Southern Romance

For a change, M has joined me on the couch for Friday night! Usually he works, but since we have some family in from out-of-town, he took the night off to have dinner with everyone....

We are currently embroiled in The Wire, Season 4.... who knew I would ever be this into a cop drama? But we can barely watch anything else right now...

The Wire, Lost, Chuck and The Conchords are our current favorite things to watch (and I am heavily addicted to Grey's Anatomy as well).

Another very long and miserable week is at an end. I swear the last 2 weeks at work have been the worst ever. Every emergency that could possibly happen has..... even things I never thought possible (plastic fork stuck in throat? Seriously?!). So this friday is a beautiful thing, as is this weekend.

V is currently very on the move. Its all he wants to do. Don't even think about sitting him on your lap.... thats a no-go. He wants to be on the floor, sitting up waving his little hands around. And you NEED to be paying attention to him while this is all happening, or he gets very upset. Which makes me laugh.... it always makes me laugh when he gets mad.

It has been so cold in FL these last 2 weeks, cold like I never imagined possible in the South. So cold that M had to scrape my back window with a credit card this morning. Coming from a North-Western Canadian perspective, I would never imagine the South being like this...

I used to imagine traveling down here. It was my ideal destination in the US, not Florida, but the 'South', and all those southern things that you read about in books and see on travel shows....

Spanish moss, bayous, swamps and gators, plantations, New Orleans Mardi Gras, over-grown cemeteries, antebellum, mint julips, drawling accents, fried chicken, extra polite manners, the word 'ma'am', jazz bands, hot and smokey nights, crawfish, hound-dogs, pick-up trucks with hound-dogs in the back, possums, handsome men in white suits, beautiful debutantes in white dresses with colourful sashes, horse racing and gorgeous big hats.....

But lets face it.... living down here, the reality of the south is not like my technicolor dreams of childhood.

It's not as romantic as I made it out to be.... I mean, parts of it are (as romantic? Well, I CAN be pretty dramatic......). Really, its more like :

* flea markets with karaoke and beer starting early on Sunday mornings
* Waffle House (awesome waffles though)
* Corndogs
* dirty, slightly broken and dodgy fairs (or is that all of them?)
* funnelcake
* Dixie flags waving proudly from enormous trucks and teeny broke-down cabins
* Endless barbeque restaurants
* Sweet tea
* watermelon and boiled peanut stands

Where did all of that romance go? What's wrong with my imagination and the reality?
It's still there, but you find it in pockets and corners and in areas where you never imagine it would be. That Southern romance is harder to find than I thought it was.

This morning however, when I walked out to my car with V and found my car's windows neatly scraped clean (by my husband's citibank card)... that Southern romance was closer than I ever thought. M has assimilated nicely after 17 years down here, or perhaps its his proper Italian upbringing.... His sweet gestures are appreciated more than he probably ever knows...