The Oddest Things

OK, complete transparency here. The oddest things can trigger the strongest emotional reactions in me. I almost started to cry when the bored looking county office worker plunked our new Tennessee license plates on the counter today. (I am glad that at least they are attractive.) She had no idea that this was actually a traumatic moment for me - in a somewhat official way, becoming a tax-paying Tennessean instead of the lifelong Iowan I am. It felt very final. And maybe a little like a betrayal.

But I still feel like an Iowan - at least the single-digit weather doesn't bother me, and Bruce was one of the few who actually went to work yesterday with the inch of snow on the ground. Schools had a late start today because of the cold - it was 9 degrees this morning, the likes of which haven't been seen in years. Several people have suggested that we are responsible for bringing the cold weather down here from Iowa.

If we had that kind of influence on the world I'm thinking we'd do something different than bringing snow and frigid temps - we just got boxes hauled away today so we could get one car into the garage, and scraping windows isn't a good time, North or South.