Welcome to Mississippi!

Mississippi, Day 1:

Me: “I can’t believe we’re driving with styrofoam food trays on our laps.”  We laugh.
Sis: “Welcome to Mississippi.”

Mostly, MS has not lived up to all my stereotypical images and dramatic expectations. When you hear "Mississippi," you picture shacks by cotton fields. While there is a cotton field at the end of my sister’s road, this northeast corner of MS looks like any other sorta rural place: there are two lane roads, neighborhoods, a downtown, a few trailer parks... kind of like where I grew up in VA.

However, Mississippi does have some quirks.

Yesterday, I had only been in the state for 3 hours, but already my nephew had found a pinecone with a black widow in it, and I had gotten bitten by a tiny, translucent, red creature. I have no idea what it was. (Mini-scorpion?) I know for a fact it wasn’t a fire ant, because my nephew got attacked by a swarm of those last summer, and my bite, while itchy, did not form into a pustule/welt like he had all over his legs and hands.

What fire ants can do was a revelation to me.

The one thing about Mississippi that meets the dramatic expectations- not the accent, not the poverty, not the obesity- is the fire ants. Read my previous post “Fire Ants: Giving Regular Ants a Bad Name” for further info.

Mississippi has other quirks that I’ll try to capture on camera this week. This is my 7th or 8th trip out here over the past 2 years (my niece and nephews are my obsessions, besides my blogs), and I’ve never captured the area on film as much as I want. You can see some of what I have gotten on my flickr gallery.

About the eating while driving thing: my sis was behind the wheel with a cheeseburger and tater tots, I had a grilled chicken and bacon wrap, and the boys had grilled cheese. We had to eat like that because it was past bedtime and the boys hadn’t eaten yet because we had to go straight to T-ball from picking me up at the tiny Tupelo, MS airport. My husband does not let me eat in his car very often, so even though I could have waited to eat my wrap, I was hungry, and getting to eat while driving felt like a luxury.

Day 2: Had the nephew’s birthday!