{"id":389,"date":"2012-08-16T21:12:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T04:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calirose.com\/blog\/?p=389"},"modified":"2012-08-16T21:12:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T04:12:35","slug":"what-time-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/what-time-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"What Time Is It?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This post is part 7 of 11 in the series, \u201cMarvelous Midwest,<\/span><\/a>\u201d about discovering my extended family in Indiana and \u201cukeing\u201d it up in Missouri. All in one very eventful trip\u2026<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/em>It\u2019s a straight shot from Indianapolis to St. Louis on Interstate 70 as we continue our Midwest sojourn. After several days of getting to know the relatives I found on Google and Facebook, my husband and I are heading to The Mighty Mo Ukulele Festival in the rolling hills of wine country Missouri. In one afternoon we drive in three states. This is new territory for me, hop-scotching across state lines. In California you can drive fourteen hours and still be in California.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hot outside. The A\/C keeps us comfy cool, but you can \u201csee\u201d the heat through the car windows: The eerie ripples of distortion that appear on blazing asphalt. Cornfields, left, right, mile and after mile where the plants are stunted, ashen and drooping like sad faces lost in a crowd. This drought that never-seems-to-end is bad news. For folks in the Midwest. For anyone who likes to eat. We are all deeply impacted by the vagaries of weather.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to watch this catastrophe unfold on the news and it\u2019s another to actually \u201cfeel\u201d it. We pull over at a rest stop to pee. When I get out of the car it\u2019s like stepping into a Bikram (that-would-be-105-degrees) Yoga Studio.\u00a0Times ten!<\/em>\u00a0I make a mad dash for the air-conditioned toilet building as if I\u2019m being chased by fire ants falling from the sky.<\/p>\n

Well almost. But I do run for it\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The view from the interstate bridge. A sliver of St. Louis, The Arch and a little bit of that big ol’ river…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Granted, I am not acclimated to this kind of weather, but who is? This is scary stuff. Later on we meet a woman who lives in a century-old farmhouse in Missouri. The ground is so hard and dry from the drought that she is afraid the foundation will crack, so she built a moat, her own mini-circle of water, around the farmhouse to give the soil some semblance of \u201cwet.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we drive on and on and just like that I see the St. Louis Arch appear behind a hill. Oh this is so exciting. I\u2019m getting goose bumps just like the first time I spotted the peak of the Matterhorn Mountain at Disneyland as my parents and I rounded a bend on the Santa Ana Freeway. And now we are getting close to \u201cThe Gateway To The West\u201d and the Mississippi River. I\u2019ve seen this great river from the window seat in coach, but never on the ground. Or rather from a bridge. During rush hour. Just then my cell phone rings. It\u2019s a client wanting to book a show. \u201cOh Natasha,\u201d I say, \u201clet me call you back in a half an hour. We\u2019re about to cross the Mississippi River!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

What does that tell you about my concept of time? That it would take thirty minutes to cross a river\u2026 Albeit a big river\u2026<\/p>\n

Speaking of time. Somewhere between cornfields in southern Illinois, my husband wonders aloud \u201cdo you think there is a time change?\u201d Uh-oh. I never thought of that… I hope you Midwest people are laughing at how totally pathetic this conversation is. I look at the clock on my cell phone and suddenly we have gained an hour. OMG. How did that happen? We get a sixty minute re-do!<\/p>\n

I later learn that most of Indiana is on Eastern Standard Time while Illinois and Missouri are on Central. So now I\u2019m wondering\u2026 What if I live in Indiana but work in Illinois (or any place near a \u201ctime-change\u201d border). That would make me fricking crazy. Like, what time is it? Like, where am I? Like, what\u2019s it all about?<\/p>\n

Well this whole discussion illustrates a wonderful thing about traveling and getting out of my steel-reinforced comfort zone\u2026 It\u2019s a chance to experience stuff that never crosses my radar at home. Stuff that is stark reality for other people. And for the briefest time, I get to \u201clive\u201d it too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part 7 of 11 in the series, \u201cMarvelous Midwest,\u201d about discovering my extended family in Indiana and \u201cukeing\u201d it up in Missouri. All in one very eventful trip\u2026 It\u2019s a straight shot from Indianapolis to St. Louis on Interstate 70 as we continue our Midwest sojourn. After several days of getting to know the relatives I found on Google and Facebook, my husband and I are heading to The Mighty Mo Ukulele Festival in the rolling hills … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogentry","category-midwest"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":2,"label":"blog entry"},{"value":37,"label":"midwest"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Cali Rose","author_link":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/author\/crbauthor\/"},"comment_info":1,"category_info":[{"term_id":2,"name":"blog entry","slug":"blogentry","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":138,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":2,"category_count":138,"category_description":"","cat_name":"blog entry","category_nicename":"blogentry","category_parent":0},{"term_id":37,"name":"midwest","slug":"midwest","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":37,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":11,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":37,"category_count":11,"category_description":"","cat_name":"midwest","category_nicename":"midwest","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}