March 25, 2008

Here I am in Georgia again. It’s funny, but I’m getting into container gardening again. Seems that’s all I dragged down from Durham with me this time were pots and dirt and half-dead plants that I’m determined to resurrect. There’s a whole back deck here that needs some color.

Nesting instinct, maybe. As long as I’m here, it’s going to be a pretty here. Colorful and sweet-smelling, like the lemon tree. With real lemons on it. I dragged all the pots in last night, as it got down to 34. Tonight, though, it’s only supposed to go to 38 so I think I’ll leave everything outside.

I’ve got Georgia plates on my car now, and I’ve donated blood here now too (after stashing the groceries I’d just gotten in the refrigerator at the senior center where they were collecting the blood). Today’s theme—and apparently they have one each time—was MASH. So the whole setup was like a Korean War site, complete with Radar, Hawkeye, and Hot Lips. Only Hot Lips in this case was a very lively seventy-year-old (or thereabouts) who had just gotten engaged (for real) and had the biggest diamond I’ve ever seen on her finger. I went with my friend Bunny on impulse—we saw the sign at the dump, of all places, “Blood Drive Eulonia Multi-Purpose Center Today,”—and so we decided to go on and do it. I’m glad we did. We ran into two other ladies from the neighborhood. And that may be why it’s starting to feel like “home”—I like running into people I know wherever I go.

So Georgia’s turning into home. As I left last Thursday, and gave Daisy a last pet before I left, I wanted to be in Durham but I didn’t want to leave Georgia. So the first half-hour of the trip, I was composing my own country song that went something like:

“It’s not home if you’re always leaving,

It’s not love if you’re always crying.

Fourteen moves in as many years

Something something and a bucket of tears.”

Fiction, pure fiction. But it seemed to fit the drive. Anyway, tomorrow will be filled up with “Control Room Ergonomics” and then dinner at Bunny’s with as many of the neighborhood ladies as show up. After all the rich food I’ve had over the past week, I think I’ll take something simple, like black beans and rice. Yep. Think I will. I need something healthy.