Since pixels don't come with smell-o-vision, I must tell you that these words are being typed in a quiet house that smells of fresh salsa and roasting bell peppers.  The laptop (old, beaten up) is positioned so as to block out the setting sun, which does not come directly through my front door but close enough to force my pupils to readjust.  I have a small party to be at in an hour's time.  I must not be late, so I must write fast and speak rightly the first time.

The place, now: Huntsville, Alabama.
The place, then: rural Arkansas.

I was a child of the late 1970s, whose memories just missed Jimmy Carter but remembered Reagan dimly through an apolitical child's eye.  Those who read this site know my story well; I came from a union family in a former mining town.  My tiny hometown, well under three hundred souls at the time, all looked like me because they were almost all related to me.

One of my favorite entries on this site is the 2001 entry, Southern political girl.  It has remained one of my favorite tidbits I've ever posted on my site, and every election cycle brings it back to memory.  I have always liked it for its remembrance of the collision of national politics with everyday life; how I saw that particular election from a viewpoint that was different from most of my fellow citizens.

Coming home from my mother's wedding, with thoughts of Washington and Arkansas and Alabama mixing reluctantly in my head like oil and water, the thought hit me. Last Q standing.

Tweets from the day of Amy's mother's wedding in Arkansas.

• 9:01 AM PT: Suited up for wedding. It is EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE hot. We are melting here dammit!
• 9:09 AM PT: @joshjanus Jeff: "Wrong part of the South. This is the teetoaling evangelical part, not the mint julep Scarlett O'Hara part of the South."
• 1:43 PM PT: Happy wedding day, Mom.
• 1:46 PM PT: @bellesouth that's still her nickname! I have great photos.
• 1:57 PM PT: Current temp: 104. Not that we are bitter. Or sweating. Or anything.
• 6:56 PM PT: Back at hotel. Out of dress clothes. Ready to pick a state and stay there - preferably one that isn't an oven.
• 9:05 PM PT: @gfmorris Crap. That ends when you're no longer single? No one told me. I mean, I only do it if it's Jeff and me sharing the jug...

The title of the post contains the ending of my mother's vow to Paul -- whom she met in a ballroom dance class -- as they lit candles honoring the spouses they'd each lost to cancer in years past.

You had a long road getting here, Mom, and now that I've met him, I can see how happy he makes you.

(Backdated one day to her wedding day, since I couldn't edit photos in the hotel room.)

Amy packs up, leaves Washington state, and flies to Arkansas. Culture shock in 3...2...1. 24 hours of travel tweets.

I just had a discussion with my fellow IT workers, and I just dropped a southernism they don't recognize. I stopped to think about it for a second or two, and realized that I don't know the 'real' name for what I'm describing.

Growing up in Arkansas, we were careful about where in the yard we went barefoot, because there was a certain type of grass we called 'stickers.' It was grass, but it has small but definite thornlike parts, and they stuck in your skin (thus the name) and made it very uncomfortable to walk barefoot on grass.

Anyone know the real name of what I'm describing?

"Well, I think about friends in the back of my mind
Are they still just kids frozen in time
The mirror won't lie as the days fly by
Are they all no better off than I?"

I think it unlikely that I will post a public chronicle of my days spent in Arkansas, for reasons that are abundantly clear in the private entry posted directly before this one, but there is one story that I wanted to tell. It was not for what I did, but for what I chose not to do.The dead cross daily with the living in Tull; it is a place in which your memories and your past confront you even during the smallest of errands.

There aren't many ways to get there from here. It's easy to underestimate the power of the Mississippi River until you realize that there are only four roads that cross Arkansas' eastern border. That's correct: four, for the entire state. Memphis holds two; the northern I-40 bridge and the southern I-55 bridge. Your next chance is a good bit farther south, in Helena, and your final opportunity lies at the southeastern corner of the state near Lake Chicot.

(We won't count the railroad-only bridge in Memphis, which technically makes five.)