Seasons of Mississippi

So yesterday was the first day of fall. Here, of course, you can't tell a difference. We've had a few cool mornings, signaling the beginning of the transition out of summer. Really we only have two seasons -- hot and cold; spring and fall are almost non-existent. But the short windows before hot or cold are the best times of the year as far as I’m concerned. It’s cool enough that I don’t start sweating the minute I step outside, but warm enough that my face doesn’t go numb walking from my house to the car.

Right now we're just about to turn the corner into the cold. The heat is hanging on with a tight-fisted grip, but a cool breath is in the air. Of course, it will only last a couple of weeks, if that long, and then it’s the long dreary isolation of Southern winter – cold, wet, cold, wet, and only snow every decade or so (and we got that last year, so I have no hopes for this year). My least favorite part of the year is definitely the cold season.

But at least the weather isn’t the end-all, be-all. Because, besides the weather, the cold season is definitely my favorite part of the year. I get at least one holiday every month, sometimes two! Halloween costumes are in stores already, and I’m itching to carve pumpkins. The Mississippi State Fair comes at the beginning of October, and I can already smell those funnel cakes and sweet honey biscuits, mingled with the smoke of the carnies, and hear the screams and teen pop music blasting from the rides that sound a bit too rickety for comfort but manage to operate fine year after year.

Then there’s Thanksgiving, with food and family, and Black Friday. That is a ritual for my family, notable for Cracker Jacks, McDonald’s breakfast, pushing, shoving, and racing, and that feeling to triumph when we go home with a trunk full of Christmas presents that we all get to pretend we didn’t know about when we open them up on Christmas morning.

Oh and Christmas! My Christmas has changed, and continues to, now that my family has grown. Ben and I are still figuring out how to share the holidays with all of our families, so each year is a little different. Usually Christmas Eve is IHOP after the candle-light church service, followed by a minimal amount of expectant sleep, and a super early morning to see what Santa brought us. And yes, at 23 (almost 24), we still get Santa presents. Then it’s breakfast at my grandmother’s of blueberry muffins, monkey bread, and cinnamon rolls, and more presents with the rest of the family. Then the whole lunch spread with all your traditional dishes. I don’t really know what this year will look like, since it’ll be split up between families. But I know I’m looking forward to it.

New Years is always fun. You can’t go wrong with fireworks and champagne.

But then…oh…then it’s just the cold with nothing to look forward to but the hot season. But each year I manage to buckle down and bear it. It helps when I have a nice long coat.

Sounds like an interesting day...

Click-clack-click hurry down the steps, with a jingle jangle of keys. Slam of the car door.
Roar of the engine, and vroom vroom vroom out the driveway, down the street, through the neighborhood.
Work is within sight.
And then - chug chug chug...chug...chug......chug......chug......nothing.

But Super Man (aka Ben) came to my rescue.

Anyone want to join the ran-out-of-gas club?

"A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Ben and I like the idea of camping. We even bought a tent last Christmas for ourselves, but we just never seem to find the time to go. But we just picked a weekend and decided we were going to go, dangnabit. At the last minute we decided to take our pupy, Colby. The one other time we've been camping since we got married we took Jackson, and that was not a good idea. He spent the whole time trading corners to shiver in and barking at every little sound that he couldn't see where it came from. Needless to say, we hardly slept at all. And sadly, our friends that went with us couldn't sleep either.
But Colby was much better. She's a great car rider. We went to a place called Rocky Springs down the Natchez Trace. Driving down those deserted, steep-banked roads, with Colby bouncing around the car, I commented to Ben that I hoped we didn’t turn into Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” I think we even ran across the Misfit when we stopped to let Colby pee. He was quite the scraggly wayward-looking man, but he seemed more interested in lounging in the grass and eating his non-descript food item than us, thankfully.

Once we made it to the campsite, we drove around to pick our site and realized we had the entire campground to ourselves. It was absolutely empty. So we picked what we thought was the best, and set up camp. Thankfully Colby is not a barker. She just played around on her tether while we set up. Ben set up the tent and got dinner going while I got fire wood and built a pitiful little fire. And then I kept forgetting to watch it, and so it kept burning down to coals. I’ve been camping tons of times growing up, but never had to really do anything. But I’m learning. We had enough of a fire to roast marshmallows, and once you’ve got smores nothing else mattered.

And then we realized we had brought nothing to do. No games to play, books to read, people to chat to, nothing. So we went to sleep.

Half way through the night I woke up, and—as always happens when the bathroom is 50 yards away through complete wild blackness—I had to go to the bathroom. So I stumble around to put shoes on, find a flashlight, and open the tent…and hear some kind of growl. Ben was awake at this point, and heard it too, so I didn’t imagine it. I closed the door quickly, and we waited. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. Be it a raccoon, bear, wildebeest, or Big Foot himself, I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t meet any critters, but walking with the single bulb flashlight bouncing around through the grey woods, with deep night all around was eerily reminiscent of Blair Witch Project…and so I scooted on back to the tent as fast I as I could.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We slept about as well as could be expected for camping, made breakfast (even a cup of Early Grey tea my hubby whipped up for me), packed up, and were off to explore the Trace a little.

All in all it was a nice trip. The Trace, as always, was gorgeous, and it was nice to get away from everything, even if to give up a few luxuries. And we managed to avoid any Dueling Banjos.

Finally, we made it home…and snuggled up in our plush queen sized bed that we can appreciate oh so much more now.