The First Chapter

I have lived in the south all my life. For those not from the South, the culture and love for this part of the nation is hard to understand. There is, however, some sort of different feeling that Southerners have for the place where they live. I was born in Nashville, TN and moved to Birmingham, AL when I was two years old. I stayed there until I was sent off to college, choosing Tulane University in Lousiana. Four years later, I returned to Birmingham and later completed law school in Mississippi. All of these moves are simply to show that I have never lived outside of the south. Yes, I traveled growing up, but that is not the same thing as actually moving to a new state and adjusting to the nuances of its region.

Why would I choose to move from the beloved South to dark and mysterious St. Louis? Yes, the answer is: a boy. After dating for five years, (three of them long distance) I decided to bite the bullet and move to Missouri for a year and a half. I would pass the bar exam and begin practicing law while Mike quickly completed his PhD. Simple. We would be back in Alabama in a blink of an eye. Funny where life takes us. Things never quite work out the way you envision them. One year later, I am still trying to fit into an entirely foreign culture. People do not wave while I pass them on my daily jog. I first took this as offensive until I realized that they were wondering why in the world I was staring at them. I battled my first winter where snow and ice are a normal occurrence, not an opportunity for the entire city to shut down. Additionally, I slipped on the ice and knocked my head on the corner of our stairs because they had not been salted properly. I have learned to call a carbonated beverage by its rightful name, not just a “coke.” I have gone an entire year without eating grits.

So where are we now? Mike is still working on his PhD and I am working in Pottery Barn Kids for $8/hr. Apparently, a law degree does not do much for you when you don’t have a lot of contacts in a city.I broke my elbow during my daily jog after I tripped and fell on the concrete sidewalk, scraping the entire left side of my body. No one stopped to see if I was ok. We have lived through my cat being sealed inside our wall after maintenance was completed, fights about turning a bachelor pad into a home , and slowly realizing that the beach is not 5 hours away. The lost cat, the broken elbow and the "growing pains" of turning a condo into a place for both a girl and a boy are different blogs in themselves.

I do not mean this blog to be offensive to people in MO, or to others outside of the South. I have met some fantastic people here, but still miss my family and friends whom I grew up with. I miss the idea that a town is small enough that people know each other’s business, but big enough that there are still people you have not met. Slowly I am adjusting and learning. I am learning to cook and become a better housekeeper (maybe just ANY type of housekeeper.). I have become quite close to my Netflix queue as Mike often works late, and I am attempting to limit the phone calls to my mother to only three a day. There is still so much to learn and adjust to before we end up moving again! Hopefully this blog will be a therapeutic tool for me as I navigate through this new "yankee" land.