I used to live in a suburb just outside of Chicago, in addition to living in Chicago for a period of time. I consider myself a yankee, as I am very direct, I like things to get done quickly, and while an extrovert…I would say that I am still very standoffish until I get to know you. I am called a damn yankee…because I moved south and decided to stay. One of the reasons that I moved south was so that I didn't ever have to scrape another windshield again, or shovel another load of snow. I like snow…for about a day, then it needs to melt…and not show its ugly head for another year. Today…the weather was gorgeous. The sky was so blue that even if you TRIED to be in a bad mood, you couldn't do it. THIS is one of the reasons I moved down here. Of course, once it gets really hot around here…I will of course be bitch-blogging about how hot it is.
It was quite a culture shock when I moved here. I was used to being near HUGE wonderful malls, great grocery stores that didn't sell things like pickled pigs feet, hoofs, or chitterlings. I found out the hard way that although chitterlings are spelled "chitterlings"…you pronounce that as "chitluns". If you don't know what those are…I will not be the one to tell you…you are just going to have to google it, as they are probably one of the nastiest things that man has come up with, next to haggus.
People drink sweet tea down here…by the gallons. And it is addicting. Worse than crack, really. Apparently, there is an "art" to making it. One that I have not mastered in 9 years, despite repeated attempts. You can also get fried "anything" down here. I went to eat at one of the local casino's…and thought that they had put one of those round French fries on top of my sandwich. How cute. Imagine my surprise…when I bit into it, and it had the consistency…of fried snot. They had fried a pickle…and skewered it to my sandwich. Boiled peanuts are another experience. These…you can buy at the gas station (along with hamburger meat…???), and you suck on them until all the salt is gone and then eat the mushy peanut inside. It sounds nasty…but it's actually pretty good, unless of course you leave the nutbag in the fish cooler on your boat that has dead fish in it. Of course, there are SOME people around here that don't mind eating them like that. I'm not naming names, lol....but you know who you are. (fishnuts)
My husband LOVES this time of year…this is when you get good crawfish. Or crawdad's, as they are called here. They look like a cross between a little shrimp and a lobster…and you suck the juice from the head…and then eat the meat. I can't even WATCH him eat these without gagging. Although…I do love the meat from crawfish, I don't want to actually have to handle the exoskeleton.
Another trip to the casino buffet introduced me to another southern delicacy…frog legs. I honestly thought they were little bitty chicken legs…and filled my plate with them. My husband was looking at me kind of surprised, but didn't say anything. We sat down, I bit into one…and it didn't taste "chicken-y". It didn't taste like anything I had ever had before, really, except maybe a fishy rubbery chicken. I finished the one up and it was THEN that he said how surprised he was that I was eating frog legs. GOOD LORD. I then learned that it was imperative that I read the labels above the food. They could be serving me fried "hoof" or something, and I would probably think it was a pork chop and I am too dumb to know the difference.
Of course…to me…the biggest difference are the bugs. Up north, the cold kept them down to a reasonable level. Down here…not so much. These things are just HUGE. The cockroaches alone…are pre-historic huge. They call them wood roaches. And while they are not quite the size of Madagascar hissing cockroaches…they're pretty close. Our back yard has a small retention pond, which also has a fair amount of trees surrounding it. The sound of (some type of unknown bug to me) is deafening in the summertime. Lol…retention pond. That is not something that I have heard a pond referred to as down here. Up north…retention ponds. Down here…cow ponds. The difference? I don't know…as I haven't seen any cows frolicking around our pond…but that would be pretty cool. However, the cow pond and surrounding woods apparently provide the perfect breeding grounds for wood roaches.
So, these giagantic roach-a-sauruses occasionally make their way into our house. It is enough to send me over the edge. The girls are not afraid of them…as they have always seen them. To my knowledge…they don't bite, and if they do…DO NOT SEND ME A MESSAGE telling me they do, I would rather not know. However, there are a great many bugs around here that do bite or sting. Fire ants, chiggers, brown recluse spiders, black widows, mosquitoes by zillions, red wasps, yellow jacket (they live in holes in the ground), and probably another 100 species that are "out there" but I haven't identified, and do not want to know about. I won't even go into the snakes around here…as they are plentiful as well. But they don't scare me as much as the bugs do.
So, why live here? My family is here; my parents and my brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins. I wanted my kids to be able to grow up around their grandparents. My middle brother (bug boy, lol) and I had moved up north when we were young with our parents, and although saw our grandparents mostly every year, I know we missed out on a lot of family things. While I have mentioned some of the negative, maybe peculiar things in regards to differences, none of those can take away the positives of being near your family. Provided you actually like them. If not…then it is probably better to keep at least a few states in between you "all".
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