Entourage Reunion 2010

Due a crazy, busy summer and lots of time spent with the kids at various pools, inflatables, and parks in the greater Rutherford County area, I have had no time to blog. However, as Hardy has now started kindergarten and I will be starting graduate school in a matter of weeks, I hope to begin blogging again.

Last weekend I did the best thing I have done in ages. I went on a girl’s weekend, a retreat of Ya-Ya proportions. As a bit of background, a group of five women became friends while attending Mississippi University for Women. We somehow (the mists of memory does not accurately reflect how this happened) gave ourselves the name of “The Entourage”. I think the name came from the fact that we always travelled in a pack in college, acting as each other’s Entourage. We were the Entourage long before HBO and Jeremy Piven usurped the name (I believe they owe us royalties for that).

The Entourage was an unstoppable force of nature. All of my best college memories involve at least one, and usually more, of the Entourage. We went to a moderately small, predominantly female university in a small town. However, we managed to have some wonderful times together. Life, however, intruded as it often does. After college and marriage, I simply drifted away from these wonderful ladies, a fact that I will regret until my dying day. I have no excuse for why I did not work harder to keep them in my life. While I hate talking on the phone and am the worst correspondent (I have reams of letters that I began that simply either never got finished or were posted in the mail), I wish I had tried to find them sooner than I did.

Thanks to the glories of the internet and to Facebook, we all reconnected in the last year. At the New Year, we begin to discuss, via Facebook, the idea of having a reunion. We loved the idea of spending a weekend together, catching up and enjoying each other’s company. After many discussions and setbacks, San Antonio was chosen as the venue (home of one of the Entourage) and the end of July was chosen.

In retrospect, the decision to go to San Antonio at the end of July was perhaps not our best decision. While it was terribly hot and humid, the weather did not mar what was possibly one of the best weekends I have spent in ages.

The best way to describe the Entourage was uttered by Traci, who said the Entourage was “like the Ya-Ya Sisterhood without the diagnosed alcoholism and more profane.” (If you have to ask what the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is then you most likely would not understand the underlying ethos of the Entourage). It is a crazy mixture of Southern sass, sangria, margaritas, beer, cigarettes (though not as much as in the past), a love of movies, a refusal to take life too seriously, and a serious intolerance for bullshit.

In many ways, we picked up where we had left off ten years ago. We tended to sit in the same spot in the car as we did a decade ago, and we laughed over the same things we did. We looked at old pictures and remembered our wild youth of stalking professors, doing shots of Jack Daniels (which I still cannot smell without getting sick), and “stinky nachos”. We went shopping together, and I had forgotten the pure bliss of shopping with a group of ladies who have no problems in letting you know if something is flattering. We went to the Alamo (a bit of a disappointment) and drank copiously of various libations (we had to beat the heat somehow). I went home more relaxed than I have been in months, despite the fact that I never slept more than five hours a night.

If I could change one thing about life, I would have the Entourage living within 20 miles of each other. My sanity would benefit greatly from having weekly contact with these wonderful ladies. My children would learn valuable lessons from an up-close study of the Entourage. They would learn about courage and sacrifice. About what you do when you lose almost everything you own in a natural disaster. About how to embrace life and when to say no to the canned cheese. About relationships and laughter and how to detect when someone is bullshitting you. About how to be a great person and a good friend.

Hiking Fun

This past Saturday I undertook my quest to take my kids to every public park in Murfreesboro, if not Rutherford County, before the summer is over. The first park we chose was Barfield Park, off Hwy 231 South in Murfreesboro.

In the interest of full disclosure, we are not novices to the playground at Barfield. We've been there many times with playgroup and other activities. We even went to the Barfield Beach Party in May, an activity in which they truck in tons of sand and hold a beach party in the parking lot. However, we have never used the hiking trails or any of the Wilderness Station facilities.

This particular adventure was undertaken without Justin as I was doing him a favor. He expressed a desire to do some yardwork/cleanup without his two little helpers underfoot. Hardy can be a bit of a hoarder, and it is easier to pick up sticks/trash without someone pleading with you to save said items for some unfathomable reason.

We began our adventure with a hike on one of the paved trails behind the Wilderness Station. I opted not to take Ellie's stroller, knowing how she loves to run. We decided (rather, I unilaterally decided as I am a dictator) to hike to the River Overlook, a distance of 0.7 miles (or 1.4 round trip). I had a backpack with me filled with snacks, drinks, notebooks and crayons for any stops that were needed.

Ellie loved hiking, running most of the way to (and from) the River Overlook. She actually hiked 1.2 miles of the trail, which I thought was impressive for a 23 month old. She stopped frequently to point out leaves and bugs to us. Each dog that we passed (all seven of them) were met with rapturous waves and exclamations of glee.

Hardy was not that enthused about the hike to begin with. He wanted to stop frequently to draw. He wanted to rest. He wanted to go to the playground. However, by the time he had snacked and rested at the River Overlook he was fully into hiking mode. He spent the return trip pointing out bugs and letting Ellie try to catch him. At one point he asked what his gift was for finishing the hike. I told him he would receive the gift of good health. His response, "That's not a very good gift." I can't help but love the utter honesty that kids have.

We finished up our day with playing on the large playground (there is a smaller playground as well, but we prefer the larger one). The major downside to the playground at Barfield is the lack of shade on or near the play structures. On a hot, muggy Tennessee Saturday, this can be a bit tortuous. However, both kids loved all the climbing options on the structures. They were also big fans of the large pavilions, which offered us a much-needed shaded respite during our play.

In all, Barfield has moved to the top of our park list (although we have only "officially" visited one park since we began our quest). It has a lot of different options for family fun, such as hiking trails, play structures, disc golf, and nice picnic areas.

Summer Plans

This week marked our first week of summer vacation for the kiddos. I don't mind admitting that I was a bit worried about summer vacation. Keeping two children of different ages from being bored while being thrifty (an inherent part of myself I can't overcome) can be a bit challenging.

Our first week has gone surprisingly well, especially considering that it was a full moon week. As an aside, my children often turn from being nice, sweet kids (with an occasional meltdown) to full-on terrors during the full moon. Full moon week (it always seems to last a week) usually involves tantrums over the most minor things (Ellie once threw a fit because I put a tank top on her rather than a shirt with sleeves) and lots of shrieking. For whatever reason, the full moon did not bewitch my children as usual, for which I am profoundly grateful.



Our plans this summer do not include a formal family vacation. For one thing, Ellie is not a seasoned traveller, and I do not think anyone in our family should endure the shrieking that will occur should she be in her car seat more than her threshold of an hour and a half. She is also still in diapers, and a diaper full of sand does not appeal. We are saving Disney and the beach for the time in our life when diapers are no more than a distant memory, and for the time right before we become incurably stupid in the opinions of our offspring.

I do have lots of local plans for us, however. We became members of the Nashville Zoo, and I plan on us visiting the animals at least twice a month. We are members of the local, awesome, fabulous children's museum, and we will go to the Discovery Center so frequently that they may kick us out. We have invested in 2 sprinklers, a small wading pool, water guns and barrels of bubbles. Our official water play kickoff day is Memorial Day.



We are planning playdates with friends as that benefits both the kids and myself. The kids because they can play with friends, and myself because I can have an adult, albeit frequently interrupted, conversation. I can't wait to discuss things other than why Squidward is so mean to Spongebob, why lollipops at 8:00 am are not a good idea, and why barking at people (if you are not a dog) can net you funny stares.

My major and possibly slightly geeky plan is to visit every public park in Murfreesboro and quite possibly Rutherford County. The geeky part is that I plan on polling the kids (which playground had the most awesome play structure, which has the best shade, which playground offered the longest stretch of playtime for the kids before the boredom complaints set in) and then trying to quantify my results in some manner. I have a feeling that a spreadsheet and charts/graphs will be involved as well. I hope at the end of the summer to determine the Gardner Family's favorite area park. What I will then do with this information is unknown, but a little extra knowledge never hurt anyone.



The part of summer that I am most eagerly anticipating has nothing at all to do with my kids. At the end of July I am going to Texas for a long anticipated reunion of four college friends. Those four ladies, who I have not seen in a decade, were my sanity in college as well as the source of some of my spectacularly bad ideas (such as shooting Jack Daniels on a stomach full of cheap frozen pizzas). I can't wait to see them, catch up, and just enjoy some of the most fun people I know. So hurray for summer!

Memorials

During a recent bike ride around the Square, I noticed the various memorials on the Courthouse lawn. There are memorials to Confederate veterans, a more general memorial to those killed in battle; there is even a memorial marking the fact the Murfreesboro was the state capital for eight years in the early 1800s.

Memorials are meant to preserve the memory of a person, place, or an event. However, I think memorials say more about the living than the deceased does. Memorials show what a society values and respects. I think it is telling that while there are innumerable memorials around this country dedicated to the fallen veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, there are very few memorials dedicated solely to the veterans of Vietnam or the first Persian Gulf War.

I do not believe that my generation is comfortable with memorials or remembering those who have come before us. We have fought illness and death so successfully that the remembrance of death is an uncomfortable reminder that we have not entirely defeated death. We do not take part in Decoration Day activities.

I remember going to countless Decoration Days as a child and teenager. My father’s family has two family cemeteries (the exclusive Watson Cemetery and the more inclusive Conaster Cemetery, both located in rural Wilson County, Tennessee). As my mother’s family did not boast its own cemetery, we would go to various country church Decoration Days in Moore County, Tennessee.

Decoration Day was not a somber affair. People would bring food to share and spread the picnic on the ground. No one thought it strange to feast on fried chicken and banana pudding while sitting amongst the tombstones. In fact, the tombstones would lead to interesting conversations of the people with whom we were eating. The children would play tag and other games, hopping neatly over the graves. There would be a brief prayer and placing of new wreaths on the graves.

As I grew older, though, I stopped going to Decoration Day. I stopped going to the ones on my father’s side because there was always too much family drama, and it was exhausting trying to remember who was mad at whom, and whom we were not to speak to at the event. I only stopped going to the Decoration Day at Buckeye (where my mother’s parents and sister are buried) after college, when life got in the way of my attending the event. Since moving back to Tennessee, nearly three years ago, I have not attended any Decoration Day events nor have I taken my children.

A part of me misses the feeling of familial kinship that comes with Decoration Day. Even though my father’s family never made me feel welcome, there was a nice feeling to walk amongst my ancestors and hear stories about them. I never knew many of them, but some of them became very real to me during these events. I also miss seeing distant relatives you only see once a year.

However, like many in my generation, I have not felt the need for Decoration Day. I do not remember my beloved grandparents or aunts the less because I do not visit their gravesites. I remember them in different ways. I tell my children stories of my grandparents, and show their pictures to them. I make some of their favorite recipes. I see my grandfather’s cheekbones whenever I see my Aunt Bobbie, and I see my grandmother looking out of my mother’s face. The memorials I have for these beloved relatives are not tangible, but they are no less real for their intangibility. Perhaps it is the same for others of my generation. We do not erect public memorials because we carry the memories of our loved ones within our very pores.

Floods

As I am writing this, Murfreesboro (but mainly Nashville) is in the midst of a historic flood. I am writing this now mainly to record my thoughts on the situation as it unfolds.

The rain started Saturday, and except for brief windows, has not stopped. Some areas of the region have received as many as 20 inches in the last two days. Nashville has recorded record May rainfall, and it is only May 2nd. Here in Murfreesboro we have received roughly 10 inches in the last 2 days.

They are calling this a 500 year flood, and I would believe it. Parts of Nashville are flooding that have not flooded in recent memory. Mill Creek, which my parents live near, has flooded and gone over I-24, killing at least one person there. Parts of Bellevue are flooded. They are evacuating the guests and workers from Opryland Hotel, which has to be a logistical and public relations nightmare for the hotel.

For me, I have a hard time tearing myself away from the television. I think it was better when there was not 24/7 outlet to the news. Seeing the flood occur in real time is heartbreaking. Watching infants being evacuated makes me want to go hug my own babies. Watching parts of Antioch where I learned to drive, where I hung out with friends underwater breaks my heart. So many fond memories of Nashville are now tinged with the sadness of the flooding.

I worry about my parents, who live above Mill Creek. Luckily their street is located on a very high hill, so if they are totally flooded out it means that it is time to call out the arks and abandon all hope. They have water in their basement;there would be more water but they have worked tirelessly the last 24 hours, tyring to get out the water as soon as it comes in. The roads between us are closed, so we can't even get to them to assist in clean up, or to just offer solace as they deal with the cleanup of the flood waters.

I fear that when the rain finally stops and the waters recede (which I estimate won't happen until Tuesday) the devastation will be mind-numbing. So many homeowners in the area do not have flood insurance, as their homes are not located in flood plains. I worry about Antioch, where my parents live, and which has been struggling financially for some time. I fear this flood may be the death knell for Antioch. While I no longer live in Antioch, I would hate to see it die because of the flood.

Zumba

For the last several months, I have been attending a twice weekly zumba class at my local gym. For the uninitiated, zumba is the grooviest exercise you will ever do. It is a mixture of Latin and hip-hop dance done to a mixture of Latin and hip-hop music. The ratio of Latin to hip hop depends upon the instructor. The instructor I favor leans a bit more heavily to hip-hop music, which is one of the many reasons I love this particular class.

I have always believed that I have no innate rhythm. If you were to observe me in zumba class you would reach the same conclusion. My body has never seemed to move in any coordinated fashion when dancing. Asking my arms and legs to do different things is like kryptonite - I end up just staring and figuring out how on earth bodies move that way. Yet in zumba I have found a part of myself that I did not know exist.

I realized recently that much of what I do in this life is in opposition to my mother. I love my mother dearly and think she is a wonderful lady; however, I seem to act contrary to what she would. She loves to dance, and won several dance contests as a young woman. When I was a young woman, you could not get me to dance or go to a dance. I think I went to a grand total of 3 dances in my teenage years, and 2 of those were prom (neither of which I danced at). Dance was my mom's thing, not mine. I had no interest in it or see any need for dance in my life. Once I realized that I was prejudiced against zumba for no logical reason, I decided to start going.

I have to admit the first time few times I went to zumba I had to talk myself into returning the next time. Some of the dances felt weird (well, all of the dances) and I felt like a huge idiot. Yet there was something that drew me in. For an hour at a time, I was someone else. I learned to stop paying attention to what I was doing and started just feeling the music and the beat. Not to say that I always find the beat, but I at least now know that a such thing as beats exist.

Now I go with no apologies and dance like the craziest, most uncoordinated girl out there. I could care less that I am a few beats behind everyone else and that the dance I am doing bears little relation to what the instructor intended. Zumba has become my time to be a different Leigh Ann. A Leigh Ann who dances for the sheer joy of it, even on the days that threaten to suck all the joy out of my soul. I become the girl who would have swayed her hips at the boys at the club, if I had ever been the club kind of girl. I forget for an hour all the worries, the stresses, the ordinariness of life. For a bit, life is colorful and exuberant and fresh. So I dance and embrace the Leigh Ann that zumba is teaching me to become.

Good Works

I have debated about writing this particular blog for several days now. I am afraid it will seem self-serving, and I do not want to emphasize any part of "self" in this. I think I am just going to jot this down, so to speak, so that I don't forget the feelings, etc. raised by the experience.

Last Thursday, I had the incredible privilege of helping out at The Journey Home for a bit. For those of you who may not now, The Journey Home is an organization that is trying to fill as many gaps as it can for the homeless and poor in our city. They have a small building on Castle Street, just around the bend from Cannonsburgh.

I could write reams about the work being done at this center and not touch on all the lives they are helping. There is a Community Cafe, where lunch is served 5 days a week to all comers. They have seats for 40 in the dining room, but have on occasion served over 3 times that number of people. There is a clothes closet for clients to go through, and a small computer lab for people to work on resumes and look for employment. The staff makes up food boxes (full of nonperishables) and distribute to those in need. There is a bread closet as well, open to all clients.

What amazed me the most about this place, apart from the amazing volunteers and the great sense of purpose one feels there, is the amount of unheralded community support that the center has received. Publix donates bread to them daily. Pizza Hut regularly donates pizza for the lunch they serve. Chef Wang's, my favorite local Chinese restaurant, does the Monday meal.

What amazed me about the local support is that I have never once heard of any of these businesses advertising what they do for the center. Not once have I seen self-serving pictures of meals being served by the Chef Wang's staff. Not once have I seen articles in the paper about Publix or Pizza Hut helping to feed the hungry in our community. The quiet nature of this support have disposed me quite favorably to these businesses.

I left the Center on Thursday feeling humbled by all that I have, compassion for those trying to find their way, and restored faith in business in this city.

To find out more about The Journey Home, go to http://www.murfreesboropost.com/filling-the-gaps-on-the-journey-home-cms-7637 to read an article in the Murfreesboro Post about the work of the center.