The Music of the Night (and other truths about the south I forgot while I was gone)

Five weeks is a long time. A really long time. Long enough to forget some things while I was in the land of the west.

For instance:

I just went out on my deck, refilled the hummingbird feeders (which are really wasp feeders right now, but I’m working on solving that problem) and watered the flowers. I was not out there long, and yet I now need a shower and a tall iced lemonade.

Oh, humidity, how could I have forgotten about you? The thing I both love and hate about this place I call home. I hate it in the heat of day, hate it when it renders irrelevant the shower taken 5 minutes ago. I hated it yesterday when the car wouldn’t start and I was in the middle of the Home Depot parking lot with heat radiating off of the parking lot all around me and I felt truly wilted until I made a mad dash for the air-conditioned comfort of Kohls.

But at night…ahhh…then I love it. I LOVE being able to feel the air. I love the the feeling of being enveloped in it’s dense warmness. I love the lush landscape that all of this humidity supports. And I love that the humidity keeps me warmer at the pool, a fact I didn’t know until last year.

Another truth about North Carolina that I forgot somehow is that the night here is loud. LOUD. Filled with high pitched squeaks and lower pitched chirps, all at a measurable decibel level. It’s like inviting another person to your conversations, like having a noise machine playing all night long every night. Now this noise isn’t normally a problem for me because I’m used to it. But somehow in the last 5 weeks of relatively quiet sleeping, I managed to get unused to it. And now it’s keeping me awake at night!

Other things I forgot…how much I love my ward and missed spending time with my friends, how awesomely wonderful my house is, how awful my lawn is, and how beautiful my flowers are. Guess it’s a good thing I’m back!