I’m a born and bred Midwesterner, and have never lived farther than about an hour from a Great Lake (with the exception of my time in college, smack dab in the middle of Michigan).  Moving to the South has been a bit of an adjustment.  So far there are a few glaring differences:

Little buggers are hard to see but they are the invading horde on our poor mimosa tree

The South has more bugs.  Lots more, and they are scarier.  Remember my encounter with the half-dollar sized spider that looked more like the alien from Alien?…  Today I came across one of these while spraying around the perimeter of our house for these (they call them “piss ants” around here).  They have honking big black mosquitoes with white marks called “Asian Tiger Mosquitoes” that seem to love me, and leave gigantic, painful welts in their wake – these have actually made me cry.  The Man regularly encounters Black Widows, and I saw some nasty looking larvae of what are called mud-daubers when he scraped their mud-daubs off the side of the house recently.  All I can say is…  YUCK.  And WHY has no one invented a combination sunscreen and bug spray??? (sidenote: just got a bite from a fire ant in the middle of writing this post… *sigh*)

The South has much longer traffic lights and much lower speed limits.  I think I read once that the average time spent stopped at a traffic light is two minutes.  Not even close down here.  I think it must be somewhere between 5 and 8 minutes.  Definitely long enough to check your Facebook updates and still get bored.  Average speed limit when you are anywhere near any people is 35mph.  It’s taking a little getting used to for this city girl.

The cable bill is crazy high and the insurance bill is crazy low.  It all evens out, I guess.

People love to talk.  The Man is no exception.  Don’t even think for a second that you will just “run in and run out” of some restaurant or store or any place of business.  Invariably, someone will stop to chat, and your errand that was supposed to take 10 minutes has now taken a half hour.  Don’t get me wrong!  I much prefer the smiles, and the “Hey!” (Southern for “Hi!”) everywhere you go, as opposed to the avoid-all-eye-contact-and-pretend-not-to-see-all-other-humans-in-the-vicinity way of dealing with other people in public that is de rigueur up North.  But things take longer down here, for sure.  Even the mail…

Did I mention that it’s hot?  I’m really not complaining.  But I’ve never slept night after night with no sheet or blanket, even with the air on.  I struggle with this a bit because I’m most comfortable with something over me, but even a sheet can be too hot.

Luckily, these are all things I think I can get used to with time (well, except the bugs).  I know there are more, but I’ll save those for another post.  And even with all of these new things to get used to, I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.  I am loving our new digs. ❤