Tuesday

Today was my last easygoing Kentucky vacation day. We watched the rest of our Netflixed Rollergirls DVD's (through episode seven--still great) and ate a nice country garden meal at grandma's house. Let's see, proper blog etiquette requires me: the broccoli in light cheese sauce was probably the best thing on the table, followed by the whipped potatoes. Sadly, the porch-grown string beans were boiled with a savory ham-hock; I wasn't able to try them. There was a bowl of the same amazing heirloom Depp Family tomatoes, meaty and iridescent, sliced and raw, I recently used to make a successful two-week soup; there was bright yellow 'Nilla Wafer pudding casserole I'll probably go to hell for having seconds of. After dinner, we all wandered into the historical family home next to my grandmother-in-law's trailer. Here is where Sunshine spent scads of time growing up. After floods rotted the stability, and a lot of the kitchen floor, out of this house, mammaw temporarily moved into a trailer parked in the side yard. Currently, the big project on the ridge is renovating the old two-story family place. Rumor has it that the old house used to be a speakeasy. It also used to have handsome solid wood siding which is just being revealed as the boys re-floor the front rooms and plan a spacious porch in the back. The rest of today was absorbed studying the North Carolina driver's license test book and a romantic candle- and star-lit evening chugging hot sake on the side porch.* Tomorrow I wake up bright-and-afternoon to make the six hour drive to my own home town. The vagaries of wireless availability will dictate whether there is another post on this Update Column before Friday, September fourteenth, when I return to my beloved District unit. [Cavin]