VS.

  • (Funny to me that corn is on the state of Oklahoma, which I rarely see and it’s not on the state of Wisconsin! Obviously you live in homes, while we live in teepees!  You have snowmen and we have cowboys! Where are your farmers? Where are our horses?)

Little nuances of the regional differences crop up now and again. Such as:

  •  Making sure I’m wearing blaze orange while walking my dogs for a couple of weeks in the fall, to avoid being SHOT!   Seriously, blaze orange is not on my color chart!
  •  Snowmobile crossing signs.
  •  I have to plug in my car? Next to my flat iron & blow dryer, where?
  •  Little tiny stop signs. For….little kids on tricycles?
  •  Seemingly abandoned vehicles everywhere I look on Saturday, to be followed with dead animals astride said vehicles on Sunday.
  • Schools sending out information regarding a day that everyone will be out of school for hunting!
  •  Lefse – yummy!
  •  I love that so many people are involved in musicals, plays, concerts and choirs!! Both men and women.
  •  Ooftah – (I think that’s how you spell it) – funny.
  •  Ya Sure You Betcha!
  •  Church, choir concerts, picnics, restaurants…everywhere you go, Packer scores being announced! Do they do it during funerals?
  •  A place suddenly evacuated because a Packer game is about to start. Y’all have heard that in Oklahoma football is a religion, but the Packer love beats us!
  •  People calling me dear (that aren’t my grandmother) – which I love!
  •  Loooong O’s. My co-workers and I have discussed that Wisconsinites say hoot!  I say he-wt making it a 2 syllable word.
  •  I’ve been told that I make several more syllables than necessary in a few words and I put the emphasis on the wrong syllable such as:  “IN – surance”!
  •  I don’t know…but we fish when you can float a boat, not when you could slide a boat. Cutting a whole in the lake to fish sounds risky to me! Have y’all heard of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks? They’re frozen too!!
  •  So many road without names. Just letters – “D”, “M”, then I guess when they had gone through the alphabet they went to “SS” – double letters.
  • What about the roads named for surrounding towns?  When you’re beginning to learn the names of those towns but you’re trying to get directions for IN town, you have to scratch your head for a minute!
  •  The yummy farmer’s markets everywhere!
  •  People around town talking about how humid it was this summer, when I hadn’t  noticed it at all! Back home we had 45+ days that were over 100 degrees and let me tell you the humidity is close to the temperature!
  •  I have seen a rutabaga queen in the Christmas parade. The Christmas parade is wonderful!
  •  Top descriptive word for a person is “hard worker”. I now realize that it is note-worthy if it isn’t in the first few descriptive words of someone.
  •  Rising early on a weekend to the sound of gun shots frequently throughout the summer and fall.
  • Rather than my dogs encountering other leashed dogs on a walk, they bark at cows and chickens. Which is very fun to watch.
  •  Rather than humidity reports accompanying the nightly weather, mosquito reports!
  •  The possibility that someone will shoot an animal on the property and I would have to know how to respond to a hunter wanting to get that animal which may or may not be dead.
  •  Knowing that on an icy-road day I wouldn’t merely bump into a curb, I would head into a lake, go ditch-dipping, or possibly take out a cow. (Ditch dipping – my new made up Wisconsin word!)
  •  Constantly scanning the sides of the roads for reflective eyes – hoping to avoid those eyes that are attached to a large body that would crash into me!  Oh yes, and never forget there will probably be two large bodies attempting to ride shotgun in my car!! They travel in pairs. I’ve usually only see deer on the golf course.
  •  The whole idea that 19 degrees will feel like a heat wave after it’s been 40 degrees below!
  •  I know I have relatives that hunt and make sausage, etc.  I don’t know anyone that processes their own meat. Especially in their own home/garage or *GASP*, dining table!
  •  I know of exactly one person who has a basement and one year after it was built there was a crack across the foundation due to the clay soil and the extreme temperatures. That’s why we don’t have basements! The person who built it came from the north!
  •  Taking my shoes off upon entering a person’s home. I’m still trying to get used to that one! I understand because of the snow and mud it’s very practial, but I still have to get over it. Every time I take off my shoes in someone’s house, I feel as bad as If I’ve dis-robed.  Aren’t you glad that’s not the custom!!
  • This morning, while heading to  a meeting, a co-worker related a spill-on-the-ice story calling it an “ice digger”; followed by people relating their various injuries from falling on the ice. Another new one for me!

I was skyping my youngest nephew this weekend and they had some heavy rain. It made me wonder, have you heard of anyone describing a heavy rain as a “toad strangler?”  When it rains hard, frogs HOP up everywhere, on the sidewalks, roads, and drive ways. My dogs love chasing wet toads.

Unfortunatley due to chain stores, TV, computers, cell phones and nobody staying in place for long – the regional difference are fewer and fewer. I’m enjoying these.