Remember That Time We Went To Hot Springs, Arkansas?

Fun fact! Hot Springs, AR is the only city that is also a National Park.  It is also the home town of one Mr. President Bill Clinton (a wooden sign in the town square depicts the former President as a high school-er playing saxophone).

At some point in history, bath houses were the business.  Everyone was nuts about bath houses.  I could go into the facts about hydrotherapy, but it's boring and I don't know anything about it (because when I tried to learn I got bored and stopped paying attention to what I was reading).  All I know is what happens in bath houses in our modern times.

First, you pay a lot of money.  If your travel companion is of the opposite sex, this is the last time you will see that person for a while.

Now that you're broke and alone, they hand you a white bath sheet and tell you to get naked and wrap yourself in it.

And so now you're broke, alone, and naked.

They then take you to a big claw foot tub and you take the white sheet off in front of a stranger called Miss Patty.  She makes you stand there in the thickest, most uncomfortable silence of your life while the tub fills with water.  Once full, you climb in the tub, and Miss Patty scrubs your body, never once speaking or making eye contact.

She turns on a bubble-maker and you get jostled around the tub for about 20 minutes.  Miss Patty comes back and drains the tub.  You are then instructed to put the white sheet back on and follow her to another room.

This room looks like the bedroom in the story books about Madeline.  A dozen beds lined up on either side of the room, only instead of beautiful cast iron beds like in Madeline, they're vinyl massage tables. Miss Patty will ask if any area of your body is particularly sore.  You might say "my back", or "my feet".  If you say your back hurts, she will place a wet towel underneath you.  This wet towel is hot.  It is so hot you might cry a little bit.

After Miss Patty is satisfied with how "relaxed" your sore muscles are, she will take you to a metal booth.  I'm fairly certain this booth's original purpose was for beheadings.  You sit on a little ledge in the booth, a door which only covers from your shoulders down is closed, then a trap door is lowered over your head.  It has a hole cut out so your head will pop through.  It will look, to the casual observer, as though a head is resting on a shelf.

Miss Patty will turn on hot steam and make you sit there in your own sweat for an eternity.  Maybe 5 minutes.  But 5 minutes is far too long, anyhow.  From your seat in the metal box, you can watch all the other, equally uncomfortable women shuffle around in their white sheets from station to station.

The last step is to take an ice cold shower.  Miss Patty will sit you in a tub of frigid water and turn on the shower.  This is the most enjoyable part of the experience.

Once your lips turn blue you are dismissed back to the dressing room and are permitted to leave.

From there we walked around town, had lunch before heading off to the next stop on the list, and...I may have forced Jason to dress up like a cowboy/gangster and take Olde Timey pictures with me...

Things To Complain About, part one

There is a beautiful bottle of red wine sitting on the counter in my kitchen.  I can see it from here.  I want very much to drink the wine inside of the bottle.

But.

I have no bottle un-cork-er.

The bottle has been taunting me for three weeks.  I move it around to different locations in the kitchen on occasion.  This makes me feel like I'm closer to it; a friendly bond between woman and wine.

Every day it's becoming more and more difficult to not smash the bottle on the edge of the counter and lap up the wine from the floor.  I've also considered going the the thrift store down the road and buying a sword, to chop the top off (but at that rate I might as well just buy an uncorking apparatus and be done with it).

Sundance Film Festival

After arriving at Devil's Tower around 1am, we were weary and poached the camping fee.  No one at the booth?  Not my fault.

(we did pay the next morning)

Jason was jealous of the climbers who were scaling the massive rock, and went as far up as he could go without climbing gear.  I sat at the base and was the photographer for the Family Vacation Photo Op Enthusiasts.  After a while I became bored and to keep myself company, I decided to take the photography very seriously and would place the families in aesthetically pleasing arrangements, and photograph them from the ground and from other extreme angles.  But I have no experience in photography, so I was mostly ruining their vacation photos.

An hour later Jason came back down the mountain and said "Sundance is down the road! Let's stop there for breakfast! Ready to meet some famous people??"

Oh, how excited I was!

Breakfast with Sean Penn, perhaps?? YES PLEASE!

Sundance, Wyoming has a population of about 1,000 people.  There is a gas station, a lot of empty cinder block buildings, rickety houses, and a lot of open space.

Not only are there no famous people there, but there is also no where to have breakfast.

Sundance, WY, though it shares a name with the film festival, is not the location of the Sundance Film Festival.

We continued down the road for a while (I believe I drove this stretch, which was probably a mistake as it was nearing noon and I'd not yet eaten), until we reached Deadwood, SD.  We ate waffle sandwiches with no one famous.

One Time Catherine and I Drove to Cape Cod

What a fancy road trip we'll have!

We went to Cape Cod for a long weekend to see whales, go to the beach, and probably flirt with some Kennedy's. 

Many hours of driving later we arrived in Cape Cod. We chose the $40/night room at Howard Johnson. First impressions of the room upon opening the door:

- there are likely bedbugs in those beds

- there are likely dead bodies under those beds

- it is also likely there are dead bodies in the bathroom

Though the man at the front desk denied it vehemently that it was bed bugs which bit Catherine's face so badly her eye was swollen shut, he did allow us to swap rooms. 

Room 2 was much nicer; not unlike my grandmothers guest bedroom circa 1993. This room had a sliding glass door which lead out to a small deck. It was on this deck that a gaggle of geese became offended by Catherine and chased her back inside.

Suffice it to say, Howard Johnson was not the best choice for accomodations. 

Perhaps it is common for Cape Cod to experience miserable weather in late August, but we were not expecting that it would rain all weekend. Whale watching: cancelled. We tried to go to a beach, but from where we sat, the fog was so thick we couldn't see the ocean. To add insult to injury, there were no Kennedy's to be found. 

We spent the weekend mostly sitting in our room, watching tv, and eating Dominos pizza. 

The weekend was not a complete bust, however. 

Because. 

We each got a duck. A taxidermy duck. 

My guy plays a geeeetar.

Catherine's has a GUN! pew pew pew!

Maybe someday we can try going to Cape Cod again, only we will check the weather first, and also do research as to where the Kennedy's hang out, and how to infiltrate the clan for the purposes of attending fancy garden parties.

Sweeeeeeeet Lawd, This Is Going To Happen

In 1 week this is happening for 2 weeks...

Wish us luck.

I'm A Hoarder

I hoard.

I hoard phone numbers.

I have Catherine's number!  And I have my mom's number, and my dad's.  I have my brother, my sister-in-law, my uncle, my aunt, my other uncle, my friends from high school...

I have all kinds of numbers that I do currently use.

But then I also have the number of the girl I met at salsa dancing lessons about a year ago, who invited me to a party at her house, and I never went and our friendship never blossomed...but I still have her number.

I also have the number for the little ginger man that my friends and I somehow (somehow) acquired during a long evening out, and named him so offensively "Leprechaun Mike".

I have the number of my ex-boyfriend's coworker's fiance.  Just in case I ever need it.

I have the number for the dude who sat next to me on a flight from Detroit to Philly a year and a half ago.  Got that number here...

I have two named Ian, and two named Dan.  There is one Ian that I am in contact with, but I'm not sure which number is his.  One of the Dan's is my boss, and so I don't want to delete the Dan that I met at a concert 3 years ago just in case I choose the wrong one.

I still have the American number for my friend who moved back to Germany 2 years ago.  Similarly, I have the American number for my friend that moved back to South Africa around the same time.

I have one named George and one named Harrison, and I keep them because they read as George Harrison, which makes me laugh.

I have someone named Lindsey WithAnE in my phone.

Nick, Sebastian, Sheila, Warren, Krystal...there's the Chinese food place that closed down a year ago...two Emily's...3 named Jess, Noelle...

There's one named Steeeeeeeeeeve Crawdad in my phone.  I'm not sure if that's a name he gave himself, or an endearment I conjured up on my own.

And so I have this array of numbers that I'll never use and that I'm paranoid I'll accidentally use, but I can't get rid of them.  I tried to delete an Ian and I couldn't bring myself to do it.  What happens if I really need something and I have an obscure memory of one of these people possessing whatever it is that I need, and I've deleted the number?  

what happens then?

I'm not taking my chances.

It's 8:42am

??????????

WHY?

I can tell you with certainty that it does NOT feel like 70 degrees.  It makes me almost want to go to work, just so I can be in the air conditioning.

90% humidity.  What is this, the Amazon??  Get a life, nature, and stop ruining my Spring.