A Girl named Kent

Hi all - wow it has been another crazy week. I am heading to North Carolina this Wednesday to Saturday. I am tying up some family stuff on my side but the sad part is I won't even being seeing my family and I am going by myself. I am looking forward to seeing my childhood friend Shannon who will take care of me while I am there and hope to get back out there in the summer when I can spend more time.

Okay one thing about the South - I LOVE Southern accents. I wish I still had mine but it has all gotten washed out of me except when I talk to someone from the South or get mad or excited -then it'll pop out. I also drive my son nuts because I do a good Southern impression and it drives them up the wall. This is a sample of what I heard while making tons of phone calls last week to make arrangements. "Well Ma'm I am fixin' to go to a funeral but let me have you talk to my son." or "I apologize" or "Yes M'am" or "Well, Thank you". All of this of course should be going through your head in your best slow Southern drawl. I have also come to find out that there are differences between how Californians (which I am one now) and how Southerners handle business. First of all you wouldn't get the funeral bit. Second of all if someone was unable to give me the business because I was calling with incredibly short notice they would not apologize - here they wouldn't even care. Third of all and I think this is the most important and what I feel bad about is that I left a ton of messages and then ended up securing some help. What I didn't do is call back all the other businesses to let them know. What I also didn't do is call them back even when then they would call me and let me know they got my message. I even got reprimanded by one for not being polite and letting them know. Normally in CA, for one thing it would be weird for any business to call you back after only trying to call them once and even weirder if they kept trying to call you back. In the South that is just not showing manners. Shame on me!

So I am hoping to eat some grits this week, maybe even hush puppies if I am lucky, gotta drink some sweet tea that's for sure, hear the crickets, feel the humidty, hear the train whistle at my grandmother's NC home and say goodbye to some memories.