Championing the makers, artists, and wanderers in all of us.
We finally have everything moved over to the new place – bookcases that need to be reunited with their shelves, a disassembled desk, an armchair that’s still covered in shrink wrap, stacks of boxes and bags and baskets.
But we got our bed set up. And the coffeemaker plugged in. And, even if there’s nowhere to sit in the living room, the patio is quite cozy.
Despite this cardboard jungle phase, it’s already starting to feel like home.
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I have a packed suitcase, and I won’t be sleeping in my own bed tonight – but I’m not going anywhere.
My bed, my dresser, and various other furniture items and boxes of things are already in our new place, down the road.
Moving is a little like standing in a doorway. Or like the feeling when the edge of an ocean wave foams up over your ankles and then pulls back, dragging the sand beneath your feet with it, until just when you think you might lose your footing completely, and it withdraws, leaving you alone to steady yourself in the sand. Piece by piece, everything shifts, and then it’s done, and you find your balance again.
Tonight, we’ll roll out sleeping bags on the floor. In a matter of days, we’ll have these rooms emptied and cleaned out, and we’ll lock the door on the bittersweet memories of our years here and begin to settle in to a new space.
It’s only a few miles away, but it feels like a fresh start.
I sunburn easily.
I blame my genes. Basically, I descend from a mélange of peoples, who, I assume, just kept walking north until they got to the regions of Europe that were cold and cloudy enough not to punish their pallid skin.
Generations later, I was born in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, wearing the maladapted melanin of my kin. Here, summer rays can be intense enough to burn a Celtic lass like me within 10 minutes.
My grandma used to tell me to put vinegar on sunburns. “The sooner the better,” she’d say. Being a teenager, I’d roll my eyes and/or ignore her advice.
Then, after one sunburn that left my skin ablaze like a village after a Viking* raid, I finally gave in and tried it. The pain was gone almost instantly. I did smell like vinegar, but I had no intentions of going back outside anytime soon anyway.
Now I wear a moisturizer with sunscreen in it daily. If I do get a sunburn, I have no problem reaching for the vinegar and gently daubing some on. Totally worth smelling like a salad dressing (or maybe a jar of pickles) for a few hours.
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*I also have Viking ancestors. I like to think of them as not the village-destroying type, though. Maybe horned-hat-wearing and fierce – like you wouldn’t want to mess with them – yet somehow kind hearted. (This may not be historically accurate.)
There’s a view that the middle of the U.S. is nothing but farm fields.
Drive an hour or so northeast of the of the Indianapolis Airport, and you’ll find yourself in Madison County (not the one with the bridges). It has its share of agriculture, for sure, but there are also cultural and historical sites, and people passionate about things they make.
1. A performing arts theater that makes you feel like you’re sitting in a Spanish courtyard under a starry sky. The Paramount Theatre Centre is one of only a handful of remaining atmospheric theaters by architect John Eberson.
2. Large, 2000-year-old heaps of earth built up by mysterious ancient people(s) to align with heavenly bodies at Mounds State Park.
3. Free public wifi throughout downtown Anderson (the county seat), thanks to dozens of hotspots. (PDF map)
4. The House of Glass, a family-run artisan glass studio, which still crafts each piece by hand in the tradition of their French ancestors.
5. A gospel music recording studio that also serves insanely good house-made cakes, Pure & Simple Restaurant at Gaither Family Resources. (Phillip wants me to add that the pot roast skillet was also delicious. So was the chicken bacon mac and cheese.)
6. The first historic district to be added to the National Register of Historic Places – West Eighth Street Historic District. (Walking tour map)
7. The world’s largest ball of paint, a baseball that’s been coated in more than 24,000 layers of paint over the last 37 years and now weighs over 4,000 pounds.
Our homebase while we explored Madison County was a suite at the conveniently-located Best Western Plus in Anderson, which included breakfast every morning and coffee all day. (Yeah!)
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A big thank you to Anderson Madison County Visitor and Convention Bureau! We were their guests at the Best Western Plus and at Pure & Simple Restaurant. But I wasn’t kidding about that cake.
“Really?! You want to eat one of those things?”
Until at that moment, I hadn’t thought wanting to get a Philly cheesesteak in Philly was such a crazy idea. But Phillip’s uncles, who we were visiting a few years back, seemed surprised and disgusted at the thought.
I guess when you have lived your whole life just outside of Philadelphia, you’re over the whole cheesesteak thing.
More recently, while in line at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, we struck up a conversation with some guys from Germany, who had already been to their bucket-list restaurant for their SoCal trip. It wasn’t a beachside seafood spot, Downtown Disney diner, trendy vegan cafe, or even an L.A. taco truck.
It was the Cheesecake Factory.
To me, that’s part of a big ol’ chain I could eat at whenever (but haven’t for a long time). To them, it’s the hangout from The Big Bang Theory, and something you can’t experience where they’re from.
Local – and interesting – eating is relative.
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