Happy Labor Day from sunny Florida. It's still full-on summer here; in fact, I'm thinking of taking a dip in the pool before grilling out this evening.
To celebrate our hard labor, how about a little online shopping sale? Old Navy is offering 30% off with the code FALLCALLS through midnight tonight. Here are a few things I've got my eye on:
(Originally $18, on sale for $12.60 with promo)
(Originally $24.97, on sale for $17.46 with promo)
(Originally $28, on sale for $19.60 with promo)
(Originally $29.94, on sale for $20.95 with promo)
*To be honest, I REALLY wanted this in the mustard yellow color, but it's sold out in all sizes! I might go to my local store to see if they have it.
(Originally $24.94, on sale for $17.46 with promo)
I'll leave you with a portion of an article titled Making the Leap by Allison Glock from this month's Southern Living magazine. It beautifully sums up how those of us below the Mason-Dixon line feel about living in, and returning to, the South. (*Asterisk added by me to the parts that really strike a chord.) Enjoy!
Moving back south is something Southerners do. Lovers of nostalgia, we are all about the rearview mirror, the greener grass in the yard where we grew up. Since leaving home at 17, I have moved back South eight times in 25 years, departing various Northeastern professional arcadias and supposedly superior dining opportunities for the bleached-linen, biscuit-baking, horsefly-biting landscape of my childhood.
This latest go, I made it all the way from NYC to Tennessee. The relocation was met with more raised eyebrows than the entire cast of every Real Housewives reality show.
"Why?" they all (okay, mostly the New Yorkers) would ask.
I never had a clear answer. *It's impossible to distill atmosphere, to defend a decision made without concrete reasoning. I suppose I could have said, "Because the South, like anything worth knowing, is complicated. *And complexity married to beauty never bores."
But I did not. Usually, I said, "The economy."
In truth, I had wants.
*I wanted to sweat when I climbed into my car.
*I wanted a place where playdates did not exist and play did.
I wanted not to be the only woman at the school bake sale who 1)loved coconut and 2) made her own cake.
*I wanted to garden more than three months a year.
I wanted my kinds to know the value of manners.
I wanted to hear birds sing at night and get high on honeysuckle and marvel at the size of magnolias, perched like Easter hats on waxy green heads.
*I wanted to drink in twangs and drawls.
I wanted to hear the frenzied jangle of banjos and fiddles.
I wanted to lay eyes on men wearing overalls and cowboy hats and women with hair teased high as Larry Hagman.
*I wanted to hug people I just met.
I wanted to see bugs big enough for saddles. And insolent enough to stick around when the lights come up.
*I wanted to drive past kudzu, both terrible and beautiful, draping the landscape like living quilts.
I wanted to suck wild berries and guzzle RC.
*I wanted to stop agonizing over fried food.
*I wanted to eat. And eat. And eat.
Most of all, I wanted to raise my children, girls ages 10 and 11, *in my ancestors' geography, where they could ramble barefoot in the sunshine and not fret about being sideswiped by a speeding taxicab.
To my dear friends up North, there are many things I treasure and miss about my time there. But parts of this really hit the nail on the head for why Florida is home-sweet-home to me.
Happy Labor Day, ya'll!
Well, we still miss you up north....
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