So there I was, minding my own business...

I got up and took the kids to school today. Again, I marveled that any mother would be dressed and make-upped and ready to go as I was still in my jammies with a hoodie thrown on. It's pretty dreary today, as it will be nearly all winter. I came home and began earnestly procrastinating. I still have my jammies on, and I'm following links from friends' blogs and I realized that I MISS HOME! An emotional tsunami of homesickness washed over me. I was totally not expecting it because I've really been having a good time with my friends here. I lead a beading class at Soup-er Saturday last weekend, I've helped do Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts this week, and I got to hang out with two of my favorite people here yesterday afternoon. So where the crap did all this homesickness come from? My morning would not have been much different in Gaw-ga, but the whole experience would have changed. Mornings in GA start with lots of animal noises. *insert farm/redneck jab here* F'real doh. Even if you live in a neighborhood, someone on the next street over has chickens and those little buggers start cockling and doodle dooing before the sun comes up. And all the little birdies in the trees too.

-side story-
when I was about knee high to a grass hopper, I came out of my room one morning and asked Mommy what that noise was. It's the birds, Shelle, they're singing! Isn't it beautiful? No. Tell them to BE QUIET. See? I've been pleasant my whole life :)

Ok, back to my wallowing. You can also hear various neighborhood dogs barking. Everyone pretty much has a dog. I'm pretty sure that phrase "Everybody's brother and their dog" had a Southern source. We even had goats in our backyard one time (we traded them for firewood from trees we had taken down) and those guys would be making all kinds of racket too. Is the scene set? Good. There is also sometimes a light fog in the woods coming up off the creeks/ponds/lakes that are everywhere. Most neighborhoods/trailor parks have at least one creek running through the back of them. Because copperheads have to have somewhere to live. This fog doesn't usually last that long, but if you're up early enough to see it, then you'll also be up early enough to smell the clay while it's still all wet with dew. I wish I could bottle that smell. Pine needles, red clay, and something so deep down and earthy that it defies description. Well, I'll try to describe it anyway. Like the footprints of native people, the clean sweat of numberless field workers, and the blood shed from too many wars. Too literary?

The sky in the mornings starts with a pale yellow and you can almost watch it turn blue. A blue that doesn't happen anywhere else. You don't get much sky there, so it's concentrated. Here in the Midwest, the sky's so big that the blue is all stretched out. In the deep south though, the rolling hills covered in trees sort of blocks out a lot of the sky. When we moved here 3 yrs ago, I would feel agoraphobic if I was up on a bluff, because you can almost see more than 180 degrees of sky! Too much, too much my brain would scream! I'm OK now, just in case you were worried about my brain screaming.

So, d'ya think that writing all this down will help me feel better? I prolly should still call some folks today just to get a Southern fix. It makes me a little sad that when people meet me and find out where I'm from that they say, Wow! I had no idea, you don't even have an accent. Well, I haven't been steeping it for the last 3 years, thanks very much. Don't worry, I'm sure it will come back when we go home.

So I'll just click my red converse (I'm not really a glittery shoe type of girl) together 3 times and say...
there's no place like the ATL
there's no place like the ATL
there's no place like the ATL


PS, if you want to see Obama ride a rainbow unicorn go here. Thanks Eve.