Well Folks, we are back in the Bluegrass! It is sorta strange being back somewhere so familiar after being away for 8 years. A whole lot has changed and a whole lot has stayed exactly the same! Eliana was coloring a picture recently and made the entire background blue with a horizontal “horizon” line across the center. She explained that the top part was the blue sky and the bottom part was the kind of grass that they have in Kentucky.
The last two months have been full-on-crazy. If you have never packed a house, sold a house, and moved a house out of state—while juggling work and meetings and homeschool and kids and medical appointments and house repairs and farewell play-dates and coffee dates and hours spent trying to cancel your internet service (while deftly avoiding getting sucked into upgrading your service package instead!)—oh and simultaneously setting up care team and medical apparatus drop-offs and appointments and hello play-dates and coffee dates and house hunting showings—oh yeah, plus we still have work and homeschool and kids—word of advice: DON’T DO IT. As an added trauma—I needed to drive my 26 foot truck down Poplar Avenue after I picked it up (all of my Memphis readers are making this face: 😬) Suffice it to say: those incomprehensibly narrow lanes make me feel like I am going to die when I am driving my wife’s HONDA CIVIC down Poplar Ave! This fancy truck also had “Lane Departure” alarms that were blaring at me every few seconds, as I spent the first 5 minutes of the moving weekend sobbing and white-knuckling the steering wheel, endlessly repeating “I’M GONNA DIE I’M GONNA DIE I’M GONNA DIE…”
I did not die, however! It took about 2 days, but we got the whole truck packed and loaded—thanks to the Tetris skills of a few very handy friends and neighbors! We loaded Katie up in the van with the girls and sent them off the day before me. They moved into a small guest house on the horse farm of the neighbor of my grandparents out in the rolling hills of Central Kentucky. Pepperdog and I drove out the following day after I finished packing it all up and cleaning out the house in Memphis (it is much easier to pack and clean without children who instantly unpack and make messes… I think my girls are part human and part tornado. They have an uncanny ability to relocate the most bizarre things into the most bizarre locations! “What the?! How did that get there?!”)
After two days in the guesthouse, it became clear that my grandparents would no longer be returning to their home (My granddad had had a stroke a few weeks prior, and they had been living in a rehab facility at the time of our move, but ultimately made the decision not to return home). So we decided to move into their empty house (moving again, for those keeping track at home) and house-sit while we searched for a home to buy in Lexington. I’m also not sure if you have ever moved an entire household of worldly possessions into another household (also filled to bursting with well over 3 decades of worldly possessions)—word of advice: DON’T DO IT! Plus, in the heat of the double move, we didn’t keep track of our “Essential” boxes as we should have, some ended up on the bottom or back of the pile—and other things that we assumed would be NON-essential (like tools and dress-up clothes) have turned out to be very essential indeed (and yet are completely buried…). (We are also still living out of suitcases, btw!) I was not planning to install a dishwasher or redo rotten steps, or I would have left certain items much more accessible than they turned out to be! (GirlDad that I am, I should have also known that being able to dress up as a ballerina would be an essential element to consider…). To quote my late, great, Mamaw, “Duh and double duh!”
Also, my granddad is very old school. Like, hard-line-Depression-era-German-immigrant-parents old school. He does things the hard way just because that’s what the Amish do. He does not, nor has he ever had, trash service, for example. He burns his trash, composts his compostables, and lugs his metals out to the sink hole in the back of his 27 acre lot via tractor. He heats his house with a wood burning furnace (and yes, chops and hauls all his logs from hither to thither, meticulously stacking and re-stacking them just for fun/aesthetic purposes). I can easily imagine him unfastening a poopy diaper, scooping out the biodegradable interior substances into his compost pile, refastening said diaper—then suddenly realizing that a used diaper actually has other fantastic purposes—and can be used in fact to germinate seeds or clean up spills or something along those lines. Or, he would actually probably try and launder the thing and re-use it later on! Suffice it to say, we are city folk, and were a bit unprepared for the sharp contrast of Amish country living at its finest (though to be fair, we do have indoor plumbing and latrines). We spent several days cleaning and decluttering this house as we sought to cram our family into this space, without disrupting the Feng Shui of my grandparents quirky lifestyle. Then spent another several days moving furniture out and setting up my grandparents new apartment in an assisted living facility 20 minutes away. We have visited them a couple of times, getting whooped at UNO by Addie or helping them settle and sort things. It has been fun to explore their home and treasures a bit closer. Last night I tried on a few of my granddad’s extremely woolly hygge sweaters and had an allergic reaction (probably because they had not been washed since sometime in the 20th century) and ended up taking children’s Benadryl (the adult stuff is unfortunately in a “non-essential” box…) because my eyes were literally on fire. I don’t think I am quite Nordic enough to pull off that much wool…
We have also experienced culture shock being back in Kentucky. I don’t know if you could find a further extreme than Memphis and Kentucky? We are not used to cashiers looking us in our eyeballs and smiling at us and telling us to have a great day as they hand us our receipt. Or—when we were at Lowe’s getting stuff for the dishwasher install, a regular dad guy was walking by and just said, “Y’all need some help?” and proceeded to explain (man-splain??) exactly what we needed and helped us find it. Y’all. He wasn’t even an employee! He was just a regular dude in the plumbing aisle! When I go to Lowe’s in Memphis, I—1) Cannot locate an employee 2) If I happen to find one and ask them a question, they will roll their eyes and complain at me, make me feel like it’s my fault that they are having a terrible day, direct me to the wrong place, not have an answer to my basic question or give me a completely wrong answer to my basic question, try to pawn me off on someone else, or leave to say they will look into it but then never return! “Customer Service” is literally not a thing. (Bon Qui Qui gives a spot on rendition in this sketch…) I quickly learned there is never a reason to ask anyone at Lowe’s anything. Ever. Not in Kentucky! People are actually helpful! Passers-by even offer to help you load your vehicle! (again, not employees!)
To help with our Kentucky Culture Shock, I went to the web. Here are a few “Kentucky Slang Words that will help you Sound Like a Local” according to Enjoy Travel .com
- Dirty Bird = KFC “Save me a piece of that dirty bird for later!” (Why yes, this is an appropriated quote from Nacho Libre)
- Fair to Middlin’ = Doing ok/so so “Oh, I’m fair to middlin’.”
- Tump = Tip/dump over “Careful ya don’t tump that cup over!”
- Butter my butt and call me a biscuit! = Jaw-droppingly unbelievable “Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit! Did you see how far I just spit??”
- Use’ta’could = Used to be able to “Now we can’t smoke in the hospital no mo…we use’ta’could though…”
We also experienced a really sudden and tragic loss. On my birthday last week, my sweet Mamaw went to be with Jesus. Pictured above is when she finally got to meet Izzie back in 2022 (she was one of the great All-Time Izzie Fans, as she was a cheerleader at heart in most things). Her funeral was this week. It was a really sweet time of family gathering, remembering and celebrating her life, singing her favorite hymns, and meeting people that she touched over the 9 decades span of her life. Many tears were shed, many laughs were had. She was a good ol’, as they say—though she often humbly referred to herself as an “old, frail West Virginia bag lady”—Heaven’s Choir no doubt got a little more boisterous this week, I’m sure! We love you dearly, Mamaw, you will be missed indeed. But we are rejoicing that you are now in a place with no more pain or sorrow or suffering. Here’s the last part of verse 3 of What A Friend We Have In Jesus, a song I sang for her at her funeral.
Soon in glory bright unclouded
There will be no need for pray’r
Rapture praise and endless worship
Will be our sweet portion there
Let me get to my saga of the day… Yesterday was an absolutely stunning spring day. It was also quite windy. So we channeled our inner Mary Poppins and went off to the hill to fly our pink unicorn kite! (Once again, I am a hardcore GirlDad…) Now, ignore the fact that my children are dressed like devout homeschoolers above, and I will set the scene—
It was such a perfect day. It was SO windy. But not cold windy. So much so I was overcome with an overwhelming urge to fly a kite. I went down to the basement where all of our stuff is packed in floor to ceiling, clambered over a few boxes to get our kite (we have only flown it one other time with mild success (due to the fact that it wasn’t quite windy enough, so you basically had to sprint to keep it up)). Katie was in the house, caring for Izzie who was just starting down the road of fever, congestion and cold symptoms, so the girls and I (and Pepperdog) took it up on the hill, and let it rip. We let it all the way out—it was a mere speck in the sky! So much fun! Pepper was not so into it and spent the time digging for a muskrat in the side of the hill or something (she is thoroughly enjoying her life as a farm dog).
(Yes, Eliana is indeed wearing a fluorescent gymnastics onesie with a flannel dress tied around her waist and mismatching fuzzy mermaid socks.) But you can’t argue that she has that wide kite-flying stance down! After I wound the kite most of the way back in, Addie also took a turn flying it—and when she went to hand me back the handle, we fumbled the exchange and our kite took off like a drag-racer that had been revving its engine and was finally set free! The handle offered little resistance until it flew up into a tree on the fence-line, all of my meticulously spun string zipped out in a matter of mere seconds—and before I could reach it, the handle broke through the foliage and flew off into my neighbors horse paddock. In Addie’s words, our botched hand off was partly her fault, partly my fault, and partly the horses’ fault.
After racing across the fence, now I was high-stepping it, down a hill, through a horse field, in my Crocs (which I did NOT have flipped into “sport mode”)—unaware of the fact that I was still screaming, “ADDIE!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!” over and over. Then quickly realizing that all of my screaming and charging had whipped up quite a bit of a horse stampede frenzy across the valley. A field of horses is a quintessential, serene Kentucky sight. Until, that is, that you charge through their field in your Crocs, chasing a unicorn kite. You then instantly realize indeed just how tiny and frail that you are, and just how…muscular and…hoov-y they are by comparison… This was no situation that I wished to belabor… The only course of action was through—
—THROUGH a CREEK, it turned out. Now, “creek” is a very generous term for what this was. A “long, slurpy puddle” would probably be a better descriptor. It stretched the length of the valley, and looked like a trickle from the top of the hill, but when you get up close to it, you promptly realize that no, it is indeed a good 12 feet across. A raging, white-water, slurpy trickle. And… it is also undoubtedly, roughly 68% equine excrement. I made it to the “creek”—but did not think to ask the Good Lord Almighty to part it like the Red Sea—my nemesis kite continued to taunt me as it was swept through the next horse paddock, and I had no choice but to press on. I would not be a coward! I would save the kite for my 4 year old daughter and be the hero-dad of the day! Fight! WIN! I could do this!
I took two big steps and I was across!—except, neither Croc came out with me. Because, what looked like a creek slash long slurpy puddle, was really only 1/10th water—erm, “liquid” (definitely urine) and 9/10ths mud—erm “brown squishy feculence” (I believe the French would call it, “Ordure”). (btw, It remains to be disproven that I did not, in fact, cross through quicksand…). Now I was shoe-less, and acutely aware of the fact that there was indeed, horse manure and urine, endlessly in every direction, as far as the eye could see. No time to dwell on that, my bastard kite was doing the backstroke! Maybe it was just a trick of the wind, but I am fairly certain I saw one of his long kite-tail ribbons fly up and flip me the bird! I shoelessly squelched across yet another fence, and made my way through the 2nd paddock, crossing a 3rd fence before reaching my kite that had finally come to rest, snagged on a fence, several hundred yards from where he was liberated at the top of the hill…
I mean, just LOOK at that smug face!! Oh, he definitely flipped me off!
I returned the kite back across the two paddocks, had Eliana get Pepperdog inside (I was also really worried during that whole time that she would take off after me and then the horses would have really let us have it! Thankfully, that did not happen!) Once we got the kite in the house and the dog in the house, I returned to the creek and traipsed once more through the “creek,” up and down the section I thought I had crossed, for at least 15 or 20 minutes. But alas, the Crocs were never found—likely never to be seen again!😭
Comical as this was, I was struck later on by the fact that it is also, so life! One moment, you can be peacefully flying a kite—and in a split second, you can be charging barefoot through a horse stampede. Life is so unpredictable. It is joy— “WOW! Look how high our kite can go!” It is sorrow—”RIP My Crocs. 2022-2024″ It can often be both at the same time. Psalm 30 of David says, “Then you turned my lament into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and covered me with joy” and later in 34:1, “I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.”
So whether you are in a season of kite-flying or Croc-burying, or something in between, don’t forget to praise the LORD.
DAVID SCOT MUSSER 