Soup Bean Day!!!!

It's soup beans day at Summit City, which means that my mind shuts down around 11 am and all I can think of is how delicious the hot pinto beans will be as they slide into my belly along with crumbled corn bread and onions and oh yes...

Really, it's hard to be unhappy on soup beans day.

Which is why I'm taking a brief break from proposal writing to write to you, my lovely lovely blog readers.

Life is good. I'm confused about people, and what I want from them, but this seems to be a constant state of being for me in the fall. It's like I suck every last bit of life from summer because I know that winter will be cold and lonely.

Okay, enough cryptic, melodramatic BS.

I had to put down my beloved Hasil Adkins, because he had kitty HIV. He would have given it to other cats and had a drastic deterioration and it would have been even sadder than it was to drive to the vet with a cat and come back with only a bill for euthanasia. That was the hardest thing I've had to do this fall.

But I went to the Pikeville animal shelter and got another cat, this time a female, black, long-haired kitten, sort of the opposite of Hasil Adkins. I don't love her quite as much as I loved Hasil yet, but Little Sadie Lockman is pretty durn cute, a purrer, and a cuddler, and just what I need right now.

Last week I went to East Tennessee to the Highlander Research and Education Center for a meeting with the STAY Project's fiscal agent. The meeting was productive and New Market, TN is absolutely beautiful! I was awed by the Great Smoky mountains. They are huge. And this is coming from a WV girl. I felt like I was from Ohio or something. I'm a bit in love with that part of Appalachia. New place I want to live?...

I spoke with my advisor yesterday, who seems to be on the same page with me as far as my time at Oberlin goes. She advised me to try to finish in 3 semesters (which I actually can do with minimal impact on my sanity) so I can go and do the things I really want to do. I knew there was some reason I asked her to be my advisor.

We'll it's only 15 minutes until it is acceptable for me to get soup beans.... I can taste them right now. I'm going to write something about soup beans, maybe a food article. They are the food of the East Kentucky gods. Cheap and delicious. At home we called them brown beans and cornbread. I call them heaven in a bowl.

Y'all get the point. I'll try to write more. But for now I'm looking forward to having soup bean breath.