I wish I was a camel

Okay everyone.  I think I'm back for good now.  I have been gone on and off for about three weeks at Rainy Lake having fun swimming and kayaking and eating whatever the hell struck my fancy, but now I'm home for at least a few weeks, so hopefully I can get back to regular life for a while which includes blogging and not eating 10,000 calories a day. (Highlight of the trip: kayaking to an island and exploring and swimming around. Lowlight:  I accidentally ate a spiderweb.)

I can't think of anything to tell you about right off the top of my head now because I'm so unbelievably HOT.  I think I might right now, at this very moment be suffering from brain damage because my gray matter is literally being cooked.  I read recently that camels are adapted to the desert in a bunch of clever ways, one of which is that their body absorbs heat and stores it and it doesn't go to their brain because there is some kind of barrier and insulation that keeps their brain nice and cool no matter how how hot their bodies get.  I wish I had that because I'm so hot I can barely think, yet my saddlebags, which hold a large portion of my cellulite, are cool.  Why can't my fat absorb the heat and leave my vital organs out of it?  I have never in my life wished so bad that I was a camel.

Last fall Mitch and I thought we were sooooooooo smaaaaarrrt because we got new super duper insulation blown into the walls of our house.  God, we were so smug about that; bragging about it, saying obnoxious things to people like, "Oh, you don't have blown-in insulation???  Weeee do.  You need to get it.  Seriously, you really need to get it."   Now it is 9:30 at night, and it is 75 degrees outside but it is still 85 in the house!  And now I know that you are thinking, "Oh, you don't have air conditioning???  Weeee do.  You need to get it.  Seriously, you really need to get it."  Well, we don't have it because normally Duluth has only about five or six days that are unbearably hot.  This year it's been much hotter which I usually like, but not when my brain gets hot.  I may go swimming in Lake Superior tomorrow.  If I live until then.

Good morning!

I'm sitting here at the McDonalds in International Falls writing this on my iPad. It is 6:17 AM. Why??? you ask? Because I didn't sleep last night between being farted upon by my lovely daughter who was sharing my bed, and the eighteen kabillion mosquitos in our camper. That high pitched whine is enough to drive a girl crazy. When I didn't hear it in my ear, I was waiting for it, anticipating it, dreading it. It sucked. So now I am in town having a bucket of coffee and listening to the early morning McDonald's regulars jabbering. One of whom is my old elementary school principal, Mr. Arveson. I loved him when I was a little kid. He has an accent that sounds vaguely like Lawrence Welk, in fact he looks a lot like Lawrence Welk. He's old now and he looks so cute sitting on the new mod-squad, "this is a coffee shop not a crappy fast-food joint!" stool. His black, velcro tenners don't even touch the ground.

What am I going to do today, you ask? I don't know. Probably have diarrhea from the shocking amount of coffee I've managed to suck down in the last 15 minutes, listen to Kira's grievances, scour the camper for the goddamn hole where the mosquitos are getting in, read, kayak (preferably after the diarrhea), swim, sweat. The usual. What are you going to do?

Summer Cold

I'm getting a cold.  I haven't had a cold for about a year and I forgot how unbearable I can be when I have the slightest discomfort.  I think I get colds worse than anyone in the world.  I really really hate slight discomfort.  This morning I let Sam drive me around and I was complaining because my sinuses hurt and my throat hurts and wa wa wa wa wa wa! And Sam said that one day he was feeling bad about himself because of some lame reason and then he saw a girl at school who is confined to a wheelchair and can hardly move at all and she was singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and that put it all in perspective for him and he saw how lucky he is.  I pointed out to him that 1) that girl probably didn't have a sore throat like I have because if she did, she would not have been singing anything, 2) When someone melodramatically complains that their sinuses feel like someone ruthlessly went at them with a melon baller, they don't want a life-lesson on optimism from their 15 year old boy because that just makes everyone look stupid, and 3) if he ever wants to drive the goddamn car again he will start feeling sorry for me RIGHT NOW.  Somebody needs to teach that boy some empathy, and I think it is probably up to me since I am his mother, but I can't today because I don't feeeeeeeeel gooooooood!

I have been gone again, up at Rainy Lake with the kids.  I only came back for a few days to mow the lawn and go to book club tomorrow night.  Kira caught a turtle under water yesterday.  It was innocently swimming around, being the aquatic animal that it is, and she swam up to it and grabbed it.  It was super mad.  I've never seen a turtle so mad.  Last year she caught a duck by swimming up to it under water and grabbing its feet.  Needless to say the duck wasn't particularly happy about it either.  I've never seen a person so at home in the water, and so unafraid of grabbing wild animals in their natural habitat.  

Sam is becoming one with a 1958 Johnson outboard motor.  I say that because he can sense what the motor needs and what it likes and does not like.  I shifted myself in the boat the other day and for a split second the boat went slightly faster even though the motor was going full speed.  I said, "Hey!  I can make us go faster!" and I threw myself around a little and Sam said, "STOP IT! That's bad for the prop!" which I found slightly insulting.  

Spider Island

Are you afraid of spiders?  If you said no, I can predict that you are sitting somewhere in a civilized, not-all-that-natural environment right now and there is virtually no danger of a spider the size of your hand running across your lap.  And you're a liar.  Spiders are scary.  And creepy.  And fast.  Yuck.

(Thank you to someone on Flickr for the photo of the gross spider.)

Amy has the most adorable little cabin on a perfect spot on a perfect lake.  For three months out of the year it is paradise.  Except for all the spiders.  Whenever I go out there I try to convince myself that:
A) they don't want to attack me, and if I leave them alone, they will leave me alone,
B) They are good because they eat bugs that bite me,
C) They are fascinating creatures, what with the spinning of webs and all.

It never works.  For one thing, they are EVERYWHERE.  Sure, they don't want to attack me, but say you are walking to the outhouse a little way into the woods; unless you make a conscious effort to blur your eyes, look only where you are going, and don't look at the buildings that have spider-web thatched roofs, you WILL see a frighteningly fast, DISGUSTING spider scurrying out of your way.

My dad said he saw a spider out back behind the shed that was as big as a small woman's hand and it was moving slowly because it was carrying an egg sac the size of a marble.  Just writing that sentence makes me want to throw up.  When my dad told that to my mom and me we both almost gagged.  I don't know what's worse: a spider that moves faster than lightning, or a spider that is slow because it is carrying a web-backpack full of millions more spiders.  When my dad saw our reaction he said, "They are good!  They eat bugs!" and my mom said what women have been saying for generations, "I'd rather have the other bugs."

Spiders are kind of interesting.  On TV.  Or on the opposite side of a pane of glass.  And only then when you chant, "She's just like Charlotte! She's just like Charlotte! She's just like Charlotte!" to yourself in a frantic cadence while doing Lamaze breathing.

I watched some fat-bodied non-giant spiders outside the sauna spinning webs.  It wasn't the worst thing in the world.  But if they were on the inside of the sauna, instead of the outside, I would have freaked out and smooshed them.  And then I'd be totally grossed out by how much their disgusting fat bodies squished.

Kira has always liked to tell me I'm a sissy when it comes to the spiders.  She acts all tough and even goes so far as to hold and play with Daddy Long Legs.  Gross.  Well, not this past week.  Amy and I were at the fire pit, and Kira came down from changing out of her swimming suit and she was frantically trying not to be frantic.  She was laughing a forced laugh that would have been screaming if she wasn't so stubborn and determined.  She had the curled up body of a spider on her towel and she said, "I caught this spider crawling ACROSS MY FACE!"  The spider was huge.  She said she noticed it and then did the international bug dance which flung him off of her, and then saw the spider trying to crawl away across my bed so she smashed it with my book.  I am so happy she had the wherewithal to smash it after she brushed it off her face.  It saved me from a sleepless night of wondering when the spider was going to crawl up my body and lay eggs in my mouth.  When all spread out with the legs and huge body, that spider was probably the size of the top of a coffee cup.  Kira was freaked out.  Amy and I (who are both terrified of spiders so our reassurance doesn't count for much) tried to tell her to forget about it.  Amy said, "Kira, in a ten foot square space anywhere on this island there are probably a thousand spiders.  They won't hurt you."  to which Kira replied with, "Yes, but they are not ON MY FACE!"  to which Amy and I said, "Touche," and we all sat there and shuddered for about an hour.   

I've been gone

The kids and I took a little mini-vacation up to Rainy Lake for the last several days.  Kira and I stayed with Amy at her cabin, and Sam stayed in town with my parents so he could drive them around wherever their little hearts desired.  I have lots to catch up on around here so this isn't really a real post.  A real one will follow soon.

I learned something about myself while I was gone.  I have absolutely no self-discipline when I am away from home.  I ate food that I would NEVER eat at home (re: Top the Tater and chips were at the base of my vacation food pyramid.) and I didn't really wash (I was swimming. Who needs soap when you have lake water?) and I wasn't even really good about brushing my teeth. (Can't worry about tooth decay and spiders at the same time.) More to come...

Beth's Help

Amy and Beth and I were determined to get some good pictures of ourselves while we were on our trip.  We are constantly taking pictures, but they are usually of our kids who don't really take bad pictures.  Beth was a bit stunned by my total inability to take a good picture, which led me to record some Bethisms (thanks for the idea Kady and Summer) so she thought she'd help me out by snapping candids of me when I wasn't expecting it, thinking that maybe if I didn't know a camera was pointing at me, she could capture the real me.  These are some of the shots she got.

Walking the streets of Annapolis:

On the train to NYC:

And then: Finally!  A half-way decent one!

(That's me on the left)

Bethisms from our trip:

"Amy, you re-ran over that squirrel"

"If I took my kids on a plane, I'd drug them."

"The new cool will be having LESS Facebook friends!"

"What are you doing with your face?"  said everytime she looked at a picture snapped of me.

Thanks, Beth!

Russian Samovar

I have a couple of stories for you from my sister's vacation.  We had tickets to see Wicked at the Gershwin theater for Tuesday night, so before the show we planned on eating at Russian Samovar.  I chose that restaurant because when I looked up "good placed to eat in Midtown" when I was planning our itinerary, that name kept popping up.  I'm not much of a fan of Russian anything, but that restaurant kept getting rave reviews, so I thought we should check it out.  When we walked in I didn't think we were in the right place.  It looked like a bit of a dive.  What caught my eye was the light fixtures with wires hanging out all over the place.


Here's a picture of Amy and you can see the light fixtures, but you can't really see the wires.  Oh well, believe me, it was a bit weird. 

We decided to be totally Russian and drink vodka and eat caviar.  The waitress who was an adorable Russian girl with a thick accent brought us a list of flavor infused vodkas so we ordered some. 

The first one I got was lemon and it was pretty good.  Next I ordered a chocolate one and the waitress looked me square in the eye and said, "No."  I said, "Pardon?" and she said, "No. Is no good."  So I told her to get me a good one.  She brought me pear.  It was good.  We ordered our caviar:

See, it's served with little pancakes and onion and boiled egg and sour cream.  It was surprisingly delicious.  A bit fishy but guess what?  It's FISH EGGS!  I ate fish babies and they were delicious.

"Thank you ma'am, your babies were delicious."

Sometimes I feel bad about eating meat because I've seen footage on factory farms and how meat is processed and it is so barbaric and gross I can hardly stand it, but I don't think I will ever think of fish as an animal.  When we go to the Great Lakes Aquarium and see all those fat salmon swimming around it just makes me ravenous. 

Anyway, we had a wonderful time there drinking vodka, and eating appetizers and desserts (cheesecake and little tiny doughnuts with a raspberry sauce that was so good you could have eaten it with a spoon).  We loved our waitress and so we were trying to figure out how to say thank you in Russian and when I looked it up on my translator on my phone, this is what came up:  Спасибо.  I was looking at it for a few seconds and my sisters said, "What does it say?" and I said, "I don't know.  I don't know how to pronounce 'six'," but we figured it out and thanked her in Russian like the dorky tourists we are. 

Because we are middle aged and have to pee every 20 minutes, we asked our adorable waitress where the bathroom was.  She pointed us through these heavy velvet curtains to a staircase and said, "Up there," so we went upstairs to the exact room where Mikael Barishnikov took Carrie on their date on Sex In The City.  It was totally empty until a tough-looking man came shooting out of a back room, looked us over and said, "You must go downstairs."  We told him we were looking for the bathroom and he said, "Downstairs" and herded us to the staircase.  We decided to hold it.  When we were walking to the theater Beth said that the waitress probably sends women who she thinks would be good for selling into white slavery up the steps (aww, thanks!) but the guy got one look at us and thought to himself, "No.  Too old.  Too fat.  Couldn't make the profit margins," so he shooed us away.  Rejection!  We couldn't make a profit as sex slaves. Oh well, one less thing to worry about, I guess. Which reminds me of one more quick story from the trip:  One day we were walking around downtown Washington and there was a guy playing a banjo at an outdoor produce market.  He was just playing, not singing.  He was pretty good until I walked past him and he started singing "Where have all the young girls gone...hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmmm...." to the tune of Where Have All the Flowers Gone.  Hey Banjo Guy, you are no spring chicken either so SHUT IT. 



First Impressions of NYC

My sisters and I took a quick trip to New York on our sister's vacation.  I have never been to New York before so I was very interested to see what it is really like.  I found it to be very complex and dichotomous.  For instance, the women there are slim and trim and stylish and I'm not.  So I felt like a butterball rube, but at the same time EVERYTHING is so BIG in New York that I felt insignificant and teeny.  So, a teeny butterball rube.  Not the best feeling, but whatev. 

Another thing I noticed was about the cleanliness.  As we were walking the streets of Manhattan we saw people obsessively sweeping, hosing down, and even vacuuming the sidewalk, but take another few steps and you can get caught in a cigarette-butt tornado.  Which was super gross.  Beth got caught in the middle of one and she was trying to run out of it and was waving her arms and spitting.  She said she had grit in her mouth after that for a long time.  Gross.  Important: when you get caught in a cigarette-butt tornado KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.   Also, do you ever notice on shows set in NYC how "gritty" things look?  Like smudges on doors and just general dirtiness that you don't see around where you live?  It's really like that.  It's an amazing place but it's like the general housekeeping of the entire city is the responsiblilty of an apathetic octogenarian with poor eyesight and a bad back.  I don't think anything below hip level has been wiped down in the entire city in at least a decade. 

We went to a few restaurants while we were there and the food is GLORIOUSLY good.  One night we went to Russian Samovar and had real Russian vodka and caviar.  It was so good.  I've never had hard liquor that didn't make me cough and spit but this vodka was actually smoooooooth.  And who knew caviar would be good?  It was served on little pancakes with sour cream, red onions and boiled egg.  Of course, rabbit turds would probably also be good on pancakes with sour cream.  Later we went to a place called Sosa Borello.  We had some appetizers that were heavenly.  In the morning we went to the New Cosmic Cafe for breakfast.  Fabulous.  New Yorkers know how to eat. 

We also saw the Occupy Wall Street protester camp in Zucotti park.  Zucotti park is REALLY small.  I was fired up by the whole thing and was ready to start marching and carrying a sign, but Amy said she wanted to run through the camp and bang on tents and yell "GET A JOB, SLACKERS!"  She didn't do it. 

I have to stop now because I have to catch my plane to go home, but more later on this, Washington, the Sisters, Mount Vernon etc etc.  BYE!

Our weekend and Beth's hidden talents

The kids spent the weekend with their grandparents at the cabin on Rainy Lake.  One day they went to a souvenir shop to buy t-shirts and they were each told to pick their favorite.  Sam casually pointed out to Kira a shirt that said, "I froze my pecker off at Rainy Lake" and it had a picture of a cute bird on it.  Kira loves birds so she wanted it.  My MIL said it was inappropriate and Kira had no idea why.  MIL had to explain the double meaning of pecker to her. She's all grown up now!

My two-year-old niece, Sid, hung out with me all weekend.  She is a riot.  When I was fixing her hair one morning she was staring at herself in the mirror with her finger up her nose.  I said, "Get your finger out of your nose," and she said, "Oh, it's okay, I'm just picking the boogers out."  She also sings a song of nonsense words all the time.  Like, "Oo ah, bee, dang, pleh, pleng...." and on and on and on while she mimes snapping her fingers.  I could NOT get Beth to tell me what this is about but I have a sneaking suspicion Beth is just trying to hide her own weirdness.  Why do I think this?  I'll tell you the history...

One time back in high school my sister Amy came across a home-made cassette tape and didn't know what was on it so she played it.  It was Beth belting out the Cher song "If I Could Turn Back Time" but she changed the lyrics to, "If I could turn back time, I'd give it all to Chri-is!"  Apparently she had a crush on someone named Chris.

Fast forward about six or seven years:  Amy and I were over at Beth's house for dinner.  We were looking at stuff on her computer while she cooked and we saw a home-made sound file on her desktop so we played it.  Remember the hamster song that was so popular in the nineties?  It was almost exactly like that but sooooo much longer and more complex.  It even had a bridge where she said, "Oo ah ah ah Oo ah ah ah" for a long time.  Amy and I were literally speechless and couldn't believe what we had found and we laughed so hard we thought we might have to go to the hospital.  It was amazing.  Beth has hidden talents.

So that is why I think Beth walks around her house singing some wonderful nonsense song that she has made up and Sid is just copying her.  I don't know why she won't share it.  She could bring so much joy to the world.  I might have to put some microphones in Beth's house and steal the joy.

Iowa State Fair

A couple days ago the kids, my aunt and I went to the Iowa State Fair.  Kira was so excited that on the drive there that she said, "If there are bunnies to hold, can I hold some bunnies???!!!"  The kids were dying to go on enough rides to make them nauseous, and my aunt and I wanted to have some fair food and see farm animals.  After we checked out the fairgrounds for a while the kids headed to the Midway to go on rides and get an eyeful of carnie, (as there were carnies-a-plenty) and Auntie and I went in search of deep fried food on sticks, and animals.  We started the smorgasbord off with corn dogs and then took a stroll through the cow barn.  Normally I would not eat a fried, breaded wiener at all, (yes I would) much less eat it while walking through a barn among livestock; but much like parades make it okay to eat candy off the road, fairs make it okay (and even fun!) to eat carcinogens in a room full of poop.

I had to squeeze through a crowd of people NOT TOUCHING this bull to get this picture. (He didn't look dangerous enough to rate having a sign, but he did have an enormous scrotum which is unfortunately being covered by the sign in this picture.  It was impressive.)

Then we headed to the sheep barn which had a very special kind of stink.  All the sheep were shorn for showing and apparently female sheep are better for showing because everywhere I looked, this is what I saw:

Vaginas here!  Vaginas there!  Vaginas EVERYWHERE!

In order to get out of the sheep barn I had to avert my gaze from the vaginas and concentrate on the sheep that were covered, for "cleanliness."

KKK-Kleanliness

Next we went to the bird and bunny barn and unfortunately there were no bunnies to hold, only pigeons.  And you couldn't hold them.  Pigeon people are touchy about people touching their pigeons.  They had the pigeon show that day and here are some of the winners:

fatass

(Get it?  There's nothing even in there! (That's the joke))
\

This guy didn't win anything, but I liked him and his freaky legs:

"Get ta steppin'!"

Then we met up with the kids and walked through the games because there's nothing a kid likes more than to get financially assaulted by gregarious people with prison tats!

"What?  You mean not one single ring went on one single bottle?  What are the chances?!?"

"I totally think it's worth three dollars for you to try to walk up the rickety ladder to see if you can get a toy worth 50 cents that you don't even want.  Totally."

Then we went to the booths to see if I could get my picture with Michele Bachmann but she wasn't at her booth.  She had other crazies passing out literature for her.  We saw a few minutes of some outhouse races.  I had never heard of this before.  People put outhouses on wheels and push them down the track.  The tricky part is that there has to be a person inside the outhouse and he (or she!) has to be going to the bathroom during the race.*  Pressure!

I also saw Angelica Huston on a rascal scooter, a cow made of butter, and a pretty good one-man-band.

Then it was getting hot so we went home.  It was fun!


*I'm pretty sure that isn't true.

More stealing: My trip to Cancun

I still can't think of anything original and wonderful to write about so today I'm going to steal from yet another blogger.  Today I'm stealing from Jane from Jane's Junk and Treasures because she just got back from a vacation to Cancun, Mexico and she can't stop bragging about it wrote a lovely post about her adventures!  Which reminded me of the time I went to Cancun.  It was the summer after I graduated from high school and I went on a school trip with about 20 kids and our Señora.   It sounded like it would be such a fun trip, and it was, but we weren't travelers.  We didn't know how to handle the inconveniences of international travel back then, we were still in high school mode, and it was the eighties so our biggest concern was how to keep our bangs tall in the oppressive jungle humidity, and how to take advantage of the no-drinking-age in Mexico without Señora getting wind of it because she said she would send us home if we broke her leyes (rules).  We were there to absorb the culture and history, and practice our Spanish language skills; not to get drunk and sold into white slavery, apparently.

High humidity, tall bangs.  Harder to accomplish than you would think.

The day we landed we went right from the plane to a bus.  A hotter than ass bus where we spent most of the next several days.  One day we toured the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.  To merely say it was hot would be ridiculous.  It was probably 175 degrees with 110% humidity so we weren't appreciating the historical significance of where we were, we just wanted to get the hell out of there and get somewhere air conditioned.

Here is a picture of my friends Jill and Drew looking at stuff in the Great Ball Court where the Mayans would play their crazy ball games that ended in death.  I think the Mayans would have scoffed at our collective wieniness had we somehow been able to travel back in time and meet them.  They'd say, "Hey, you want to run around this enormous ball court in the oppressive heat until one of us dies?"  and we'd say, "No thank you!  It's too hot and Señora said to move slowly and stay hydrated."  

This picture cracks me up.  It's me (on the steps on the right), my friend Jen, and my friend Jonelle.  I think Señora told the two girls standing above us to watch us because they were constantly watching us and told on us when we ordered drinks the night we went to the discoteca.  In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have ordered drinks that were on fire.  That wasn't very low profile.  But we got out of trouble by telling Señora that we ordered in Spanish, you know, for practice, and we must not have said it right.  Like tres llamas azules Jesus, por favor (three Flaming Blue Jesus shots, please) could be confused with tres Coca Colas, por favor.  Oh well, she bought it.  I'm guessing she didn't really buy it but she let it go because she didn't want the hassle of sending us home.  

This is toward the end of the day at Chichen Itza.  The boys slowly got more and more naked.  The guy on the right was my high school boyfriend who I broke up with right before prom.  You know I have a thing for Tom Selleck and he was as close as a girl could get in high school.  What's that?  No, I said it right, I broke up with HIM.  No, YOU shut up!  We still went to prom together.  It was awkward.  

Awkward

Toward the end of the Chichen Itza tour we saw this:

It's the sacred cenote where they would sacrifice virgins. I believe at the time I was thinking, "God, it's hot, I wish I was a virgin."  Just kidding, Mom and Dad!  I was a virgin!  I could have been sacrificed!  omg, yeah right!  Did you see my boyfriend?  Like I wasn't hitting that.*  (They can't see this because of the small print.)   

Señora told us to pack lots of snack food because we wouldn't like the food.  She'd been doing this trip for years and years and knew what she was talking about, but we were teenage girls, we didn't want to seem like pigs so we all packed a candy bar or two and someone had the forethought to pack squeeze cheese and a sleeve of crackers.  We ate all that stuff the first night.  For the rest of the trip we were starving.  We were in the rural Yucatan and there was no McDonalds or anything even close, which, as an adult I think is wonderful and I'd love to go back and try out all the stuff I turned my snotty teenage nose up at.  We ordered tacos at a street stand, expecting something like Taco Johns, but they weren't like Taco Johns.  They were made with goat meat instead of overly processed commercial "beef" of questionable origin, and had no orange cheese, no sour cream, no salsa or anything.  Just goat meat on a tortilla.  I think that was on about day four and Jonelle cried when she saw it.  

One day we were approached by a dapper-looking man on the beach in Cancun who told us for a tidy sum we could be treated to a wonderful day trip on a yacht, where they would take us to a nearby reef to snorkle and see beautiful tropical fish; a delicious lunch included.  How could we pass that up? We got the okay from Señora, and off we went.  The "yacht" was a 15 foot dingy.  The "nearby" reef was about a two hour boat ride out into the open ocean.  The "tropical fish" was a bunch of baracuda ripping the shit out of any cute little Nemo-like fish they could see (traumatic), and the "lunch" was crackers with salsa and one Corona a piece. We were suckers.  

So there, Jane.  You're not the only one who can blog about their trip to Cancun!  So what if mine was 22 years ago!

*That wasn't very nice.  Sorry, old boyfriend.  I didn't mean to sully your teenage reputation.*

*bow chica wow wow!*

*again, I'm so sorry.

I'm Back! (and classier than ever)

I'm back from my little vacation.  It was up at Rainy Lake in International Falls.  My kids have been there for two weeks with their grandma and I was starting to miss them.  Unfortunately for me the weather turned from hotter than Satan's bung to "seasonal" which in Minnesota means cold.

On one of the cold days we went in to town and shopped around the tourist shops.  I found a scented lotion that I loved.  It was super expensive, but I thought it smelled so good, it was worth it.  I put some on my hands from the tester and had Kira smell it.  I said,  "Doesn't that smell great!?"  She said, "Oh yeah." and she sniffed it and thought about it and then said,  "It smells just like an outhouse after Febreeze is sprayed in it."  Which she genuinely thinks is a good smell.  Later I picked up an Enquirer and read all about how great Prince William is at Polo.  Then I went outside to watch Kira swim and she played with a dead perch for about a half hour until a seagull came and stole it from her. Kira put up a good fight and I eventually had to step in and referee the scuffle which mostly consisted of yelling, "IT'S A DEAD FISH, JUST LET HIM HAVE IT!" Then I thought to myself, I bet Prince William has never known the joys of playing with a dead perch, getting in a fight with a seagull, or smelling the wonderful smell of an outhouse after it's been sprayed with Febreeze; and then I thought, "OH MY GOD! WE'RE REDNECKS!" which probably isn't coming as a surprise to some of you (okay, all of you), but I guess I never really thought of us as  rednecks.

Stop laughing.

And I'm the worse kind of redneck.  I'm the redneck who looks at other rednecks and feels superior.  For example, when I saw a woman who looked to be about 50, in a Miller Lite tank top with an especially mullety mullet, drinking a beer at 10:15 in the morning, I snottily thought to myself, "Wow. Nice life, fashion plate." All the while I'm walking around town in mom shorts that nicely showcase the surprisingly long hair, peeling skin and scabbed over mosquito bites that make up my shins this and every summer, while my daughter and her cousin are having farting contests and guessing what each other ate the night before based on the subtle hues and undertones of their intestinal gas.

We need to go to finishing school.  Is there still such a thing as finishing school?  (There is! Yay!  I wonder if they have scholarships because mama don't have the scratch, know what I'm sayin'! I spent all my money on outhouse/Febreeze lotion.)

Oh well.  Being a redneck has it's benefits.  At one point while we were at the lake Kira said, "I'm goin' fishin'," and she grabbed a big tube, tied a minnow bucket to it, slapped on some goggles and spent the next half hour with her head under the water, looking for crayfish under rocks.

Because, Dagum!  Them's good eatin'!

Just kidding.  We didn't eat them.  (she didn't catch enough.)  I think teaching Kira to act like a lady may be a hopeless case.  When I tell her to shape up and mind her manners she puts on a fake British accent and calls me "Mumsie."

I might as well cut her hair into a mullet and get her a Miller Lite tank top.  Why fight it?

Quality Time

The kids and I took an overnight road trip yesterday.  We drove up the North Shore of Lake Superior to Grand Marais, stayed the night there in a cabin at a resort right on the beach and then toured the crap out of the sites on the shore on the way home today.  The purpose of this trip was to make some awesome memories and spend some quality time together.  Yeah!  Fuck yeah!  Quality time!

Oh, sorry, got a little carried away there with my outstanding mothering skillZ! 

It was really fun.  I wanted some time to hold my kids captive and drill into their heads that they are each other's closest relative and they will grow old together so they should learn to love each other and be friends.  Now I'm pretty sure they think I have a terminal illness and I'm going to die before the end of the summer and they will both have nervous break-downs trying to be good for their poor sick mother.  Oh well!  Whatever works!

 I bet you didn't know this about my kids,  Sam is a normal sized person and Kira is TINY.  

While it was nice and sunny out we spent some time on the beach.  This is a picture of Sam and Kira sitting RIGHT next to each other on a MILE LONG BEACH, bickering.  They actually pulled their chairs up that close to each other for the sole purpose of annoying each other. Progress!

We stopped at Palisade Head, which is a 2500 foot cliff (I don't know if it's that high, but it seemed that high.  I was 2500-feet-nauseous, I can tell you that.)  Kira was annoying and enjoying the hell out of herself, and Sam DIDN'T push her off!  He was sullen and angsty though, but so what, KIRA IS STILL ALIVE! YAY!

What was she doing that was so annoying, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  She had to sit in the back because Sam had to sit in the back yesterday.  When she gets sick of riding, she ups the obnoxious level until it's unbearable and hilarious all at the same time.  Today she decided to speak in an accent which was a cross between a Southern hillbilly (but somehow, from what she was saying, she thinks it was a western accent) and the Target Lady from SNL.  LOUDLY. 

Kira:  That there horse had more hair on him than a wooly mammoth, wouldn't ya say, m'boy!
Sam: Kira, shut up.
Kira:  "Whoa there fella, Pa said yer not s'pose to say shut up to me, m'boy!"
Me:  (laughing and trying to pull it together enough to tell her to tone it down.)
Kira:  Do y'all ever get any wind storms 'round these parts?
Sam:  Mom, Please tell her to be quiet!
Kira:  'Cause out in the West we have a good wind storm 'round abouts every other week!
Sam:  Ugh, can't you drive any faster?
Kira: Ma, you take it easy on that little ole gas pedal, we're in no hurry!
(merciful silence for a few minutes...)
Kira: I sure does wish I could snap! (she can't snap her fingers.)

and on and on and on for miles and miles and miles.