southern by the grace of god

being out of the south for so long (ten years!) has changed some things about me…i don’t think i say ya’ll as much (especially not in professional situations), i’ve gotten slightly accustomed to cold weather (but i still don’t like it), and i don’t really yearn for crawfish and daiquiris like i did in my first few years away (but that doesn’t mean that i love them any less). but put me back in the south, even just for a few days, and i am reminded of all the incredible things about the south, the gulf coast in particular, that are so deeply ingrained in my being. there are so many subtle things that i forget all about until i’m back there, silly little things, like jeeps or ant hills and spanish moss, that totally slip my mind until they are in front of my face again. i wouldn’t give up living in dc to go back to new orleans any time soon, that is for sure. i love my life in the city and all the amazing things that are right at my fingertips, but being back home reminded me of all the things down south that are without comparison. like the sight of a shrimping boat being followed by seagulls, or how it feels when a flock of brown pelicans fly right over your head (those suckers have enormous wingspans!). things like the sugary sweet taste of a snoball on a warm day, or straining to see the outline of the superdome from the lakefront on the northshore. things like how your heart (or at least mine) sort of skips a beat when 5 pounds of hot boiled crawfish is put on the table in front of you, or the drawl that you didn’t even realize you missed until you start to hear it in your own voice, too. or the way that waitresses down south call everyone “darlin” or “hon,” and people ask how your moman’em are (yankee translation: how is your mother and your immediate family). it’s a very different way of life down there, and while i’m so happy to be where i am and have the opportunities i’ve had since leaving louisiana, visiting again makes me understand why the word “fierce” is so often used in describing the pride that southern people have in where they come from. i do love the south in a way i can’t explain. it still blows my mind that people here ask what king cake is, or if i’ve ever been to “the mardi gras.” and the idea of not getting together with your neighbors and eating crawfish by the pound, spread out on newspaper on someone’s fold up card table…that’s just weird to me. people up here don’t eat crawfish? what on earth is wrong with them? no second lining at your cousin’s wedding? what is a wedding without it? no all-nite drive-thru daiquiri stop on the way to your moman’em’s? what else am i supposed to drink then? no one has a gun rack in the back of their truck? what do they go huntin' with?

it took a while to adjust to moving north. you can argue that i'm technically still south of the mason dixon line, but that doesn't mean that i am off for the entire week of mardi gras, or that people up here think eating a mudbug is anything other than completely disgusting. it's just not the south. and i am glad for that. it makes me that much more thankful to be there, when i do get the chance to visit. in the words of the tattoo of the good ol boy i once dated, american by birth, southern by the grace of god. and really, there is no better way to put it than that.

why being a normal human being is the best thing on earth

i think i daydream a lot about being some rich, famous celebrity, who never has to worry about money and who can just spend her days jet setting about and shopping for $3,000 purses. but the more i think about this (and the more time i spend on perezhilton.com), the less i think this is the kind of life for me. for one thing, i can leave my house. anytime. no one follows me around with a camera, so if i happen to pick a wedgie while i’m out walking my dog, it won’t be on the front page of us weekly the next day. and i know that i’ll never see my slightly-longer-than-my-big-toe second toe circled in red and pointed out for the whole world to scrutinize. i can indulge myself and buy cheetos at the store without anyone judging me for putting on a few pounds. if i ever happen to experience any kind of “wardrobe malfunction,” it won’t end up all over the internet. when i do happen to manage to get away on vacation, i can maybe end up topless in a hot tub without having to sue someone or apologize for making a “very big mistake” or having a “temporary lapse in judgement.” i can get mad and call someone a douchebag without having to promise to go to rehab for anger management issues. when i do have one or two more drinks than i should, rumors don’t swirl about how i got drunk and started a fight and/or no articles surface on how my drinking is out of control and i need to get myself to promises as quickly as possible. if i eat a big burrito for lunch, my belly doesn’t cause cnn to speculate on whether or not i may be with child. i can shake hands with someone without being linked to them in the biblical sense. no one takes my picture in the airport so i can wear my sweats and bring my stuffed santa claus without facing ridicule (oh who am i kidding, i always get dressed up to fly). i don’t have to deal with being blinded by paparazzi flashes 24/7, so i can get away with only wearing sunglasses when the sun is actually in my face. i can go to wal mart for underpants without people saying i’m a redneck idiot just like that britney spears (actually, maybe people do say this about me and i just don’t know…). i can drink diet coke or diet pepsi or vitamin water or gatorade without ever worrying about getting sued for a breach of contract. i can change the channel when an awards show is really boring, instead of having to sit through the whole damn thing in a really uncomfortable dress that i am sewn into and will no doubt be unflattering from at least 3 angles. when i have one of those days where i can’t conjure up a cute outfit, i still do not end up on the “what was she thinking” list. so really, celebrities can have their money and their paparazzi, and live in their 5.6 million dollar apartments with their 6 miniature toy yorkies named after all the other major cities they have homes in. i can wear the same pants for 5 days IN A ROW and no one gives a shit. so there. who’s got the life now, bitches?

the niki and lindsey show

god forbid you should ever sit next to or behind or in front of my sister and i when we are at any sort of performance: dance, music, play, whatever...you don't want to be the poor bastards who end up on either side of us. niki and i are both very opinionated and brilliant people, and we tend to, uhh...critique what we're watching as we are watching it. i know she just blogged about the performance we saw at the kennedy center last night, and DUH, anything she can do i can do better (and my bangs are so much cuter, i don't care if you cut yours first!), but i just couldn't get the image of everyone's favorite grumpy old theatre goers, statler and waldorf, out of my head, and i was thinking that maybe jim henson's creative team was looking for a younger version of this dynamic duo, to really reach out and relate to today's audiences. i mean, we are pretty much a gold mine of hilarity and the henson empire would be FOOLS to pass an opportunity like this up...come to a concert with us. we will chat your ears off about the set design, the play list, the obnoxious people in the audience next to us who won't shut up. see a play with us, and i promise, we will entertain you way more than anything on stage. and if you ever get a chance to catch "jeckyl and hyde" the musical with us, oh my god are you in for a treat. i think we actually embarassed my mother on that one, since neither one of us could contain our laughter at one actor, his face painted right down the middle so he could be both jeckyl AND hyde, having a song-fight WITH HIMSELF. brilliant. GIVE THAT MAN A TONY! GIVE HIM ALL THE TONYS!!! really. half the fun of going to things like this is talking to my sister the whole damn time. no wonder my mother still has to separate us in church. if she'd didn't we'd probably heckle the priest right off the altar.

the ratio of cows to people

living in a big city like dc gives you all kinds of opportunities to observe human behavior. riding the metro every day is pretty much the equivilant of receiving a master’s degree in psychology from some big fancy school, as far as i am concerned. this makes me totally qualified to make statements up and try and pass them off as being true, since i graduated from the u of wmata, which would be the university of the washington metro transit authority to those of you who don’t speak dc-bonics. so it has come to my attention that i think that humans may indeed be more closely related to cows than primates, and i make this statement because you can practically hear the moo-ing when a crowd of metro-riders begin moving forward to squeeze their collective selves through one narrow door like there is a cattle prod being dangled in front of their dull, glassy eyes. seriously, this boggles my mind. think about it. if you are on the metro, at an airport, even in line at the store, wherever the big crowd of people is, that is where people will gravitate towards. so what if there is no line to go up the escalator on the other side of the platform? i want to stand in line with the rest of the herd and go up THIS ONE. no line for baggage check just a few desks down? forget it. i wanna be where everyone else is. god forbid we ever talk to anyone in that line to make sure this is, indeed, where we should be, we just see a line and assume we should be in it, so off we go. just yesterday i was standing on the curb in a busy intersection waiting for the light to change, and the guy next to me starts to cross, so naturally, i start to cross, too. only i had to jump back up on the curb to avoid being hit by a bus, so it’s not always a wise idea to follow the heard. but i noticed when i was leaping back to safety that i was not the only one who had followed this fool’s lead. remember when your mom used to say, “if so and so jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?” apparently, the answer to that question is YES.

fur coats and feather dusters

as a resident of our nation's capital and someone who takes public transportation to work every day, i pretty much expect to encounter some pretty wierd shit on the metro. sometimes it's something as benign as someone next to me eating bbq pork rinds at 8:15 in the morning, other times you get really lucky and some crazy person is sreaming at her fellow passengers because they let the cats out of her purse and now she will never be able to find her way home. and then there are the times when some guy walks on to your car and you think, oh my heavens, i must have been a very good girl today and the gods have decided to reward me, cause he is standing there, with his chest all puffed out with pride, wearing a full length fur coat that looks like fozzie bear and the cowardly lion had a baby and he went out into the woods and killed it himself and made the fanciest most amazing techincolor fur coat he could come up with. seriously. musicals have been created around coats less stunning than this one. i'm thinking, surely this man must know that he is indeed a man, and therefore has no business wearing such flippery. had there been a woman inside this muppet costume of a coat, i would not have looked twice (except maybe i would have said "shun! shuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!! under my breath or at least in my head), but no no, this was an otherwise completely normal looking man in a red sweater and a pair of dark brown cordoroys. i'm always amazed at men that think it's ok for them to weath a fur coat like it's just totally ordinary and no one should think anything of it other than how damn fine he looks in it. knock, knock. who's there? normal. normal who? EXACTLY. this could only compare with the woman i saw a few months ago on the metro, who was wearing, and i am not lying, a feather duster in her head where a ponytail should be. again, like it was TOTALLY NORMAL. i wonder if she worked as a housekeeper and figured she would save herself the time and trouble and just go on and attach that thing to her head...or maybe she was thinking, gee, this feather duster is looking a lot better than my raggedy ass ponytail, i'm gonna put it in my head and i will be fancy as a circus pony, oh yes i will! if i have to spend 20 minutes every day getting to work and 20 minutes retreating home every day, i thank the lord in heaven above for blessing me with the crazies, cause they are way more entertaining than the newspaper will ever be.

seriously...there must be something wrong with me

today is monday. it was snowing when i woke up. i did NOT get a snow day. i have a pounding headache. these things are all directly related to one another.

anyone who knows me probably hears me go on and on about my headaches from time to time. i mean, sometimes even i think i am making this shit up cause i feel like i am always, always saying, "i have a headache." first thing when i wake up: i have a headache. midmorning sitting in front of my computer: i have a headache. sitting on the couch at home after dinner: i have a headache. WHAT GIVES? i recently decided that taking upwards of 6 excederin a day really wasn't going to be helpful in the long run and, fun as it is to sleep on an ice pak every night, i sucked it up and went to a neurologist. wanna know a secret? THIS WAS NOT MY FIRST TIME. i saw one when we lived in louisiana like 90 years ago, and i was seeing one for a while when i first moved up to dc, back in 2005. i have had MRIs, i have been on about 8 different meds, i have kept "headache journals", and had my eyes checked, but nothing seems to give anyone any reason for WHY my head feels like it's going to fall off about 85% of the time.

so, i tried a new neurologist this time. the conversation went like this:

him: so, how often are you having headaches?
me: um, how often is always? can i just say always?
him: are you taking anything over the counter?
me: i'm going through a bottle of 100 pills every 2 weeks. that's not bad, right?
him: any head injuries i should know about?
me: head injuries? no. not really. i mean, i cracked my head open when i was 4, fell out of a tree house when i was 6, smacked my head on concrete running around a pool when i was 9 and i was dropped off of a cheerleading pryamid when i was 12, but you don't think that has anything to do with this, do you?
him: have you had an MRI before?
me: twice. apparently my brain is NOT made of candy corn. i was dissappointed.
him: hmmmm...well let's start with another MRI and go from there.
me: excellent. where can i nominate you for doctor of the year?

so. that was last week. the MRI is next monday. if my head doesn't fall off by then. that machine is kind of scary and you have to be really still for like an hour. and i still don't believe that they can see inside my brain without being able to see what i'm thinking. i think maybe they just want to magnetize my brain so they can steal my secrets and all of my brilliant ideas. and i have lots of those, you know. i don't particularly like being on medication, either...and so far i've been on like 3 antidepressants and an anti-seizure medication for my headaches. so i was running around, not having seizures and singing the smurf song all day, but i was still having headaches. so. maybe this time i will get something that is you know, like an anti-HEADACHE medication and things will be as great as they were before i climbed into my friend's treehouse in my rollerskates and rolled backwards out the trap door and wound up with the greatest migraine this world has ever seen. maybe.