard to see the beauty of it when there are vagrants vomiting in the bushes around the clock.  Also, it has been heavily graffitied.  However, the graffiti-ists were not the most creative of people.  So the entire building is covered in rather non-descript messages in black spray paint.  As I have never tagged anything myself, I don't know if this is actually the current style of graffiti.  I suspect we just have really bad graffitiers.

(I really wish I had a picture to show of this, but I sure as hell wasn't going to hang around long enough to take one.  My apologies.)

Anyway, the directions went on to instruct me to walk up several blocks and look for a building with a green awning.  Not a problem.  Green awning.  Got it.  Then, they instructed me to walk passed the door of the building and down an alley.

An alley.

I didn't really know what to make of that.  I mean, I try to avoid alleys at all costs.  Mostly because I tend to be a tiny bit on the nervous side, and I've watched entirely too many cop dramas on television over the years to ever consider hanging out in one for any reason.  But I reasoned that the testing center people surely wouldn't send me down an alley for no reason.

The next step was to look for an unmarked door behind a Dumpster.

At this point, I started to suspect that the testing center was actually a speakeasy in the 1920's.  An unmarked door.  Behind a Dumpster.  Seriously.

The door was, of course, locked.  So I knocked.  And waited.  Alone.  In an alley.  Behind a Dumpster.  I really expected someone to jump out of it and knock me in the head and steal my purse or something.  So I waited for someone to let me in.  In reality,  I probably waited about 30 seconds.  But they were the longest seconds OF MY LIFE.

Once inside the testing facility, I got to go about proving I am who I say I am.  I used my passport, because in most cases, a passport counts as two forms of identification.  But not here.  I'm lucky I had my driver's license on me, because I was not about to walk back through the scary alley and passed the bus station to get it.

I then had to remove all of my jewelry and prove that my eyeglasses were eyeglasses and not some kind of crazy cheating device.  I couldn't even bring my own pencil into the testing room.  We were provided with a golf pencil and one piece of lime green scratch paper.  All of my other belongings were placed inside a canvas bag, which was then locked and attached to the back of my chair.  I had to argue with the woman for ten minutes to get her to let me keep my inhaler out.  She really didn't want to let me, but when I pointed out that in the event of an unexpected problem I could be dead by the time she unlocked my bag, she relented.  But I had to sit it on the table behind me.  In case I had crib notes written on the canister or something.

I can't really say much about the test itself, because apparently the first rule of CRT testing is you do not talk about CRT testing.  But 86 minutes later, I walked out of that place with my scores in my hands, and I didn't even notice the alley or the bus station.  Because it was over.  And I passed.

Typed up while wearing super-cute fingerless gloves

I'm feeling particularly Slytherin-like today (and if you don't understand what that means, I don't think we can be friends anymore).  And it's not just because of these:

Although that *is* part of it.  I mean, maybe a true Slytherin wouldn't have the little flowers, but I like to think that at least one would appreciate the dichotomy of liking ambition AND pretty flowers.  And you can't really tell from the picture, but my toenails are painted green, too.  I should be wearing a green shirt, too.  But I ordered this baby from ThinkGeek and it came in the mail today:

It's only the most amazingly epic shirt EVER.  I was so tempted to also purchase the Tim the Enchanter hat and evil bunny slippers, but I refrained - for now.  No promises that they won't be winging their way toward me at some point in the future.

It's been a lazy couple of days at Chez Erin because we got some snow, and as I mentioned before, snow means staying at home if at all possible.  It was very pretty snow, though:

I hesitate to complain about our paltry four inches when I know that New England is getting hammered by feet upon feet of the stuff.  But other parts of the country are far better prepared for it than we are.  Hell, we don't even have snow plows.  We have a couple of Bubbas that slap makeshift plows onto the fronts of their pickups.

So it's not the best of situations.  But it usually grants us at least a couple of days off of work or school, which is always appreciated.  Particularly those of us in college who are not required to physically make up snow days.  Sure, we're responsible for the work missed, but at least they can't add days to the end of the semester.

I have a confession to make.

Socks are not my only love.

Let me give you a minute to process that shocking information.




Yes, it's true.  While socks have a very, very special place in my heart, I also have a weakness for hats.  The bigger, the better.  The crazier, the better.  It is my dream to one day attend the Kentucky Derby for the hats alone.  Give me something huge and gaudy with tulle and sequins and feathers, and I am in heaven, y'all.

So naturally, today is one of my favorite days of the year.  It is National Hat Day.  The day to celebrate all things millinery.  Now, as I mentioned before, I live in a tiny, tiny room.  Which means that my biggest and best hats are currently stored away for safe keeping.  But rest assured - my cramped quarters have not stifled my love of hats.  Just steered me toward slightly smaller versions of my lovelies.

There was a woman named Willie Oates who was a state legislator and major philanthropist in Arkansas who died a few years ago, and she was officially (as in decreed by the governor) dubbed "The Hat Lady of Arkansas."  I had the pleasure of meeting her on a few occasions before her death in 2008, and fell instantly in love with her, and not just for her outrageous headgear.  But that was definitely part of it.

I may never do the things that Willie did in her life, but she will always be an inspiration to me.  And MAN, I want that hat.

So from the cloche:

To the cap:

The porkpie:

To the bucket:

The fur-lined with ear flaps:

To the beanie with a propeller on top:

Happy National Hat Day, y'all!!

It's a red-striped kinda day.

In honor of the snow that effectively shut down my entire state:

I know it's kinda misshapen, but I promise it's a penguin.  With snowflakes.  I just didn't think to take the picture *before* I put the sock on.  And it's like 19 degrees outside, so I'm not about to take it off.

I have to go out and do real people stuff today and tomorrow, which will probably end in tears and/or tragedy.  But at least I'll be able to get a blog post or two out of my adventure.