Confessions of a Northerner, Part 2

It's been an interesting life. (sigh...) Once you think you are finally used to everything that there is to be used to in the South, something new pops up. 

1. Area Codes

Ok, people, area codes are not an accessory on your phone number. They are an essential part of your phone number. Your number is incomplete without the section archaically labelled "area code." 

Here in Small Town, South, there is only one area code in a 30+ mile radius. In Big City, Northeast, there are at least five area codes in 30 mile radius. Area codes are as normal as a first name. It's a normal, natural part of the phone number. 

Do you know how many times I have entered a seven-digit phone number into my phone... only to delete it because no one mentions their area code? Every time! And, honestly, not absolutely everyone has the same area code around here. Some people, like Mr. Wonderful and I, recently moved to the area and have not yet converted to a local number. 

With cell phones these days, who needs a specific area code anyway?

2. Southern Living magazine

In the last two months, I have received six ads from Southern Living magazine, requesting me to subscribe. This one is quite simple: 

No.

I live in the South. It is absolutely nothing like the glamorized South people dream about.  The magazine portrays a south that I am certainly not living. So, no. 

3. Half-conversations

It is reasonable to have a conversation with someone and come back to it at a later time or date. That's totally normal. What's not normal is having a conversation and coming back by randomly blurting out statements that could relate to a hundred different things. 

"Purple."

"Five Dollars."

"Tuesday afternoon."

What does that mean??!?

Something to do with yesterday's conversation, if I ask several questions to figure out what the person was talking about. 

Oh boy....

I live in a constant state of confusion. :)

Confessions of a Northerner (in the South)

So it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the North and the South are very different. When I lived on the West Coast for a very short period of time, I never had people comment on the fact that I was from the East Coast and I never struggled to fit in there. I always thought that we all live in the United States of America, and we may have been raised differently.... but we are from the same country after all.

But I have to tell you, growing up in Big City, Northeast, and moving to Small Town, South has been a shocker to the system. It has been total culture shock!

Here are some of the wild & crazy things that I have noticed about the South. Not that they are bad; they have just been total shockers to me.

1. Fried Food 
Wow! Everything they eat down here is fried! I didn't even know it was possible. Back in the North, we try to figure out how to make all of the traditional fried foods taste amazing without being fried. And here in the South, they actually try to fry everything! It's amazing. Fried chicken, fried chicken, fried chicken. Fried appetizers - mozzarella sticks, onion rings, french fries, pickles, and okra. Fried desserts - twinkies, oreos, doughnuts, and ice cream. I've even heard of fried pizza.

Ick!! I really, really don't like fried food as a general rule. An occasional meal at Chick-fil-a. A once-a-year appetizer at the Cheesecake Factory of fried zucchini with their amazing ranch dressing. (There are a few reasons that was a once-a-year treat!) Everything else is baked. Like I even bake my own egg rolls, so I don't have to have greasy ones whenever I make a non-greasy homemade Chinese meal.

Would you guess what I have eaten a lot of since I moved to Small Town, South? Fried chicken, fried chicken, friend chicken. Do you know what people are constantly encouraging me to try? Fried pickles, fried okra, and fried oreos.

The thought of all that the grease makes me want to go take a shower and spend thirty minutes working out...

2. Food
Speaking of fried food, does everything revolve around food? I mean, I love food as much, if not more, than the next person, but why does every activity or event have gobs of food at it? Like, why can't we just fellowship for the joy of fellowshipping? Do we really need those doughnuts? The fried chicken has got to stop. I really can't take anymore of the fried chicken... It's no wonder I'm on a diet. Thank you, South!

On top of that, every single restaurant here has a buffet.

I don't like buffets.

Do you know how many people have touched at serving utensil? When exactly was it last cleaned? How many hours ago was this food prepared? 

I didn't even know that KFC had buffets, and I thought Pizza Hut did away with theirs in the 90s. Every time we happen to be out with someone, I want to ask if they mind if I order a meal instead of the buffet. (I'm making faces at the computer right now, just at the thought of the buffet.)

3. Walmart
Remember Big City, Northeast? 100,000 people live in a five mile radius with one Walmart? Yeah... Well, I think there are like 20,000 people in a 30 mile radius and I have never been to a busier Walmart in all of my life. (With the exception of Black Thursday Night & Friday) There are always tons of people there.

Some of the teenagers said it was because it was the only place to hang out, and adults said it was because it is one of three places to do grocery shopping, but seriously people... Walmart has great prices but it's not that cool!

There are always lines at the four registers that are open (and yes, they do have the standard 25 registers for absolutely no reason since they are never open!). Some items are always sold out or picked through. There are always carts totally blocking entire aisles so you have to wait until it clears out to go down the aisle. Between the crazies and the extreme couponers who block the aisles, I have decided to not go to Walmart before 9 PM. The later, the better.

4. No Chinese Takeout
Chinese takeout was not something that my husband and I did frequently, but it was a nice convenience. They seem to be always open and if you find a good one, it's usually worth getting in a pinch. One night my husband and I worked super late at Small Town Baptist Church. There was no way that I was going to make dinner that night. So we called a friend and asked if they knew of any good Chinese takeout.

They actually asked what that was.

Then I called a Chinese restaurant that we pass on the way home. They looked at us cock-eyed too. (I could here it over the phone!) We finally persuaded them that it was putting a prepared meal (versus buffet) in a box and me eating it at home, not in the restaurant.

Oh, what an experience!

5. Country Music & Cowboy Boots
I don't have much to say about either of these items other than they seem to be epidemic. Some of those boots really are cute, but I just can't picture them on my feet.

Really expensive boots from Country Outfitters

Check back sometime and I am sure that by then I will have posted some other culture shock-type items. :)

You Need a Budget... For Real!

No one wants to talk about money or budgeting ever, certainly not at Christmas. But if you are panicking about the amount of money you have spent this year or you are planning on getting on budget this coming year, this is the post for you!

For the last three years or so, my husband and I were using a particular budgeting app that worked great for our needs when we started, but became less and less useful. The bigger problem was that it had limited features.

Several months ago we signed up for a 34-day trial of a budgeting software called You Need a Budget and became instant fans. You Need a Budget or YNAB, pronounced "Why-Nab" though we prefer to call it "Yuh-Nab," is basically a digital envelope system with the basic principles taught by financial advisors like Dave Ramsey but with the flexibility of real life.

What We Loved
We loved that the software was available on our desktop, phones, and iPads all with one single purchase. That's a total of six devices for one price! The program synced through my beloved Dropbox and worked fantastically on everything except the iPad. Both my husband and I could never get the app to sync correctly on either of our iPads. But we happily overlooked it because it worked so well on our other devices. The sync was so quick. It would literally take a matter of less than five seconds and my husband could see what I was looking at and he could see what I was looking at. Awesome!

My husband and I get paid at unique times each month. Instead of a consistent day each month, we get paid on Thursdays. While my husband gets paid every two weeks, which is sometimes more than twice a month, I get paid once a month, so sometimes my paycheck comes in on the 15th and sometimes it comes in almost a week later. In other words, our cash flow is super-inconsistent. YNAB was so forgiving of that! Let's say I had $400 in my grocery category for January 2016 and I grocery shop on Saturdays. This particular January there are five weekends, but I know that my $400 won't stretch that far for various reasons this month. So I spent $360 during the first four weeks on groceries and only have $40 left for the fifth Saturday. Now if I was really strict about my budget, I would make my groceries fit into the $40, but I am having friends over on Sunday and need to spend an extra $20 to accommodate. I know that I won't spend all $400 in February, so I spend the extra $20 and go $20 in debt for January. According to the envelope system, I should have planned better or put some groceries back or starved. According to various financial advisors, I should have reallocated money from a different category, but YNAB graciously allowed me to borrow from the coming month. By the end of February, all is well and I am not in debt at all. This is a vastly different situation from other financial programs.

As well as a handful of other personalizations. It wasn't so much features as it was the flexibility to adapt the budget to our style of handling money. We don't carry credit card debt from month to month. We don't have school debt. As far as debt, we only have a monthly car payment, though we will soon take on a mortgage.

While we love our YNAB, we are very disappointed with the company. When we bought the software a few months ago, we knew that there was a update coming in the undetermined future. We looked forward to trying it and writing a glowing review about the the program that has brought our financial situation into a beautiful wrapped package of visibility, clarity, and control. But the new YNAB came out right at the end of 2015, and unfortunately I cannot recommend it at this point.

The new version of my beloved YNAB isn't an update. It is a total redo. While it is visually appealing and has a handful of fun new features, it feels like a clunky step backward in budgeting. One of the biggest things that I positively despised about the new version is that I can't transfer last minute debt to the next month just because of how the calendar works. You are now forced to reallocate the money from other categories. That just doesn't work for my life.

Basically the new version is trying to force you to budget according to their financial principles, and for some, that is a wonderful feature. But for those of us looking for a visual, flexible, and clear budget, this probably isn't the one for you. Sad day. I was looking forward to gushing about YNAB. 

Confessions of a Northerner

I am from Big City, Northeast. It is my home and my heart. My favorite places to visit are the surrounding Big Cities along the East Coast. Memories of home include bright twinkling lights on dark nights, traffic, honking horns, shopping galore, historic districts dwarfed by mammoth sky rises, and people everywhere you turn.

In my early twenties, my husband and I moved from our happy cozy condo on the corner of a busy street in the suburbs of Big City, Northeast to a significantly larger apartment on a quiet street in Small Town, South – hours from a large city or a honking horn or a sky rise. A place where people were excited that 2,000 cars drove on the main road in a single day!

Talk about a dramatic change! (No, not traumatic... although sometimes it feels like that)

Although Small Town, South, would probably never be my first choice for a place to live, this is where God wants us to be. God called my husband to be a youth pastor when he was a teenager, and God has called us to live here in Small Town to work at Small Town Baptist Church. It's new, it's different, it's a little weird... but we love it! All because God is in control. 

From my old blog Confessions of Kay Christian, where I wrote about my experiences as a Northerner in the South and a new youth pastor's wife, under a pseudonym. 

Identity Crisis

Do you ever have those moments when your life changes so much that you are going through an identity crisis? I certainly have.

Three years ago I was fulfilling a life dream and serving the Lord as a youth pastor's wife and church secretary. It was everything that I had ever worked toward and my destiny. I wanted it to be perfect, and of course it wasn't. During those ten short months that I lived in the South and served as a youth pastor's wife, I thought that is who I would be forever. I had achieved the role God wanted for me.

But I discovered all too soon, that I would not stay a youth pastor's wife for long. I would go back to being an ordinary church member in an ordinary church. Not even teaching a Sunday school class or having an opportunity to minister in close to a similar capacity.

Ten months doesn't seem like a lot and in the scheme of my life it truly isn't, but it doesn't change the fact that for those ten months I was a pastor's wife. I experienced in rapid succession and extreme pain the joy and struggle of being a youth pastor's wife. I truly thought that was who I would be forever. So at the end, I went through a pretty serious identity crisis.  If you have experienced this, you know what I am talking about.

It took a long time for God to work in my heart and make me realize that who I am is a child of God. Who I am is not dependent on my role in ministry or my position in a church. Who I am is determined by the relationship I have with God. Life is an everyday surrender to God and there were times that I forgot that. Not thinking that I had arrived, but thinking that I was exactly where God wanted me and He wasn't going to move me. Does that make sense?

The last two years have taught me so much about God and how He works in people's lives. In fact it has been like a total reset and perspective change. But that doesn't mean that those months were useless or negated.

Over the next few things I would like to share some posts that I wrote as a young pastor's wife living in the South, after growing up in the North. It made for some funny situations and heart-felt posts. Enjoy!