The Perfect Day

It's amazing to see how blogging seems to be connecting women from all over.  Crystal, a friend who lives in California, sent me this link and wrote something like, "You should check out this blog.  This woman, Anna Maria, is a fabric designer and she lives in Nashville.  I love her fabrics."  

It turns out that Anna Maria lives in the next town over.  AND, via her blog I discovered that she was heading up a community project to make quilts for the middle Tennessee flood victims.  AND, they were going to get together on Wednesday, October 20th, for their next sewing session.  I emailed Anna Maria and told her that I wanted to help out.

When Wednesday morning rolled around, I started having thoughts like, "What if I'm walking into a group of women who've known each other for 20 years?  That's awkward!"  (My middle school students used to say everything was awkward.)  I almost talked myself out of going, but I'm so glad that I didn't.  It turned out to be the perfect day.  Here's what I loved about it:

• I met lots of interesting ladies, some who had come alone just like me - one woman had moved from Sunnyvale, California three years ago and her husband had worked at Yahoo!  Btw, it turns out that Anna Maria's husband works at Vandy in a department that occasionally works on projects with Howard's department.
• I received training on Tennessean pronunciation and vocabulary.  If you hear the word flares, they might be talking about flowers.  Some people say hit instead of it.  (The woman who told me about that had been skeptical the first time she had heard about it until when one day when she heard a woman commenting on her new baby, "Isn't hit beautiful?") 
• I got to be a small part of the work of dozens of women working together for a good cause.
• I got to hang out all day in a stunningly unique, but simply restored farm home, in a picturesque Fall country setting. 
• It was 72 degrees with cool breezes and blue skies - I worked on the porch for awhile trimming blocks and listening to country western music.

I regret that I didn't take any pictures, but it turns out that Channel 5 was there covering the story.  Even though I'm not in the footage, I promise you I was there!  It was the perfect day.