Jersey Girl Welcomes SITS!!!!

WooHoo!! Today is my SITS Day, as in The Secret Is In The Sauce, as in the greatest group of bloggers and bloggerettes in cyber-space!  I'm ridiculously excited and celebrating in typical Jersey fashion with a Jersey Girl fist-pump.  The SITStahood is a group of more than 6,000 women bloggers dedicated to supporting one another by leaving comments.  Lots and lots of comments.  And The SITS Girls have chosen me as the featured blogger today.  

So since it's my day in the sun, my day to shine, I have a special little request.  For today forget what you think you know about Jersey Girls - the low-class, high-drama housewives, the big-haired big-mouthed Gatsby girls, the Situation and Snooki - cause I'm here to set the record straight on what it's really like to be a lady from New Jersey.  That's right, I said "lady" because believe it or not, there are ladies in New Jersey, and we know how to act, dress and carry ourselves in public.

Geographically speaking, living in South Jersey is about as good as it gets.  If you make a left turn out of my neighborhood you have the choice of going west bound on the Atlantic City Expressway, which will lead you to the great City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, in all of 20 minutes.  Take the Expressway east bound and you're "On the way to Cape May"..... or you can be in Atlantic City in 40.   Go North on the Parkway and you're in New York City in a mere 2 hours.  Head South and you can pass Baltimore and be in our nation's capitol in 3 hours.  In addition, we are 20 minutes away from the Pine Barrens, which contains 1.1 million acres of state forest and is home to the Jersey Devil.  It is also home to the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, which holds 17 trillion gallons of the freshest water in the entire country.  Not a bad place to live if you ask me.

Do we love our diners?  You betcha.  Soft pretzels and cheesesteaks?  Fuhgettaboutit! But did you know that we also have some of the most beautiful farms with acres and acres of the most delicious fruits and vegetables, hence our name, the Garden State.  If you had the pleasure of tasting sweet corn or yummy tomatoes this summer, chances are they came from New Jersey.  We are also the blueberry capitol of the world!

We don't have hurricanes or earthquakes, rarely have tornadoes or wildfires, but we do enjoy four beautiful seasons with gorgeous foliage in the Fall, beautiful snow in the Winter and amazing beaches to enjoy in the Summer.  And just to be clear, Jersey Girls don't head to the beach.  We go "Down the Shore".  Always have, always will.

I hadn't planned to use my SITS day to grandstand.  I actually had a completely different post planned about my not-so-exciting life as a 40-something mom to two girls and wife to my college sweetheart who just found out that the symptoms of menopause and pregnancy are very similar (go here to read about that interesting conversation with my man).   My blog is about decorating and thrifting and extolling the virtues of Craig's List - all topics for a great post.  But I just couldn't do it.  I sat up all night trying to think of an idea for a special SITS post, and it occurred to me that this would be a great opportunity to establish New Jersey in a new light.   For today, I did my small part to rid the notion of Jersey Girls as being uneducated, small-minded, wildly confrontational drama starved women.

I leave you with a list of highly intelligent, very successful and classy "ladies" who hailed from the great state of New Jersey:

Clara Barton - Founder of the American Red Cross
Dorothy Parker - Famous American Poet
Betsy Ross - Creator of our Nation's flag
Molly Pitcher - Revolutionary War Hero
Harriet Tubman - African-American abolitionist, humanitarian and Union spy during the Civil War
Christine Todd Whitman - first female governor of New Jersey
Judy Blume - Famous children's author
Donna Weinbrecht - 1st gold medal winner in the 1st Olympic mogul competition in freestyle skiing
Sandra Dee
Bette Midler
Susan Sarandon
Meryl Streep
Kelly Ripa
Queen Latifah