Confessions of a Yankee Girl

So the other day on a nice afternoon walk, I had this blog posting all written out in my head and since then it's slowly faded away. Sometimes I wish I could just record my thoughts since at the time they seemed brilliant and now they don't seem as intriguing, but perhaps that's because it is 2am.

When we first started taking Theo for walks in his stroller at night, he didn't seem to love them too much. He's gotten MUCH better about them, but I started to play music from my iPhone while we walked just to keep us entertained and so as my first Yankee Girl confession; I have started to like country music. I guess I tend to enjoy more "pop" country like Lady Antebellum, Zac Brown Band, Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill, James Aldean, Miranda Lambert, etc...but what's sadder is that I've begun to recognize artists on the country music channels, Mason's begun to listen to country in the car (he claims it's because it's the only station with different songs that actually play music continuously without lots of commercials). I'm only slightly embarassed to admit that two of my favorite songs these days on walks are "She's Country" and "Country Girl (Shake it for Me)." Yep, I'm a bad ass as I stroll the neighborhood singing country songs to myself, admittedly sometimes out loud (sorry Theo).

(Spirit Week, 2009)

My second Yankee Girl confession is that I like to say "Pop" just to piss people off. I guess first and foremost I do have to say that if you ask me if I want a carbonated beverage I have always called it "pop," but in the South, everything that isn't Sweet Tea or Beer is Coke. Doesn't matter if it's Sprite, it's all Coke. Occasionally people will ask for Soda, but to me it's always Pop, that that always gets some grumblings and a response.

Last for now, there are definitly Southern terms that I've grown accustomed to hearing, but are different from the North. Receipts are tickets, grocery carts are buggys, all y'all refers to you all, daggum replaces damn, Northerners are obviously Yankees. I will say that I've found myself using "y'all" in my classroom (gasp!), but it was a proud day when my students began to use "you guys" in their everyday speech. At first they teased me about saying it, but now they say it all the time and it makes me smile on the inside every time!