My West Virginia Boy

Okay. He's not a boy. He's a man. The man I married 17 years ago this September.

I don't live in WV anymore, but anyone who was born and raised in WV knows it stays in your blood. That's why I'm glad I married a West Virginia Boy. I think God knew I wouldn't have been happy with anybody else.

Things I love about my WV Boy:

1. He can work 40+ hours a week in a white collar job, but still fix anything around my house. He fixed my washer last night and my dryer a few weeks ago. It's great to have someone so handy. I have friends whose husbands are not. That gets expensive.

2. He loves to camp and fish with my son. It's surprising how few kids get to do that nowadays! And he helps coach my son's baseball team every season without complaint, though often it means going straight from the office to stand on the field for another 3 hours!

3. His blood runs blue and old gold, so I know I can never make him angrier than he gets when WVU is losing a football game.

4. He loves WV as much as I do and therefore understands me.

5. WV men make great dads and I know my son will also be a great dad because of the example his father is setting.

Happy Father's Day to my WV Boy!

Hiatus

Life is getting kind of hectic with the school year finishing up, recreation baseball ending, and All Star baseball starting. I'm going to take a break for a while from blogging. I'll continue to check on blogs I enjoy reading.

I plan to be back when time is once again on my side.

Enjoy your life!

What I loathe about the Internet

There was a time years ago when people kept their thoughts to themselves. If they thought something bad about someone, they thought it privately. At most they might have shared it with a husband or a friend, but it stopped there.

These days people can say whatever they want and unlimited numbers of people can read about it. There seem to be no consequences for bad behavior.

I'm not sure that's progress.

I enjoy reading other people's blogs. I tend to stick to the ones that talk about being a mom, homeschooling, cooking, and staying home. I enjoy reading about how other people handle struggles I face. I like to read what people think about topics in the news or issues that affect a group that I am in.

What I don't like is reading mean spirited banter from people. I don't like people who use the anonymity of the internet to misbehave or attack other people.

If you are rude or a jerk in real life, it really does come through on your blog, or your facebook, or your tweets.

I suppose the good thing about it is, you can just click away from that page or that item that is offensive.

What I'm afraid will happen eventually, though, is that all this freedom of saying whatever you think about other people, without thought of the consequences, is going to spill over in real life. I think it's already started to.

A good rule I like to follow is, if I wouldn't say it directly to the person I am talking about, I shouldn't put it on the internet.

Talking about yourself, your life, is one thing. Attacking other people or parading your prejudices on your blog is something else. Those kinds of blogs are the ones I try to avoid.

Just makes life more peaceful.

North Georgia

One of my family's favorite places to go is Blue Ridge and McCaysville, Georgia. We spent the day there yesterday and had a great time!

We started going there several years back for the fishing and maybe for the fried pies at Mercier Orchards (plus Mercier has a fantastically clean restroom --- very important to me when traveling away from home --- just in case you want to know!).

We always drive through Blue Ridge and McCaysville and go to Horseshoe Bend Park. My son and husband go fishing. Yesterday, I actually cast a line in the water a couple of times. None of us caught anything, but we did spend some time watching a guy wade out into the Toccoa River first flyfishing and then using a rod and reel. He caught about three fish. My son was a bit jealous. :)

The park has a baseball field too and my son threw some pitches before we headed over to Mercier to grab some pies, apple cider, and a toy flintlock gun for my son. Boys love guns, don't they?

On our way back home, we started to drive through Fort Mountain State Park. We have never been there before and wanted to check it out. We found out it was about 16 miles off the highway, though, so we'll have to save that for another time. It was just getting too late!

I still haven't planned out that camping trip yet. I guess I need to get started with that. Gee, I wonder why I'm dragging my feet?

Oh, I remember, something about sleeping in a TENT!

A funny thing happened down in Georgia . . .

. . . we became a family.

The last week of July/first week of August will mark 16 years for us living in Georgia. The varying dates are because my husband moved down the week before I did because I had to finish my internship in Bluefield.

I try to remember what those young people were thinking way back then. I was 22 and my husband was 24. We had only been married about 10 months. I can hardly remember those people. So much has happened and changed us since then.

I do know we felt limited by options in WV and I do know we saw moving to Georgia as a grand adventure. Not to say we took the decision lightly. We went back and forth about it for MONTHS! We listed pros and cons. We discussed our options. We made ourselves sick talking about it.

And then we jumped.

I had a deal with my husband. I told him I would stay in Georgia for five years and then I wanted to move back to WV.

Truthfully, I wanted to move back to WV after the first month. And I didn't even want to give Georgia a shot.

In fact (and I'll be quite honest here), I wasn't sure our marriage would survive our move to Georgia. We had a hard few years. Yeah, years. It wasn't always talked about, but it was always in the background. I wanted to give up and move back to WV. He thought we should stay and make it work here.

The best piece of advice my mother ever gave me when I called her (you should have seen the long distance phone bills!) and cried and cried about wanting to move back home was this: Your place is with your husband. Your home is with him now.

Yesterday, sitting on the front porch, I thought about all of that. I thought about the years living as a WV Expat in another state. I thought about how much I missed by not living in WV with family. My husband loves WV as much as I do, so it's something we've discussed before.

But what I was watching from my front porch made me realize I wouldn't change a thing. My husband was down in the yard with my son and 5 of my son's friends from the neighborhood. They were playing touch football. It a was beautiful day. It was an even more beautiful moment.

We've had so many experiences here. We've built a life here. I would have never believed it 16 years ago, but Georgia really is our home. I'll always love WV, of course. It's our heritage; it's where our family is. But Georgia is our home.

It's quite a revelation to me that home is where your history is. That's why it was so hard to leave WV. My childhood was there and that was the only history I had.

Now that my husband and I are going on 17 years of marriage, my history is somewhere else.

There are some bittersweet elements to that, but I choose to focus on the sweet.

Camping

Now that the weather is warmer, my family and I will spend some time at our favorite place nearby: Red Top Mountain State Park.

It's surrounded by Lake Allatoona and it's a perfect spot to fish, hike, play in the water, or just sit by the lake and soak up the surroundings.

My husband and I stayed in a cabin there the second year we lived in GA. Back then we lived about 45 minutes away from the park. Now we're about 15 minutes away, making it easier to just drive over and spend a couple of hours on the spur of the moment.

This year we are considering going camping there.

In a tent.

My husband and son love to go camping. Usually, they go camping off the Elk River in Webster Springs, WV. That's a spot my husband and his family have been camping at since he was a little boy. It's a beautiful, untouched spot and it's my husband's first choice for any camping excursion.

Hubby and son haven't been there since the summer before my father-in-law passed away. My husband isn't sure when they'll go back there. That place is tied up with memories of his dad and those memories are hard for him to face right now. I'm sure they'll go back there eventually, but maybe not this summer.

I've been to the place where they camp on Elk River, but have only spent a few hours there. The accommodations are primitive. For example, the toilet consists of a hole dug by my father in law with a bottomless bucket and an old toilet seat on top.

Now, I like primitive as a decorating concept, but not as a way of life. So I have not spent the night at Elk. And probably never will. I'll live that joy to the men in my life.

Last summer we camped off the Greenbrier River in Ronceverte. This style of camping was more for me. We stayed at property right by the river owned by my sister-in-law and her husband. They've had the place for years and have equipped it with a building that has running water, with a toilet, shower, and sink. There is also a refrigerator, a stove, and a dryer.

There are no sleeping quarters in that building, but they have their RV parked right beside it. The RV is where we slept while we camped for a few nights.

The RV has a few very comfortable beds, plus the RV has air conditioning if the heat gets to be too much during the day. Honestly, I didn't need the air so much because I'm used to Georgia heat now and sitting under a tree on the hottest WV day feels kind of like heaven to me. Our little pug appreciated the RV, though, and we'd put him in his crate and let him nap when he got tired of running around outside.

So that's my idea of camping, folks. Showers, running water, refrigerators, electricity, and a nice, soft bed.

Kind of like being home.

This year, I stuck my foot in my big, fat mouth by suggesting we go camping a little closer to home when spring came. We are planning to camp in Ronceverte again this summer, but (because of me) we are also planning to camp at Red Top.

In a tent.

Granted, it won't be as primitive as the accommodations on Elk River, but it'll be a whole new way of living for me.

We're only staying a maximum of two nights.

And, if it gets to be too much for me, I'm driving the 15 minutes back to my house and leaving the boys in the tent!

I guess that's another luxury of camping so close to home!

WV news

West Virginia got hit a couple of times in the media recently. One hit involved a study that placed the state dead last among the happiest states in the country. Another hit came when a West Virginia legislator from Lincoln County, Jeff Eldridge, introduced legislation to ban the sell of Barbies in WV.

My mom tipped me off that our hometown newspaper wrote a good editorial in rebuttal to the stupid assertion that West Virginians are the unhappiest people in the U.S.

I did an independent study recently and determined that studies like the one showing WV is the unhappiest state in the U.S. are a waste of time.

Some people in Lincoln County think that Jeff Eldridge is wasting time by introducing the bill to ban Barbie. According to a quote from the Lincoln Online Journal, he's just interested in making sure girls know there's more to life than a pretty face.

“It isn’t just Barbie,” he said this week. “It is the idea that all a girl has to do to succeed is look pretty. I wanted to emphasize the need for education to succeed in life.”

It looks like he's getting more than he bargained for, what with Jay Leno using the opportunity to make fun of WV and David Letterman wanting him on his show.

The Lincoln Online Journal reports Eldridge won't be going on David Letterman, but I wish he would.

I've thought a lot about this story and I'd like to know what the argument is. Are those giving him such a hard time saying there is no negative impact by allowing our young daughters to emulate Barbie? Of course there is. Young girls suffer from self esteem problems now more than ever. Unfortunately, it's just the tip of the iceberg.

I played with Barbies growing up, but I was surrounded by strong women who looked nothing like the stereotype. Plus, I wasn't bombarded with the perfect body from every magazine cover and television show. I didn't see the waifs all over the movie screen or dancing in videos like young girls see today. And not every woman in my life was obsessed with diet and looks. They had other things to do like live their life.

All of these things have an impact on young girls. Dove built an entire campaign around the problem.

I think Eldridge was making an honest attempt to address the issue. Maybe he could have found a better proposal. Maybe he should have suggested a mentoring program for young WV girls so they could be exposed to real women contributing and making a difference. Maybe he could have helped start a sports program aimed at getting young girls active and keeping them healthy. Maybe going after Barbie wasn't the best thing, but he took a shot.

What bothers me most about this story isn't the fact that Eldridge introduced the legislation, but that the mainstream media used it as another way to take potshots at West Virginia.

Other states have their shares of legislation that seems a little odd or unimportant. A while back a GA lawmaker introduced legislation to make it illegal not to serve sweetened iced tea in a restaurant that is already serving iced tea. (I actually supported that legislation. Unsweetened tea? What's the point?)

WV is an easy target for people and that really makes me angry. Leno went too far. He didn't just take aim at the lawmaker, he took aim at the whole state.

His exact words: "Last week, a West Virginia lawmaker named Jeff Eldridge introduced a bill that would ban the state of West Virginia from selling Barbie dolls. They want to make it illegal to sell Barbie dolls in West Virginia cause they say the dolls give girls unreal expectations. See, apparently in West Virginia, dolls that have all of their teeth are not considered realistic."

That's taking a hit at every West Virginian and promoting a stereotype that hurts the state in more ways than one. Proud West Virginians don't want to be belittled. Teens in the state don't want to be made fun of. This pervasive idea that the state is filled with toothless hillbillies hurts people and can prevent much needed industry from coming into the state.

But what can you expect when the state's own governor takes potshots at his constituents?

Mr. Eldridge, go ahead and rethink the Barbie ban. Seems like people in your area aren't interested. Replace it instead with something more useful.

Ban the transmission of Jay Leno's Tonight Show from coming into the state's TV stations.

Now there's some useful legislation.


** Thanks, A., for the heads up!