Strong is her hold

Boy do I have bad timing.

I had been waiting a year and a half for what went around to finally come around, and two weeks before I leave the company, eleven years of selfishness and mismanagement explode in my boss’s face in a great karmic fart.

She quit before she could get fired, but the effect is still the same. She remains in the bakery, but being kicked back from team leader to receiver (yes, my job) is a significant pay and benefit cut. Her home life and personal situation struck a match of pity, but that ember died in the next breath because oh right, look at all she’s done to her employees and her department. I’ll spare you the details.

Karma’s a bitch and then you get reincarnated as a dung beetle.

In other news, this is the fifth year in a row that I have missed the NC Literary Festival. This troubles me deeply, because this year it was hosted by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library system, and I had absolutely no reason not to go. In fact, three of my professors were featured in the festival and read from their books.

The Festival is just what its name implies; a celebration of the various writers and books that have come out of North Carolina and the South over the years. John Grisham and Clyde Edgerton were among the keynote speakers, as well as R. L. Stine and Kathy Reichs. If you’re curious: www.ncliteraryfestival.org

I would not be so stricken by this if I were remaining in North Carolina for another year and another festival. But I’m pulling up my Tarheel roots and moving, as my mountain-born friend jokingly put it, “Up thar whar them Yanks gon’ suck all the South outta ya.”

I know I gripe about living in the land of tobacco and NASCAR, about how I feel displaced here, but a gentle Carolina twang rolls so naturally off my lips that, despite myself, I do belong here in a distantly-anchored sort of way. I was born here, grew up here, and except for brief stints out of the country, lived my life here. I know North Carolina well, and even though I may not like her very much, I do love her, because she’s my mother, and she’ll always be home.

Let it be known that I will cry if I hear “Carolina In My Mind” anytime soon.