This week has been challenging.. I stayed up until 3 am one night getting paperwork organised for my sister. The next day I functioned pretty good on 3 hours of sleep. This past week has been continued paper work, meeting deadlines.

I made the mistake of mowing grass at my sister's house during the heat of the day. Although the yard is quite small, it played with my diabetes big time. I drank a half gallon of orange juice to get my sugar where it needed to be.

The worst of the week is I lost a dog to a rattle snake bite. I live in the country and snakes pass through. I did pay for her to have anti-venom but rattle snake venom is so potent.  I don't care how old you get; a dog can break your heart. Holly was the heartbreak kid. I've got to breakdown and buy myself a pair of snake boots.

Louise stole some cheese my sister had set out to warm to room temperature. I heard her sneaking in my room. Then my sister said someone had stole the cheese. She makes me think of myself. It was obvious she was the culprit. Guilt wears on us. Running to my sister, Louise apologized profusely, it was cheese and she loves cheese and most anything else. Louise likes to eat a slice of apple when you are eating an apple.

I read a book this weekend by a good local author, Charlotte Moore. It was a cozy mystery and the first one in the Hunter Jones mystery. Reading as a writer, the book had outstanding structure. It was set in central Georgia so I enjoyed the naming of people and exposition of Southern culture.

I'm not normally fond of "The South" topic. Many times it is made up caricatures of who we are. I've heard people who are young enough to be my daughter talking about chain gangs and other aspects of the Southern landscape that died out before World War II. Some things like the KKK straggled up until the seventies. It's depressing it is re-emerging today under different names.

 The hard scrabble farmer fought for their regionalism much like their great grand parents fought in the Revolutionary War.  Being descended from Simon Bennett and Big John McDuffie who fought for the Confederacy, I respect them as my ancestors. I remember what my dad told my older brother before he went to Vietnam. You don't want to be at the losing end of a war.

I've wondered what the men and women who lived through those times would have thought of the people today trying to explain their times. The Civil War was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight".

I grew up in a military town so I have considered myself "Southern Lite". I learned a military culture and attitude. I feel pride in my Southern roots. More so than my English roots in that I live in the South. I have first cousins who live in Minnesota and upstate New York. They don't identify with the South.

I talk and act like I stepped out of the swamp at times. I had my schoolteacher handwriting and my actual handwriting. Well I have my schoolteacher speech too. Since I have been writing, my speech has taken on a more country sound. The voice in Charlotte Moore's books is very accurate.

The temperaments of the people reflect the area. In the book by Charlotte Moore, I like where one character makes sure the husband of a woman killed does not hear about a plan to entrap the culprit. They are not afraid of the character spoiling the plans. They are afraid of that one character catching the culprit and exacting his own punishment on the killer.  Revenge is not exclusively a Southern thing.

Anyway, Charlotte Moore has created some good reading. It also shows our good side.

I always liked how this house set just before the land rolls to the East in Macon Georgia. It is located on High Street.