There Is A Reason For Our Name.

Photo from Hands On Nashville


Tennessee is called The Volunteer State, and in the week since the floods, it's becoming apparent why. All over the city groups are springing up, thousands strong, to help their neighbors and city recover. At a gas station yesterday there was a huge bus, waiting to fuel up to drive to some of the hardest hit parts of the city. Exhausted, sweaty, filthy volunteers filled the store to stock up on snacks and water for the long day ahead of them. People driving through neighborhoods asking strangers what they need help with the most.


Having grown up here, I can say that this drive to help those in need is something instilled in Tennesseans from childhood. If someone is in need of help, you help. Period. This week has reminded me of all the reasons why I am so, so proud to call Nashville my home. I cannot help in all of the thousand ways I wish I could: I have my kids all day every day, and taking them into the wrecked neighborhoods is just not an option right now. I hope that with my minimal time I will be donating, I can make at least a small difference. And one of the things I wish most is that my kids could accompany me to see their city coming out to help its own recover from this disaster. I was talking with the husband last night, and we both agreed that it would be wonderful if they were older and able to help and see the helping going on. I wondered to myself if Ella understood that yet, as there have not been many instances in her short life that she has been able to witness true giving, giving without being asked to give. And yet, this morning as I watched the local news, I got my answer. A news crew had gone out to a ruined neighborhood to talk to the residents, and a woman stood with her two kids talking to the reporter, crying. The kids stood in front of what was, just last week, their home, sorting through family photos and water-logged toys. "Mom," she said in a serious tone. "We need to help those kids." As I struggled to keep my heart from bursting through my chest, I said, "I know, Ell. We will! People are already out there helping, and we can think of ways that we can help, too." I was a bit dumbfounded, to tell you the truth, because we do not volunteer at soup kitchens, we do not feed the homeless Christmas dinner. But all of the small things over the years have added up, and I realized that she has seen the tiny acts of service that I didn't think she noticed: dropping off bags of clothes and toys to Goodwill, explaining that some people can't afford brand new things, so when we don't need something any more we give it to them. Picking up trash we come across at the park, explaining that it's nice to keep our town clean, even if it isn't our mess. This small girl, and her concern for her neighbors that she doesn't even know, has completely convinced me that it doesn't take grand gestures of service to instill the need to help in a child. There's a reason for the name The Volunteer State: We help others. We just do it, without being asked. It's in our dna.

One in a thousand.

On Friday evening, the weather report for Nashville stated that we were in for a "wet, soggy weekend". As a mom to two small children I mentally prepared myself for two whole days shut in the house, making preparations as best I could. Crayons? Check. Toys organized and easy to find? Check. Bottle of wine? Double check. As a lifelong resident of Nashville, I am used to wet spring weather. "A wet and soggy weekend" typically means that there will be showers intermittently for the whole weekend, nothing worse than forcing families inside for a couple of days. So I wasn't surprised on Saturday morning when the rain started when I woke up at 5am. When the kids got up around 6 it was still raining. "Maybe just another hour or so and there will be a break in the rain so we can run to the grocery store," I thought.

But the rains, they did not stop.

They not only did not stop, but they were absolutely incredible. So heavy for most of the day that we could not see out of our windows, and they did not let up for one minute. Even at that point, though, I was mostly just glad that we did not have any tornado sightings yet (which is what we are mostly worried about here weather wise). It was not until I saw this on an interstate:



that I truly became concerned. Scared. The whole storm took on a new meaning. No tornadoes, but terrifyingly deep and fast floods creeping over parts of the city. The term "Thousand Year Flood" began being tossed around. Also "Five Hundred Year Flood", although I don't think it really matters which it is...this is still more destruction and disaster than anyone in this state will probably see in their lifetime. There was no way for anyone to predict that this would happen: a freak line of severe storms that, under normal circumstances, would have quickly passed and drifted off to the east, leaving no more than puddles and gray clouds in its wake. But on this day, this weekend, they did not move. They sat squarely on top of Middle Tennessee and poured inch after inch of rain on top of us with no signs of stopping. We watched the continuous news coverage, hopeful that THIS line of storms was the last, the end of it. Nope. It kept coming. It rained and rained and continued to flood until Sunday evening.

Sunday afternoon was when reality hit me: a friend on tv, being boated out of her home with her husband and child, carrying nothing more than the clothes on their backs with them. The soccer fields where Ella played her first soccer game: gone, underneath water that was too deep to measure. Homes floating down roads on a river of white water. Elderly people trapped in their homes unable to wade through the rushing water. Interstates under foot after foot of water, impassable. Roads that I use every day looked like this




and homes everywhere looked like this




There has been much talk of "There is not enough media coverage on this, people need to KNOW!". I can see their point...a two-minute blurb on the Today show, stating that flood waters are rising in Tennessee, the death toll has reach 19, the Cumberland river hasn't crested yet. While all of those statements are true, they fail to actually capture the wreckage that this storm has caused and the dire situation many many people are now finding themselves in, homeless and faced with rebuilding their homes themselves due to a lack of flood insurance in this area. Kind of the same way saying "Nashville got a lot of rain" would technically be accurate, but misses the mark completely. At the same time, there is a reason for this lack of news coverage, I believe. There is no looting and murdering, there are no riots or fires being set. This, to me, speaks volumes about the city I call home. There are simply neighbors helping neighbors by bringing boats, food, giving shelter and driving around until they find someone who needs help carrying debris out of their ruined home. Volunteer groups sprang up as soon as the rain stopped. No one is sitting on the curb crying "Help me!", they are getting up and helping themselves and others, and they are doing it quietly and without complaint. As one old man on the news said when asked what he was going to do next, "Shut up and get to work."

A couple of days ago an article from our newspaper, The Tennessean, started going around through email and Facebook links. It was short and sweet, but said everything that could be said about the flooding and the city of Nashville.

written by Patten Fuqua

It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

And for my next trick, I will now kick some puppies and trip a blind man.

There is just something about the days of the week that Ella has preschool. They confuse my internal clock. In the morning we're all "Ohmygod, we have to leave in five minutes, HURRY!". And then we make it to school on time, and Charlie and I drive home. Once home he has a snack while I get some chores done, then it's nap time for him, during which my brain says "Ahhh, relax. Sit down for a spell and read a book." Or as was the case last week "Fall asleep on the couch the moment you sit down and wake up two hours later in a puddle of your own drool." What is so obnoxious about these days are the constant GO GO GO! Okay now STOP. WAIT. Nooooowwww....it's GO TIME! Once 1:30 rolls around and I know it's time to leave the house, no one or no thing had better stand in my way. I am hauling ass to get to the school on time, lest I be charged $1 for every minute I am late. I say all of this just to give you an idea of how I was feeling last Friday on my way to pick up Ella from school.
Frazzled and in a very sizable hurry, I opted for the shorter-in-distance-but-not-in-actual-minutes route, because if you can get lucky and not hit any traffic, it IS quicker, by like 3 whole minutes. Halfway out of our neighborhood, Charlie starts whining. Crap, I told myself. I maybe kind of forgot to feed him lunch. This is what school days do to my brain: I forget to feed my children food. I weighed the options. I could turn around and go back to our house, run inside, and pack a quick snack, but also risk hitting traffic that was so far non-existent. Or I could stop at a gas station and grab a box of crackers or something and continue on my way. I chose the latter. Three minutes and a bag of Goldfish later, we were on our way, me being slightly more frazzled than before and eyeing the clock warily. "Please God, I only have two dollars in my wallet, and I will be forever mortified if I have to tell the preschool ladies to put the balance on my tab. Amen." Things started looking up. Every traffic light I encountered was GREEN! No cars turning left on a road with no turn lane thus making them have to come to a complete stop in the middle of the road! Awesome. I was feeling like I was actually going to be on time when BAM. Minivan, driving twenty eight miles an hour. On a road where the speed limit is 45. Rage. Hatred. Maybe some severe language going on in my car at that point. I could not pass her, I could not take a detour...this was the only road that led to the preschool, and it is one lane the whole way, baby. Of course it is. I couldn't see into the van very well, only enough to see the outline of a significantly overweight woman with frizzy hair. As I only had Charlie in the car with me at this point, I felt like it was okay to let a little of my rage come out. "COME! ON! For real, you hag, you are probably out driving around looking for estate sales so you can load up piles of shit in your van before heading home to watch Dr. Phil and eat Cheeze Puffs. Come the hell on, MOVE IT! God, YOU SUCK! So help me, I will rear end your shitty van if you do not get it up over 30 miles per hour right this instant!". Or something like that. So it continued...me, stuck behind the slowest driver in all of America, every few minutes having a glimpse of hope as she sped up to 30, then 35, then...slowed back down to 25. This only made the rage worse. I was alternating between muttering profanities and screaming profanities when I saw it. She got into the turn lane to turn left, away from my route to preschool. I glanced at the clock, and saw that I had two minutes left, and I could maybe possibly make it if I did 55 the whole way there. Still annoyed and somewhat angry, I was muttering not-so-nice things under my breath as I came up around the van, hoping to get a look at this woman before I sped past her. I had one last hurrah as I passed her, mumbling "Moron!" as I approached the turn lane she was sitting in. And that was when I saw it. The SIDE of her van, previously obscured from my view. It read "Middle Tennessee Medical Transport". And in the van I could clearly make out a larger than normal car seat with what appeared to be a teenage boy strapped in, clearly handicapped. Oh GOD. OH MY GOD. I had just spent fifteen minutes cursing and yelling at a woman who was driving a handicapped boy to the doctor. I instantly closed my mouth, my eyes wide, and said a silent prayer that I would not, in fact, "get what was coming to me" in the form of a horrific car accident on the way home that day. I almost said some hail Marys but then remembered I am not Catholic. I pulled into the preschool, exactly on time, not a minute late. And I spent the rest of the day watching out for a huge rock to fall on my head, and feeling like a terrible, terrible person.

Do as I say, not as I do.

There is a strange new phase of parenthood that I am beginning to enter into: The School Years. This first year of preschool for Ella has been wonderful, and as it comes to a close, so does her "preschoolerhood". She is no longer a tentative girl peeking into her classroom on the first day of school, she is a kid who barely stops to give me a quick hug before she races into her classroom and starts her day with friends. After four and a half years of having a baby, then a toddler, then a preschooler, this, whatever this phase is called, is kind of shocking. Because with my girl's new found independence comes the need for me to take a step back and let childhood run its course, for better or worse. There are times that I see her in a difficult situation and I know that I need to let her figure it out on her own, even if that is the more difficult choice for me to make. Case in point: Mean Kids. Oh, they're everywhere, and I am sure that Ella has taken her turn as the Mean One in a group now and then. But I have watched her play with others, and as a rule she gets along very well with her peers. As a mom I silently pray "Please do not let my kid be the Mean Kid in the bunch", because sometimes despite fantastic parenting, a child says mean or hurtful things to another, and there's just not much you can do about it besides correct them, make them apologize, move on, and hope they won't repeat the offense. But when your child is on the receiving end of the mean-spirited comments, oooooohhh boy, you want to kill someone. This has been happening with a particular kid that we come in contact with on a daily basis. For the sake of anonymity, we'll call him Dr. Evil. Dr. Evil is older than Ella by about two years, yet they have played well together up until this point. Things changed about a week ago, when the mean kid-ness started. During a game of tag, Dr. Evil suddenly hopped on his bike and started riding away. Ella ran after him, thinking this was part of the game. "NO, Ella. I'm going to my OTHER friend's house, and you can't come. I don't want to play with you any more." Ella let his words sink in, really thought about what he was saying to her, and then she cried. As I would, probably. Because it is no fun to hear "I don't choose you first anymore, and I don't like you as much as I like this other kid." I took a deep breath, gave her a hug, and then tried to calm her down as best I could. I told her that it was okay, that I still wanted to play with her, and we didn't need to play with Dr. Evil to have a good time. She calmed down a bit, but the level of fun dropped considerably...I guess having the wind knocked out of you with an outright mean comments will do that. I tried to explain to her that even when people are unkind to us, it is ALWAYS the right thing to do to try to be kind back to that person. You don't have to like that person, and you don't have to play with them anymore, but you do not get to say mean things back, even when you may want to. Which, speaking of saying mean things back, my inner mama lioness was a-roaring. I wanted to rip this kid a new one, call him every name in the book, and then kick him in the shin and run away. Motherhood: Making women regress back to first graders since the beginning of time. Just when we had started to have fun again, drawing with sidewalk chalk and riding bikes, guess who should saunter back over to our house with his tail between his legs? Yep, little Hitler himself. "Can I play?", he asked sheepishly. Ella looked at me with wide eyes, then looked at Dr. Evil, then looked at the ground and said, "I don't want to play anymore" in a soft, hushed tone of voice. While I was proud of my girl for not resorting to name-calling and yelling insults, I was indeed not rising above the situation very gracefully. "Asshole! Jerk-face! Stupid, stupid kid who is wearing a stupid, stupid...shirt! Yeah, your SHIRT is STUPID, butthead!" is what my inner voice was yelling. Loudly. I just looked at him to gauge his reaction, which was to try to stick up for himself. "Look, I just wanted to see if my other friends were home, but they weren't so I came back. I want to play now." I could tell he was growing irritated by her refusal to let him back in so easily. Ella just glanced at him and said not one word, continuing to circle the driveway on her bike. "That wasn't very nice what you said earlier, Dr. Evil. Ella may not feel like playing any more today," was what I said out loud, my repressed elementary school self still inwardly hurling childish insults his way. "Well, FINE! Then I don't want to play with her anymore EITHER! BYE!!!" was his last response. He hopped on his bike and headed home. As a last ditch effort (at what I don't know, because calling names is a surprisingly ineffective way to get others to want your company. Go figure.) he turned around and yelled over his should, "I don't want to play anyway because Ella is weird!". And with that, he rode off into the gates of hell from whence he came. "I'm proud of you for not yelling at him or being mean, Ella" I told her after he was gone. She smiled a big smile and asked if we could write our names with chalk on the driveway. And in that moment, I realized that she was listening when I tried to teach an important life lesson, she had gotten it and had actually followed through, not stooping to the level of the little menace. In all honesty, it would seem it was me who had just a little growing up to do.

In which I eat my words, with a side dish of moving boxes and OH CRAP sauce.

So. Remember the post about seven months ago wherein I ranted and spit furiously and raved about moving and our landlord and the utter suckage of it all? And maybe that post was titled "I will die in this house if it's the last thing I do"? Well, let's hope I don't kick the bucket in the next six weeks. Because we're moving. Again. AGAIN, I say. Can you feel the excitement? It's palpable around here, let me tell you. This all began approximately eight years ago, with a conversation between me and the husband.

ME: "I hope you don't think you're going to marry me and move me back to this hometown of yours. Because it's never gonna happen. Ever. As in, hell will freeze over and pigs will fly."

HIM: "Oh, I know, I hate this town as much as you do. Don't worry, it will never ever happen."

Cut to present day: We're mother effing moving there. In six weeks. End scene.

After being born and raised here in Nashville and having every resource imaginable at my fingertips (except, like, a subway system, because dude. This IS Nashville. It's just not THAT big.), we are packing up and moving out to the relative countryside of the husband's hometown. I've been chastised for calling it a "small town"...it is, after all, the fifth biggest city in Tennessee, and they do have things like running water and a mall and stuff. I even got laughed at when I asked if there was a place to take the kids swimming there ("Yes, they're called POOLS" she said). But! Imagine if you will a peaceful, golf-club neighborhood situated as close to the Nashville side of the city limits as you can get. The house is gorgeous, the seventh green of said golf course is in our backyard. It's a neighborhood with other people living there, not the "country" setting you would imagine where our closest neighbor would be a hop, skip, and a two mile drive away, their mailbox bearing their last name painted on it with fence post paint. And then you pan across the street, to the other side of the road. Cows. A BARN. Acres and acres of land that does not have a Starbucks or a Target on it. This is foreign to me. Save for a brief period of my life when I was very very young and we lived in a tiny town about 30 minutes outside the city, I have lived here, among the busy five-lane roads, the bus stops. I can hear the interstate from my home, instead of crickets and owls. And I like it that way. But in the interest of my children having more than one parent present on a regular basis, and for the sake of my sanity due to me being that one parent that is present on a regular basis, we are moving to be where the husband's job is right now (and hopefully will be for a very loooong time, because I mean it this time, I'm not moving again. For at least five years. Three if the cows and barns become too much for me to handle). His job has him leaving as the kids wake up in the morning, and during the busy season (which is NOW!) it is not at all unusual for the husband to get home at 9 or 10:00 at night. Plus most weekends. All of that adds up to momma being the sole caregiver to our babies, and maybe results in me fleeing the house on Sundays for a few hours of peace and quiet.

So here's to our new adventures in the "country". I may change the name of this blog to "From The City To The Sticks: How Cows And Nature And Stuff Drove Me To Drinking".

Yeehaw, y'all.

In The Home.

When asked what they are most thankful for on a daily basis, most people would blurt out one or all of the following: My family, my health, a roof over my head. And while I am ever so thankful for all of that and more, the one thing that tops my list is that I am lucky enough that our circumstances have allowed me to choose to stay at home with my kids every day for the last four and a half years. I have friends who have no choice, who would rather stay home with their children than work but cannot do so because finances will not allow it. And while we are by no means wealthy, and a second income could sometimes come in handy, we have made it work for this long and I am thankful. Does it sometimes get monotonous, having the same schedule every single day? Yes. Do I sometimes throw my hands up in the air and wonder if I am really, deep down cut out for the life of a stay at home mom? Oh my lands, YES, sometimes three or four times daily. But the things that I get to be here for, the firsts and the hugs and the monotonous but oh-so-lovely days, they more than make up for the trying moments. And at the end of every single day, no matter how much whining or crying there was and in spite of temper tantrums and the days where I have no adult conversation outside of my running dialogue with Moose A. Moose on tv, I am so thankful that I have these early years with my babies. Every minute of these early years, because even though they may threaten to break me sometimes, these first months and years of their lives are beautiful and I am privileged to get a front row seat for every tiny detail. So, so, so thankful.

Life, Liberty, The Pursuit Of Happiness...And Cheaper Prescriptions?

Aaaaand WHOOOOOOSH. That was me exhaling. I've held my breath for as long as I can on all of the healthcare reform shenanigans that are cluttering up the news these days. My opinion on it, in one word? Shit. The variety doesn't matter: Horse shit, dog shit, donkey shit, it's all the same. It stinks to high heaven. Let's run down the list of reasons I find this bill to be utterly and completely wrong on so so so many levels, shall we?

1. It is one small step for healthcare, one giant leap towards socialism. Call it what you will, but anything that forces a citizen to purchase goods, or taxes one citizen in the name of "helping" another, is dangerously walking the very thin line that separates capitalism and socialism.

2. Healthcare is NOT A RIGHT. It's just not, no matter how many times you want to say that it is. When our founding fathers were drafting the Constitution, all of our rights were laid out with one central theme: ACTION. We, as American citizens, have the right to action, be it protesting, pursuing happiness, living peacefully, or writing about how crappy we think this bill is on our blogs. We do not have the right to lower annual premiums, or cheaper co-pays, or free check-ups. That? Is called a hand out, my friends. If that's what you want, then fine. But at least call it what it is, and please don't label it as a "right". Listen, I GET it. I understand those people who are saying "But I have a preexisting condition that makes my healthcare bills and prescriptions insanely expensive!". I get it. Because me and the hubs BOTH have preexisting conditions. Him with his knee that blew to smithereens a few years ago, and me with my Degenerative Disc Disease. If you don't think that those things make our healthcare more expensive, then you have another thing coming, my friend. Does it kinda sorta stink to pay more for our healthcare than we would without those conditions? Yep. But I do not for one minute expect other taxpayers to foot the bill just so my expenses can go down. IT. IS. WRONG. It is dipping your hand into my pocket to pay for someone else's medical bills, when all of this healthcare stuff is not even a right that we are afforded by living here in this great country. EVERYONE has access to medical care...it's called the emergency room, or a walk-in clinic. And then? It's called paying your own medical bills, even though they are more money than you can afford right then, to prevent others (ME!) from having to pay them for you in the form of taxes. I hear mainly from people with preexisting conditions saying, "Think about ME! This will be helping ME!". Well, it goes both ways, kind sirs. Maybe you should think about all of the people that this will NOT help.

3. This bill is just the beginning. When I envision where all of this is going, I see it happening as a kind of gradual progression until BAM. We have socialised medicine. And maybe some other things, as well. "Oooh, look, this cute wittle bitty healthcare bill didn't hurt you, now did it? It's harmless!". And then a year, two years down the road we are left scratching our heads, blinking dumbly, wondering how we got to this Single Payer System we have. The Great One has said it before: That's what he ultimately wants. And it is only a matter of time. This? This current healthcare "reform"? Is merely a catalyst.

4. The ones who passed this bill are not planning on participating in the same healthcare plans that they are so adamently in favor of. Obama and member of Senate and/or Congress will not be partaking. Enough said.

5. This bill does nothing to support job growth. Oh, "they've" said it does. But does creating 20,000 more jobs within the IRS (who will be overseeing who does and does not have healthcare and who has or has not paid their fines) really help "grow jobs"? Nope nope nope.

6. Government does such a bang up job running things, let's put them in charge of healthcare! Medicaid and Medicare? Government-run programs, almost bankrupt. So of COURSE! It's perfectly logical to think that government should stick their hand into the healthcare industry and "help". They can run it so much better than American citizens can, right?

In closing, I don't fault anyone for believing opposite from me. Hell, it's a free country, and THAT is one of our rights: to believe what we will, and voice that opinion to all that can hear. But I believe Ayn Rand says it best with her many, many quotes on politics and freedoms:

"Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

Amen, sister.