Much healing~ma to your BiL and calm~ma to your MiL, Cashmere.

So very much this.

Oh, Cash! Health~ma to your BIL

My South is cornbread without sugar; biscuits; grits; greens; field peas cooked with a ham end; pulled pork with some outside meat; green beans cooked with ham and topped with chopped raw onions; and muscadines and scuppernogs. It's where "peas" means crowder, black-eyed, field and related peas, and the other peas are English or green peas. It's where people still talk about "sweet milk," as opposed to buttermilk, and iced tea comes sweet unless you ask for unsweetened. It's making eye contact with strangers and smiling. It's also poor schools; crazy liquor laws; an unhealthy obsession with high school and college football; and going from your air conditioned house to your air conditioned car to your air conditioned office.

Ginger's South is an awful lot like mine. It's eating watermelon on the porch in the summertime while staring out at green fields of cotton and soybeans. It's chasing lightning bugs in the cemetery after Sunday night church. It's turning your thumbs purple shelling field peas. It's where I'll always be Kelly's girl and Ervin and Eunice's youngest grandbaby, and where everyone over 70 exclaims over my uncanny resemblance to my dad's Granny Wilder. It sings the old hymns with more of a twang than a drawl. My South's battle cries are "War Damn Eagle" and "Roll Tide Roll." My South is the red clay I'm rooted in no matter how far I travel.

What? Just be glad I didn't say "Hi-dorable!"

Oh. Bugger.

Note to self: Make new list just for MFNlaw.

You're cute, Pete. Is that more or less embarrassing than the A-word?

Note to self: Make new list just for MFNlaw.

My work here is done. I am so going to get it when I come to Seattle.

ION, I am absolutely procrastinating on my self-evaluation for my performance review. They've changed the form, and now it's 9 pages long and an interesting mix of multiple choice and free-form discussion of goals and weaknesses. It sucketh mightily.

ION, I am absolutely procrastinating on my self-evaluation for my performance review. They've changed the form, and now it's 9 pages long and an interesting mix of multiple choice and free-form discussion of goals and weaknesses. It sucketh mightily.

For the multiple choice once, I suggest throwing darts at the questionnaire. Or you could draw a target on the form, and then draw arrows from each dart hole to the multiple choice answer it corresponds to.

You're cute, Pete. Is that more or less embarrassing than the A-word?

I think that's entirely dependant on the circumstances.

I am so going to get it when I come to Seattle.

Yeah, I'd say that was guaranteed.

Health~ma to your BiL, Cash, and lots of calm~ma to your MiL.

Cash... much ~ma to your in-laws. Oh my.

As for Everyones version of the south.... all I can say is... I WAS ROBBED. Eastern KY was nothing like what y'all wrote. And now that I remember, I literally was robbed too. My sister came down with a car load of my stuff (books, tv, winter clothes, etc) as I was heading to Grad school after the summer... they broke into her car and stole it all. Ya, it was coal country. Twisty roads, dirty hollers, not much open after 6 pm (which sucks when you are working till midnight), and all the town shops put out of business by the mega Wal-Mart. It was a very economically, socially, and educationally depressed area. Tho I really did love my visit to Savannah, GA. Pretty lil town!

Obviously I need to visit B.org folk, just travel thru the south some summer. ROAD TRIP!!! (making sure a/c in car works!).

Oh Cash, I'm so sorry. Tons of ~ma to you and your family.