observations on the south, part I

Three days in Charlotte plus a layover in Atlanta led me to this:

Awfully nice people. Lovely, really. They'll kill you with kindness through that sweet drawl if you're not careful. And yet there is a relatively-constant presence of invasive cigarette smoke there. As these two opposite qualities don't seem to match up well, I am left to assume that the juxtaposition is some sort of homage to the founding tobacco plantation owners/farmers. Bless their sweet, misguided, 18th century hearts.

The airport in Charlotte actually has a screened-in (well, w/ glass) front porch with a view of the planes and, are you ready? Rocking chairs! Tons of them, all lined up. And wooden ones, at that. If I had slept more than two hours during my night of travel to that point, I'd have been tempted to trade in my coffee for a lemonade and sit a spell with a hand-held fan.

I either traveled 2000 miles or just up the road to LA - there was a "Terminal Getaway Spa" there. I could've had a facial right there in the airport if I'd wanted, sufficiently marked up in price of course.

Sitting outside in the South at the end of July brought Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer to life in a way that Tom Sawyer's Island at Disneyland never could. The humidity hangs so thick in the air I swore I caught some in my hand.

Somehow I had precious little need for my sunglasses. I did, however, have a strange hankering for a pretty hat.

and... not related specifically to the South but rather to my trip in general:

An unwise time to leave one's baby at home, for the first time ever, would be when one is spending 12 hours on 2 planes to go off gallivanting across the country - while pregnant with one's second baby (and therefore exhausted, emotional, and hormonal). After I was able to hold it together and wave goodbye cheerfully to a sobbing little girl yelling "mama" from her carseat, I ran to the nearest bathroom stall to hide my sobs for the next 10 minutes. Good times.