Never Thought It Would Happen To Me

Quick Update/Note: I'm so happy to report that my niece continues to recover and in doing so has gotten her smile and sense of humor back...and so it seems have I. Our family has finally reclaimed the levity lost by the seriousness of Haleigh's illness and what better way to celebrate that than another self-depreciating blog post about the fumbles and follies of a Southern girl in San Francisco? Thanks again to everyone for your well wishes and support. ~Caroline

There are many things that happen to a girl on the road to becoming "citified."  Like assimilating to a foreign country, it is important to learn the customs and rules of your new surroundings.  In Britain, you  learn to drive on the opposite side of the street.  In San Francisco, you learn that green does not automatically mean "go," rather scan the crosswalk for pedestrians and THEN you may go (and may I just vent for a moment here?  San Franciscans, I realize that it is your God-given, er...state-mandated right to be in said crosswalk. Could you not act as if you are on an evening stroll down Pier 39...giddy up, peeps!  Do you know how hard it is to make a left turn in this city?!)  Sometimes less overt changes happen - issues of Mother Jones are pushed through our mail slot alongside Southern Living Magazine, the word "barbeque" is used less as a noun and more as a verb, at the first sign of a cold, you email your herbalist instead of making an appointment at the Minute Clinic...but this....this I never thought would happen to me:

Secret is out in favor of Soap Walla's All-natural deodorant cream.

When I first moved here, I marveled at how San Franciscans embrace their "natural oils and odeurs."  Not unlike the French, but somehow just not as glamourous.  I even hatched a new "necessity is the mother of invention" idea.  You know those air-curtain-thingys that some stores have above their entrance doors?  Well, what if we fashioned them to spray bursts of deodorant along with the cool air?  It could be kind of a dual purpose "free deodorant dispensary" and "service to the olfactory-sensitive public" all in one. If you've ever ridden BART on a hot San Francisco day, I can almost guarantee that you would identify with the latter population.  When those doors close and those "natural odors" putrid B.O. invades your nostrils, you will know I speak the truth...and once you are in the tuna can that is a BART car, there is obviously no escape. Ick. (Playing devil's advocate here for a moment, I'd like to point out that Southern women have a tendency to layer on the perfume...which perhaps not quite as bad, a sensory invasion in itself.)

So back to the point...after reading an article about the presence of aluminum and other icky things found in anti-antiperspirants, I turned to my old friend Google to help me search reviews of natural alternatives.  Not surprisingly, most of the reviews were pretty bad.  I had almost resigned myself to the fact that the heavy metals would have to remain as my underarm accessories, until I found a blog by a girl who had tried 7 of the leading hippy-dippy alternatives, ranking each by her own set of methodical criteria.  This totally resonated with the data nerd (and budding hippie?) in me.  (see also: I am a sucker for infomercials and a sales person's dream. Although she did not benefit directly from this, her sales pitch of sorts had similar consequences for my AMEX)  Furthering my journey down Assimilation Lane, I was soon the proud new owner of a vat of Soapwalla All-Natural Deodorant Creme.

After my next shower, I dug my fingertips into the foreign consistency and lathered it on.  It smelled pretty darn good.  I remained optimistic - this Faux-B-O  repellent might actually work! Day 1 was a success!  I even recruited Lew as a second guinea pig for my trails.  If this stuff could stand up to man-stank, then I knew I could easily convert and never look back!  Day 2, both guineas remained stench free!  However, on the third day of Stench-mas, my true love gave to me, a reality check via sweaty Hanes Tee.  This delicate deodorant frosting didn't stand a chance against 18 holes of golf and a 74 degree San Francisco "heat wave."  Turns out, it would fail the she-male as well.  About a half-hour into a cardio workout, I felt like the Peanuts character with the cloud of dirt wafting from him...except in my cartoon version, the wafts would be a pea-green color to represent the stink emanating from my pits. Gross.  While not a total bust (if the weather is chilly and my plans de jour include mostly sedentary activity, I see no reason to "aluminate" my armpits), but not exactly a score either.  On to the next conquest...

Should I go "tout naturel"with brows as well?

In Defense of Ig'nant

 

Ok, so I’m a little tired of everyone picking on the South (even though I will say the jackadoodle-doo that pulled the stunt with Jim Cantore didn’t do us any favors in the image department).  I agree that, as a whole, we could have done a little better planning for "Snowmaggedon I" and now its bitchier sequel "Snowpocalypse - Fo'Real This Time."  May I humbly point out that we just aren’t equipped to handle the powdery stuff?   It doesn’t make sense to invest in the equipment it takes to properly clear roads when its use is only necessary every 5+ years (which brings to mind a personal lesson learned – the beaucoup bucks one shelled out for a fancy Jack Lalane juicer was not the best use of funds for the “Detoxifying Juice Cleanse” a certain someone has done…well...once in 5 years and reason #305 why I shouldn't be allowed to watch infomercials).  Instead of seeing a bunch of ignorant, bumbling simpletons, I saw something beautiful.  We Southern people banded together and truly had each other’s backs.  In Atlanta, people took to the interstate and offered food, rides, and lodging to those who were stuck or out of gas. Someone started a Facebook group that, within hours, had 20,000 members designed to match those who were in need with those who could offer assistance. People were freely posting their addresses and what mile markers were closest in order to open their homes to perfect strangers so they wouldn’t have to sleep in their freezing-cold cars. Mother Theresa put it beautifully when she said, “If we have no peace, it’s because we’ve forgotten that we belong to each other.” My darling fellow Southerners just demonstrated that sprit in this beautiful outpouring of love and made me so very proud to be among them.  

As many of you know, my niece Haleigh has been in the hospital for almost 7 weeks now. Through this very difficult time, I have seen such generosity and sincere kindness.  Almost immediately, friends and family organized a schedule to make sure meals were delivered to the house (‘cause that’s another thing about Southerners….ain’t nobody going hungry on our watch!).   One of Haleigh’s nurses went to Target to buy a few pairs of those footed PJ’s with the zipper thinking that if we put it on backwards, it might help HJ to keep her Central Line and GButton in place. She did that with her own money, on her own time, with her own love for this little kid on her rotation. Talking to a woman here at the hospital in Charlotte, we heard of a mama who has been with her baby so long in ICU that all she had were summer sandals.  What did that woman do? She went to the store and bought that mama a pair of shoes and had the class to leave them at the nurses’ station as to not embarrass the woman with a face-to-face handout. So yes, there are times when I shake my head at the latest "drunk man falling off his tractor" news story coming out of Anals (sic) of Dixie, but these beautiful expressions of selflessness and “we belong to each other-ness” make this girl proud to be among this tribe of ig’nant Southerners.