Oh, to have a Valium prescription

Went to Mississippi again. Managed to make it down in, oh, 10 hours. Mom asked to see the kids, and as she had cared for my dog for the past month, I decided to humor her and drag them along. What I learned - the piercing whine of, "I have to pee," is even worse than the one complaining of "how long, I am hungry, I hate this song, I am bored, X hit me." And the great thing is, it can go on for many exits. It is amazing how a kid that doens't have to pee at one exit, has to pee once you get on the on ramp and you have to get off at the next one. Well, this got tiresome after oh, 100 miles into the 350 mile trip, so the whine changed to, "Why CAN'T I have anything to drink? I can see the bottle RIGHT THERE. Please, please, please pass me some. I promise to not have to pee if you just let me have one little drink."

When I was in high school, my father was stationed at the United States Military Academy. My parents' divorce wasn't great, but my mother always had no problem with visitation. Basically, one week after school finished, I was sent to Daddy to return one week before school started. They never bothered with holidays/weekends. West Point, NY, 4,000 cadets and me. True, they all left soon after I arrived, but for a few glorious days, it was me and a bunch of men in uniform moving in formation. I loved it, and because of these trips, my accent is not as thick as is used to be. Anyway, I remember after one of these visits, when I returned home, I realized something. New York City radio stations NEVER talk about "pork belly futures". And they never advertise herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides. And no one ever wore a baseball hat advertising seed companies. And, most importantly, no one got to watch this on a regular basis:

crop dusting

I am so immune to them that I didn't even notice until the kids yelled about the crashing plane.

Mississippi isn't perfect, but I realize that one way it is totally in my skull is I only relax in places that are completely flat. And Mississippi definitely doesn't look like this:

Sirens

Why? Well, water doesn't flow in Mississippi. It slides. And there isn't one freaking rock in that state that wasn't brought in from somewhere else. Our gulf coast beach was imported because there are no rocks nearby to make sand.

Our water looks like this:

swamps

or like this:

Catfish ponds

Just so you know, they typically drive a tractor around the pond spraying dogfood in there and the lake looks like it is alive.

Because I am obsessed with beauty pageants a bit right now, I have to tell you a story about one. Growing up, watching beauty pageants was a ritual for me. Loved them. But then one year, Miss Mississippi was in the finals, and her question was about her unusual hobby. It was grappling. Drawing a blank? Here is an instructional video. Skip about 3 minutes in.

Fishing Mississippi style

Oh, and it is flooding a bit in Greenville, too.

floods

The guy doing this is the most irritating person I have seen awhile, but it has some good images of Mississippi.

Delta video

We are going to be moving and I think it is possible I will ignore this blog even more than I have been lately.