imaginary surrender--not!

Alright,

Lets just pretend for a moment that I'm starting to like it here. That even though I say I miss the Chicago winters and all the complaints about everything that Northerners tend to have (because they spend too much time indoors together during the winter), I really don't miss them very much.

That I don't feel like a hell-bound heathen among all the churchgoing people.

That the water has not given me what my beautician aptly described as "Your Tennessee Hair" A.K.A. straw, and the southern change in latitude is not bringing me one step closer to discovering a subtle but fatal spot of malignant melanoma.

That the word "ya'll" slips forth from my lips, and I welcome it as "learning the dialect."

That the wolf spider I let stay alive the first time I discovered it (because it is a natural predator of the brown recluse) was not found residing on my daughter's pillow the other morning and didn't try to climb into her mouth, causing her to vomit all over herself.


That I drive the appropriate 15 m.p.h. speed limit in school zones, and do not get reprimanded by overzealous crossing-guards with crisp white gloves when they see my Chicago Bears plate on the front of the car.

That blondes do not outnumber the brunettes here. God save the redheads like myself.

That I look good in a spaghetti-strap sundress, a main wardrobe staple of the female locals May through September (especially at football games); unlike in Chicago, where dresses are mainly worn to church, weddings, and funerals, A.K.A. to church.

That I finally stop saying "pop" when referring to Sprite and instead call it "soda." Wait, I mean "coke."

That I come to accept the term "toboggan" to mean a hat with earflaps, rather than a sled-like device that you use to have fun with in the snow, because winter is bad, bad, bad.

While it's been fun to make fun of Tennessee (which I really don't think I've done all THAT much), maybe I should change the theme of this blog a little. Write more about family? Get all bitchy like all those SAHM blogs I've glanced at? Nah, my husband hears enough of that. Work? No, composing a novel for that subject (stay tuned). Friends? Don't have many here, and the ones that I do have are coworkers anyways.

Oh well, sorry Tennessee.