Notable quotable Jeff Foxworthy makes millions making fun of his redneck self by pointing out the quirks of being a southern Georgia hillbilly. Which begs the question, can you be a true redneck if you can afford to buy the entire county that you allege you inhabit? Ponder that, gentle readers.

Before I came on active duty, my last abode was in the shabby but gentile and now extraordinarily overpriced suburbs of the metropolis we refer to as our nation’s capital, and being friends with the great TLRG, I liked to consider myself somewhat savvy in the ways of urban living. I had a Starbucks within walking distance, (a key indicator of a Carrie Bradshaw wannabe) and I enjoyed hanging out at the neighborhood bookstore on the weekends. A hop on the subway and I was in the heart of the city in 10 minutes.

So it has come as somewhat of a shock to me that I, in my new desert abode, find myself in danger being Foxworthy. I am spending some time at our higher headquarters encampment this week, practicing my shyster profession and missing my regular, more urban, encampment. I, the litigation luminary that I am, would have never expected to be a single female, albeit only geographically, love you honey!, living alone in a flooded out trailer park, with no hope of a decent glass of pinot noir or a sushi sampler tray for many many months, yet, here I am.

I have measured myself on the Foxworthy Scale, and find I tip it like a 300 pound unemployed trucker with greasy hair eating cheetos for breakfast. For example, you know you’re a redneck if you can holler at your neighbor in the next trailer to shut the hell up when he is watching WWF. Well, last night, I had to bang on the wall of my trailer to quiet down the my overzealous neighbors at midnight who had the cable blasting on wrestling. As military as I am, I had no desire to learn about Wrecker Bob, or Crazy Crazy Cab 1.

You know you’re a redneck if you stumble out of your trailer at 0600 am to go to the outhouse in the morning and get accosted by a neighbor who hasn’t seen you in a couple of weeks and wants to know how your life is going. This morning, as I attempted to blunder through the last dregs of sleep to the latrine trailer in this unfamiliar living area so I could pee before I burst, I hear Ma’am, Ma’am, what are you doing at Division? It was one of my favorite sergeants from the brigade who had just taken a different job up here and was curious to see me outside his trailer. Water cooler, latrine trailer, outhouse, whats the difference?

You know you’re a redneck if you have a satellite TV, play-station, 500 DVDs but you still scam free food at every available opportunity. The soldiers in my office compete to see who has the biggest DVD collection, yet whenever care packages come in, the food disappears as if they were the starving Ethiopian children my mother always made me clean my plate for.

You know you’re a redneck if you keep waders by your trailer door so that you can muck through the mud on your dirt road in order to reach your pickup parked at the end of the driveway. Substitute in combat boots and a humvee and you have my life, ladies and gentleman. The dusty desert creates some spectacular sunset photos, with the light filtering through the dust into prisms of color, but ever wonder what happens to all that dust when it rains? It doesn’t magically wash away, like it does in the U.S. What was dust and dirt becomes heavy, cloying mud that takes weeks to dry out and for some reason, always smells like ass.