New Orleans Pet Care: 4/28/13

1. Your sunglasses fog up when you step outside.

2. You reinforce your attic to store Mardi Gras beads.

3. You save newspapers, not for recycling, but for tablecloths at crawfish boils.

4. When you give directions you use "lakeside and riverside" not north & south.

5. Your ancestors are buried above the ground.

6. You get on a green trolley car to go to the park and a red one to the French Quarter.

7. You take a bite of five-alarm chili and reach for the Tabasco.

8. Every once in a while, you have waterfront property.

9. You sit down to eat boiled crawfish and your host says, "Don't eat the dead ones," and you know what that means.

10. You don't learn until high school that Mardi Gras is not a national holiday.

11. You push little old ladies out of the way to catch Mardi Gras beads.

12. Little old ladies push YOU out of the way to catch Mardi Gras beads.

13. You leave a parade with footprints on your hands.

14. You believe that purple, green, and gold look good together.

15. And you don't think twice about eating something which has all three of these colors. In fact, you love it.

16. Your last name isn't pronounced the way it's spelled.

17. You know what nutria is but you still pick it to represent your baseball team.

18. No matter where else you go in the world, you are always disappointed in the food.

19. Your town is low on the education chart, high on the obesity chart and you don't care because you're No. 1 on the party chart.

20. Your house payment is less than your utility bill.

21. You don't show your "pretties" during Mardi Gras.

22. You know that Tchoupitoulas is a street and not a disease.

23. Your grandparents are called "Maw-Maw" and "Paw-Paw."

24. Your Santa Claus rides an alligator and your favorite Saint is a football player.

25. You cringe every time you hear an actor with a Southern or Cajun accent in a "New Orleans-based" movie or TV show.

26. You have to reset your clocks after every thunderstorm.

27. You're walking in the French Quarter with a plastic cup of beer.

28. When it starts to rain, you cover your beer instead of your head.

29. You eat dinner out and spend the entire meal talking about all the other good places you've eaten.

30. You decorate your e-mails with purple, green, and gold.