Read it pho­net­i­cal­ly. When I’m real­ly tired, I fall back into the Alaba­ma accent.

Made it to my appoint­ment this morn­ing. Made it to Katie’s appoint­ment on the oth­er side of the world. Then the car would­n’t crank. In fact, it would­n’t do any­thing at all. Not even the auto­mat­ic door locks were work­ing. No rea­son at all for it—I did­n’t leave the lights on or any­thing like that.¹

Over the last two years, Sam and I have talked about mov­ing else­where. Geor­gia has almost no con­sumer pro­tec­tions for cit­i­zens, has a crap­py sup­port struc­ture for humans in just about every way you can imag­ine, and has law enforce­ment who don’t care to enforce laws unless you’ve got enough mon­ey to get their atten­tion. Essen­tial­ly, we want to live in a blue state, which means leav­ing the Bible belt. Cool­er weath­er would be nice, too. Less humid heat, at least, would be a relief.

We haven’t real­ly made plans, not want­i­ng to uproot Katie while she was in school and so on. There’s a lot of iner­tia, too, since I’ve been here all my life (except for the few years in Alaba­ma before my par­ents moved us to Atlanta). Sam was born here, and was­n’t thrilled with New York or New Jer­sey when he lived there. Our fam­i­lies are here, which means some­thing, even if we don’t see them that often.

From the Car­roll Coun­ty Times of West­min­ster, Mary­land:

Accord­ing to The Sacra­men­to Bee, a fam­i­ly in El Dora­do, Calif., is in trou­ble after spend­ing a fam­i­ly out­ing mak­ing pipe bombs and then test­ing them.… Accord­ing to the Bee, Justin Lee Brown, 29, was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of sev­er­al felonies. He, his girl­friend and their two sons, ages 6 and 8, had one of the more inter­est­ing fam­i­ly out­ings ever.… When asked about the activ­i­ty, Brown said he learned how to make bombs from friends and “decid­ed to try it so he could show it to his kids.” … Brown is in jail and Tiffany Dean, the mom, is being inves­ti­gat­ed for what deputies call “unimag­in­ably stu­pid” con­duct.

I’m hold­ing my breath, hop­ing that no asso­ci­a­tion with the pagan com­mu­ni­ty or Spi­ral Scouts will come to light. That’s what came to mind first, hon­est­ly. If it had hap­pened in Alaba­ma instead of Cal­i­for­nia, though, I’d be rea­son­ably safe in assum­ing some degree of rela­tion to Dean and Brown. I’ve nev­er regret­ted mov­ing to Georgia—specifically, to metro Atlanta. I’d be quite hap­py to move else­where, but as this sto­ry shows, you can find red­necks any­where.