Monthly Archives: February 2011

February 19, 2011 · 6:15 pm

Fraternizing With The Enemy.

We all burst from Chapel Hill in a plume of gorgeous blue smoke, wafting to all corners of the globe where other like-minded souls await. The “sky-blue mafia” has beds for you in Manhattan, an internship in Hollywood, and we’ll save your spot in line at the K&W in Rocky Mount. There is no old boy’s network, no secret handshake. We just share our affection for a town on a hill, and this: When we see Dookies clogging our TV, our lips curl, and we seethe. –Ian Williams, Why I Still Hate Duke

 Here is an account of the events that occurred in my life on February 9th, 2011. No names have been changed to protect the innocent.

This story confession is coming to you on the later side for a reason: I’ve had to work up the nerve to tell it. Because you know what February 9th was. Everybody knows what February 9th was.

It was the Carolina vs. Duke game.

Yes, it’s basketball season and consequently, Kellan and I are not speaking to each other. And here’s my dirty little secret for the day: I’m dating a Duke grad.

Around here, we call that “fraternizing with the enemy”.

The simple fact that two very different shades of blue have managed to somewhat peacefully coexist in the same relationship for the better part of six months now is nothing short of a miracle. I’m writing the Vatican.

If you had attempted to convince me as an undergrad that one day, I’d look twice at a boy from that pretentious dark blue school from the other side of the tracks-I would have recommended a lobotomy. You see, Carolina leaves an ever-lingering, indelible mark on her students. It’s a place that becomes a part of you. Hallmarked by an ardent passion for learning and basketball, sweet tea and magnolia trees, wraparound porches and old southern columns, books and bowties, Carolina is emblematic of both academic excellence and the effortless elegance that causes her to stand in such stark contrast with a school a mere fifteen minute drive down the road.  

It’s a long. fifteen. minutes.

Rushing Franklin after beating Duke!

Duke. Duke stands for everything we loathe, despise and abominate. If Carolina is the proverbial good neighbor that gently helps a sweet old lady cross a busy street, Duke is the gum-smacking, insolent adolescent that beats her with her walker and shoves her into oncoming traffic. Our archenemy and the other half of a time-honored, storied rivalry-we consider Duke to be the apex of all that’s evil in the world. At Carolina, an incredibly diverse student body stands united in disgust of a certain shade of blue and Coach K. Any mention of the Blue Devils leaves us seething and rather tempted to grab the nearest crucifix and go to town.

You get the point. As they say-“to hate like this is to be happy forever.” And a sea of Carolina [and Duke, for that matter] blue said “amen”.

I was raised to hate Duke. My Mom is a Carolina grad and made certain that no matter what continent we were living on, I had my little Carolina blue cheerleader outfit and pompoms with me. I learned the UNC fight song before I

Rushing Franklin after we won the National Championship my senior year!

 learned the alphabet. In college, the hatred intensified as I joined the ranks of thousands of college students that cover themselves from head to toe in Carolina blue and white paint, scream like wild banshees from buzzer to buzzer, and then elatedly burn anything in sight when we beat Duke. Win or lose, when those Duke/Carolina games roll around, you’ll find us fervently cheering on our Heels with a passion normally reserved for newly freed prisoners of war.

That’s my crowd. Duke and Carolina offer each other both unadulterated hatred and begrudging respect.

…and apparently, we also offer each other dates.

To my very great chagrin, I walked into party about eight months ago and started talking to a Dukie. And not just any Dukie-this one harbors a particularly relentless hatred for all things Carolina. He created the “UNC Sucks” facebook group when he was a freshman in college-a facebook group that is now thousands strong. He was in Michigan to watch the Blue Devils win the National Championship last year. [Wail!] Kellan is one of those hopeless Cameron Crazies that spent months of his undergraduate career camping out in a tent outside of Cameron to score tickets to see Duke and Carolina play. The kid bleeds Duke blue.

Aaaand this is how we handle basketball season.

…but he’s just so cute. I couldn’t help it.

Thus, to my great shame, February 9th did not find me with all of my Carolina friends drinking Carolina blue “haterade” and detailing the myriad of ways Coach K looks like a “rodent of unusual size”. February 9th instead found me watching the game with-brace yourself- a Dukie.

I’m humiliated. Please don’t take my pompoms away!

In my [rather shaky] defense, we also watched it with Kellan’s Dad-and Mr. Dickens is an ardent Carolina fan. [And thus, currently my favorite member of his family.]

The guilt has been rather overwhelming. This will inevitibly take a daunting amount of therapy to resolve. That, or a Carolina victory…

Carolina is going to give Duke the pounding they narrowly escaped in February on March 5th-so consider this my cyber stand against all things Duke. Here’s to my Heels-let’s beat those Dukies but good! I do, after all, dearly love watching Coach K cry.

…and if Kellan joins him-so be it.

God bless them Tarheel boys!

6 Comments

Filed under Go HEELS!

February 16, 2011 · 3:51 am

Hey, Julian.

My a-DORABLE twelve year old little sister received an “anonymous” heart shaped lollipop at school for Valentine’s day yesterday.

Anonymous.

I find this to be slightly suspect for a myriad of reasons. You might want to sit down-the emotion is still rather raw for me. I have, in fact, only recently stopped hyperventilating. But the paper bag is sitting right here for just-in-case purposes.

  1. She. Is. TWELVE. When I was twelve, I didn’t have the foggiest idea as to what a boy was!
  2. Well, that’s what I’ve told Emily. And I would consider it a personal favor if you’d be a dear and go along with it.
  3. Because to me, she is still four. With pigtails. And an incessant giggle. And chocolate shoved up her nose. We’re similar like that. I am in denial.
  4. But really, twelve is still positively infantile.
  5. Excuse me, my paper bag and I are going to need a minute.
  6. Now. Given the fact that Emily happens to be the most wildly intelligent twelve year old baby on the face of the planet, the little savant knows precisely from whence the lollipop in question came. It’s from a boy named Julian in her band at school. Apart from having a horridly pretentious little name, he apparently can’t play the trombone even a little bit, has a bad attitude, a worse cowlick and is altogether entirely unimpressive. If it had been anything other than a heart shaped lollipop she would have marched her baby butt right over to his gym class, hurled the thing at this head, and told Julian to fugghedaboutit.
  7. But really, who can resist a heart shaped lollipop?
  8. Me. They’re like diabetes on a stick.
  9.  I don’t like candy.
  10. Like me, Emily is impossible to surprise. Thus, anonymous Julian was not so anonymous.
  11. Julian is currently sobbing into his trust fund.  

Emily always has a crush on somebody or other. But at this point, I’m rather unconcerned-given the simple fact that

Em and Dad before a dance at her school. She looks like she's 25. Waaah!

 the Jonas Brothers still trump every other male in her life.

But the day some unfortunate male trumps Joe Jonas, we’re all in for a wild ride.

Especially if he brings Em a bouquet of heart shaped lollipops.

Hey Julian. I know how to kill someone and make it look like an accident.

Na, na na nananana.

2 Comments

Filed under Family, Holidays other than Christmas

February 5, 2011 · 4:50 am

Of Butter and Turkish Prisons. [Half-Baked.]

Pre-baking.

On the subject of how on earth I’ve been occupying my time back home, there’s another adventure I ought to regale you with. Get comfortable-you might want to think about flipping your coffee pot on-because this one will put you in a food coma that will last a month of Sundays.

Never before have I seen so. much. butter. I’m still recovering.

It all started when I was a little girl. There aren’t very many things that I believe in in this world-but I believe in the Southern Living Cookbook. [Amen.] This, friends, is a must. It’s my go-to gift for newlywed friends that are struggling to keep their significant other alive. I have yet to find a bad recipe in the Southern Living Cookbook [Amen.], and given the fact that I’ve probably cooked my way from apple butter through zucchini muffins no fewer than twelve thousand times, I consider myself to be an authority on the matter.

Actually, I consider myself to be an authority on any number of things-hence the problem. I love to cook-this, we’ve already discussed at great length. And one of the more mouth-watering recipes in the Southern Living Cookbook [Amen.] that I’ve experimented with over the years, is their recipe for cinnamon rolls.

And a hush falls over the crowd.

It’s divine. The stuff legends are made of. It will make you forget your name and birthday and the Gettysburg address. I swear by them-and have maintained since the ripe old age of eight that the Southern Living Cookbook’s my cinnamon roll recipe is far and away the best out there.

Case closed.

Now, there’s a blogger you might be familiar with-Pioneer Woman-who maintains that HER cinnamon rolls are the

The finished product. My next blog will be about the life sized statue of Pioneer Woman that I'm currently carving out of butter.

 best. Which really, is just offensive. Honestly, the first time I read it, I wanted to grab my torch and pitchfork and send her to sleep with the fishes. But given that I have sort of a cyber-stalker crush on her [In my head, we are best friends. It’s humiliating.], the authority on baked goods herself I decided to see for myself.

And that, friends, is how at approximately 11:00 PM on Monday night, I found myself in my kitchen, covered from head to toe in powdered sugar and flour, lecturing The Pioneer Woman [out loud, to my mild embarrassment] about mortifyingly obscene amounts of sugar and butter she was asking me to pour into the bowl.

I kid you not-I’ve never seen a recipe like it. And in the greatest bout of denial the world has ever seen, I actually modified half of the recipe to make “healthy cinnamon rolls”.

After all, Michelle Obama says that we all have to do our part to fight childhood obesity. And I am very patriotic.

I’ll admit, I was cocky. I tossed those pans in the oven without the slightest concern that the Pioneer Woman would come out on top […not that she had the foggiest idea that she and I were locked in the throes of an intense competition that made the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan look like a cake walk.] But as the minutes slipped by, my kitchen started to smell like something that simply cannot be described in earthly terms. The smell wafting from my oven alone was enough to send me into insulin shock.

I’m not kidding.  I had to eat four bagel bites just to rebalance my blood sugar. [Michelle, if you’re reading-I’m sorry. I’m weak.]

Seventeen minutes later, I removed said pans from the oven. It was undeniably clear that I was in the presence of greatness.

I took a bite, and was positively discombobulated. Twitterpated, if you will. Suddenly, my old recipe started to sound more like something one might eat at a state fair…or in a Turkish prison. I proceeded to cry, eat eighteen more, rip that old recipe out of my Southern Living Cookbook [which by the way, you should still buy, AMEN], and write an ode to Pioneer Woman, who as it turns out, knows her stuff.

Shut your computer, run to your kitchen, and make this recipe. Though be warned:  you’ll end up waddling away…

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Filed under Home, The daily grind