It won't be long before my turn is next...

Y'all? Youse? You guys?

Have y'all taken this little quiz up there?

I've taken it three times (the questions aren't always the same), and each time, my top answer says I'm from LOUISVILLE.

This freaks me out just a tiny little bit...that I can be so easily profiled! Like on Criminal Minds...not that I'm a serial killer or anything, but still!

It does remind me of 5 or 6 years ago, when my family and I were doing Derby Day at the Whirlaway Room at Trackside. Our server for the day was so sweet, and at one point she said something like, 'I'm going on break, do you'uns need anything right now?'

YOU'UNS.

The only people I've ever heard say that is my great-grandmother and great-aunt...I looked at her and said, are you from down near Eastern Kentucky, like from London, Kentucky, maybe?

OMG I freaked her out so bad she almost had to sit down...I sent over to my grandma's table to see if they were related, everyone from down there is related. Everything you've heard about Appalachia is true.

G'night!

:)

Ties, baby

We go to Cumberland Falls every year.  My daughter feels the pull as much as I do, and insists on it.  She'll be 21 in July. !!!.  She was 2 or 3 in this picture, and my grandma had talked us to the edge to get a great shot.

We're Kentuckians, through and through.  Even though I was an Army brat and lived in a lot of different places, it was a relief to come back home.  I'll never want to live anywhere else.  Why would I?  This is the best place in the world.

I blame my grandmother.  She raised all of us to be like this.  I'm not kidding when I say that when I was little, she'd sing me to sleep with a lullaby that began, "Kentucky, you are the dearest land outside of heaven to me...".

I'm a city girl, but I can trace my dirt poor tobacco-farming eastern Kentucky ancestors back to the 1700's.  That's because they're all buried in our family cemetery in Blackwater, KY, where we go every year on Decoration Day.  My grandmother is buried there, and my great-great-great-great-grandmother is buried there. There's still room left for me, too.

We were taught how to handicap the Kentucky Derby by the time we were 5, the basics of country music at 6, and had field tripped the state's major landmarks before age 10.  The UK Wildcats basketball worship training began in the womb.

It's a good thing the brainwashing began early and intense, because it might not have otherwise survived the big 3-year move to Germany.  We didn't get basketball over there, I had to rely on country music cassette mix tapes sent to me via APO mail, the only mountains were the Alps, and the only landmarks were various castles and the Schwarzwald.

I got shipped back home right before I turned 13.  A little culture shock.  But my family!  My trees, my basketball, my Derby, my bluegrass, my mountains, my falls, my Kentucky...

Edit: My mom reminded me exactly how the song goes:

Kentucky, you are the dearest land outside of heaven to me,
Kentucky, I miss your laurel and your redbud trees…
When I die, I want to rest upon your graceful mountains so high..
For that is where God will look for me.

Sleep

My alerts aren't working again...bummer...
I called D today from work to ask his opinion on how I should drive home from work, since Kentucky Oaks Day at Churchill Downs (big horse race the day before the Derby, just as crowded but more fun, kind of like the Golden Globes compared to the Oscars...) was going to cause all my feasible exits to be blocked on the expressway...
When I got him on the phone, he told me that:
1. He had talked to my brother today and I needed to call him later, to talk about Mother's Day stuff...
2. He had talked to my mom today and she wants us to set up a tent in her backyard for her Derby party tomorrow...
and
3. He had talked to my daughter today and she was at Kentucky Kingdom with her friend...
OKAY...LOL!...whose family is it again?  Mine?  His?  It is mine, right? 
They like him SO much better than they like me...

I'm losing my Friday night!...

Friday night is MY night...I go to bed early, or stay up reading...there's no fighting with my daughter about my bedtime, and if I'm not too tired from the week I can catch up on computer time...
I love my Friday nights...quiet, restful stay-in nights...Sunday through Thursday are full of stress and Saturday nights are full of fun but Friday nights are MINE...
Except tonight...
Tonight I have to take my daughter and go over to my brother's house so that we can sleep on his floor, all because of where we live...

You see that enclosed circle where the Derby miniMarathon starts?
That's my neighborhood...
(sigh)
Every year, those of who live here either try to make it out before the roads close, or just sleep in that day, because otherwise we're stuck making circles around our neighborhood for a couple of hours waiting for the 7,000 runners to go by...
But this year, I don't have the luxury of sleeping in, because my daughter has to be at Saturday School at 9 a.m...
Delinquent child!
So since the roads will be closed unless I choose to leave my house at 6 a.m. (I don't think so!), my brother's house it is...
I'm taking my laptop anyway, just in case...

I need a blanket...

I think I'm done writing about the trip, for now...at least until I get my pictures developed.. I had a very productive week...I caught up on the laundry...worked overtime and finally caught up at work...and I gathered up all the disposable cameras we took to NYC and put them on top of the piano by the front door.
I'm trying to avoid a repeat of the shame that I have over last year's field trip to Chicago...I'm sure we probably have very nice pictures of that trip, but I wouldn't know, would I, because I've NEVER GOTTEN THOSE PICTURES DEVELOPED, EITHER...
I have just a tiny little problem with procrastination.
Whatever.
Moving forward...for the past month it's been 70-80 degrees...everything is in full bloom...it was summertime here!  Then this freak cold front moved through...high winds...thunderstorms...hail...a funnel cloud touched down in downtown Louisville...and behind the cold front, oh no, it's so cold!  It's like I'm back in New York!
30 degrees yesterday and SNOWING, when it reached 80 the week before.  That's the Ohio Valley for you...
I'm standing in my living room yesterday, and I hear this airplane flying low over my house, and I think, "Hmm, that's weird."  It wasn't until I got in the car and turned on the radio that I remembered it was THUNDER OVER LOUISVILLE, the kickoff to the Kentucky Derby Festival, starting with the air show downtown over the river,and culminating in the largest fireworks display in the country last night.
We never go down there...last year, roughly 750,000 people flocked to the riverfront for the festivities..the crowds and the traffic getting home always seem just too daunting.  This year, though, because it was SNOWING, there was not that big of a crowd at all...I tried to convince D that this is the year we should go, since there'd be hardly any traffic getting back home, but he told me off pretty good...something about freezing to death/am I crazy/what's wrong with you...we didn't have one of those silver survival blankets like one of those crazy people down there...LOL!
So we were at home, watching it on TV, as usual...my favorite part is the music...my daughter likes to watch out the window, because we live close enough to downtown that she can see the sky glowing even though she can't see the actual fireworks...
"I see green, are they doing green now, Mommy?"...
"Yes, honey..."
"Ooh, red, I bet they're doing red now, aren't they..."
"Yes, sweetheart..."
"Ooh, yellow..."
This is the point where I break down and say, will you please come and watch it on the TV? Please please please... LOL!
After the show's big finale, it lives up to its name, as the shock waves from all the explosives downtown move through the city...it really does sound like thunder, and as it moves through the house, it actually shakes the walls...
Thus the annual two week party that my city lives for is kicked off...
All this for a two-minute horse race.
Here we go...

Weekend Assignment #5

Weekend Assignment #5: Recount your most memorable encounter with celebrity.
I CAN'T!  I live in Kentucky, the only encounters with celebrities around here involve being cut off by limos during Derby time.
(sigh)
Okay.  This celebrity encounter involves, of course, the Derby, and this will hopefully be my last Derby entry until next year.
It was May, 1997, and the night after Silver Charm had won the Kentucky Derby.  My boyfriend, my brother, my sister-in-law, and I, had gone out to eat at my favorite place in the world.  We're sitting there, enjoying our dining experience, until we hear a sudden uproar and the place, if possible, gets louder than it already was.
What? Who?
Yes, of course, it was BOB BAFFERT and MIKE PEGRAM, plus entourage, enjoying their night on the town after winning the Kentucky Derby.  (For the uneducated, Bob Baffert is the trainer, Mike Pegram is the owner.)  It was very exciting, particularly for those in our group who had won money on Silver Charm.
And, you ask, where do million dollar winners go to celebrate their Derby victory?
Why, the OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE, of course!
It was a really cool thing.

Derby: Two days left...

All the famous people have been coming to town this week.  Or that's what I'm told: I hear them on our local radio stations and read about them in the newspaper.  At this time of year, we begin to see limos in abundance, and all the media people ask all the famous people the same question: "What's your Derby pick?".
I won't even make a joke about asking people from out of town what their Derby pick is, because EVERYBODY ALWAYS asks EVERYBODY ELSE what their Derby pick is.  Even strangers on the street.  Because you never know, someone might have the inside scoop and make this year's Derby a happy one!
(Okay, every Derby is a good one, and always exciting.  But it's a fact, the ones that you remember most fondly are the ones in which your horse wins it.  For me, it was Winning Colors in 1988 and Charismatic in 1999.)
Here are some different ways of picking your horse for the Derby:
1. Dosage index, Rasmussen factor, tip and finger sheets - these are all scientific and insider tips that usually...don't really work.  Either a horse fails the chart and wins, or, in the case of Charismatic, it made the chart on dosage but the experts all said he wasn't good enough, and he still won.  I guess these horses didn't know they were supposed to lose!
2. Go to the dawn workouts at the track - I've never done this, but many people do and swear by a horse's good workout.  Doesn't work.
3. Know an owner or trainer and pledge your allegiance to them by betting their horse.  Works as well as anything else.
4. Pick your horse by the name or the colors. Most normal, non-fanatical people do this. This also works as well as anything else.
5. Close your eyes and hit your program with a pencil.  Whatever it lands on is your horse.  I HAVE BEEN MOST SUCCESSFUL WITH THIS!
I'm going to go look at the post positions now...

Chicago working backwards

We got back from Chicago late last night, and I'm still exhausted. How long does it take to get over a trip like this?
We had dinner in Indianapolis on the way home. The experience there made both my daughter and I feel a lot better about the trip. The two of us sat down at a table alone since her six classmates were sitting with each other, and, as usual, they hadn't left any room for her.  We had just been there a couple of seconds, though, before the girls noticed where she was and shoved a bunch of seats together and called her to sit with them. 
I was so thankful to see it, and trying hard to get over my resentment of the fact that they could have done that the whole trip, instead of the last day. I had really taken everything a lot worse than my daughter had. She is the eternal optimist and always ready to forgive and forget.
So, my daughter deserted me, and I was stuck eating dinner by myself, but that was okay because she was happy.
Then I hear someone say, "Are you eating alone? Come sit with us!". I look over and it's one of the other mothers from my bus, at a table with her son and his friend.
I had seen and heard this woman, Allison, talking on the bus for the last four days, and she was by far the most intimidating person of all on this trip. Older, beautiful, self-confident, and loud - totally opposite from me.
With trepidation, I sat down with her, and we talked through supper. And to my surprise, she was absolutely approachable and nice. Not only that, but she had a lot of the same concerns that I did about the trip and how the other kids were treating her child. And also the same concerns about not really knowing the other people on the trip, and the same relief that the trip was almost over!
(Anna: I was thinking of you as I was talking to Allison through this dinner, and how right you were.  This person wasn't intimidating at all once I talked to her, but very nice and normal.  Thank you again!)
As for the last leg of the trip home, Derby Time struck again.  I-65 was closed for THUNDER OVER LOUISVILLE, the nation's largest annual fireworks show and the official kickoff of the KY DERBY FESTIVAL.  The fireworks show is held over the Ohio River.  That's the river we have to cross to get back to Kentucky. 
With I-65 closed, we backtrack our way on the Detour to get on I-64, where traffic was at a standstill.  So the bus got off the interstate and drove through the back roads to get back on I-64 at mile marker 1, which is the last entrance to the interstate before it crosses the river.
So we get on the Interstate and are soon stuck on the bridge over the Ohio River, which is where we happen to be when the fireworks start.
And that's how we got great seats for the 40-minute fireworks extravaganza, keeping the kids and adults close to the windows, and the conversation on the bus soon limited to "OOOH...AHHH...OOOH...AHHH".
The tour guides insisted that they planned it that way, hour delay and all.
I'll write more on the trip next time, working backwards. I am so happy to be home.

It's Derby time...

I had to go to an Easter egg hunt at 10 this (Saturday) morning.  I'm rushing, rushing, run out to my car, tear down the street, around the corner, up the street, and...stop.
   
The road is blocked by some kind of race.  I go around a different way and it's blocked there too.  I manage to make a huge backwards square in a way that's not blocked and finally get to where I'm going.

This happens to me every year, and signals the advent of DERBY TIME.  

I live in Louisville, KY, home of the Kentucky Derby.  While most people know about this horse race, most people probably don't know that this city throws a huge three-week party up to the start of the Derby, consisting of festivals, chow wagons, walks, runs, a balloon race, and a huge fireworks display.  There is also no school on the day before the Derby (Derby Eve). The Derby is the big thing here.

I really love this city, it's beautiful.  I didn't always live here, because I was an Army brat and moved around on the average of every 1 to 3 years growing up, in the US and in Germany.  I was very thankful to settle back down here when I was almost 13 and I've been here ever since.  I've lived in other beautiful places, cities with castles and 1000-year histories, but there's really no place like home.

However, for three weeks every year at this time, I'm kind of slightly frustrated being here, when I deal with the inconvenience of living in the South End of Louisville, where Churchill Downs happens to be, and the roads are closed down ALL THE TIME.  

When I was working nights a few years ago, I got off early one morning and actually had to leave my car parked a mile and a half away, and walk home.  Culprit: the mini-marathon.  And I don't even want to talk about OAKS day, when for the past two years my exit off the expressway on my way home from work has been blocked, and backtracking my way home has taken an extra hour.

And I guess I'll stop complaining, because I wouldn't trade the inconvenience for anything... since along with it comes the excitement of being in the middle of something really great!  

This city wouldn't be as charming without all the Derby craziness.  It's springtime, and the trees and flowers are blooming, the drabness of winter is being painted over with greens and pinks and purples, and my city prepares to put its best face forward to the world who watches us for two minutes every year.

And there's lots of helicopters.