Thursday, August 21, 2014

All's Fair

Yesterday I went to the county fair.  I met my friend Sarah there and we watched her daughter compete with her horse, then we wandered through the animal barns, walked the midway and watched the animal auction.  We both did admirably and avoided the worst of the fair food and had gyros instead of a deep fried anything on a stick.  I feel I deserve extra points for not buying deep-fried cookie dough, my main disgusting fair food downfall.  Sarah had to leave early so I ended up by myself at the fair that evening and considered going home, but then I heard the roar of the stock car races and knew I had to let my inner redneck shine through.  Man, those babies are so fun to watch.   You can eat a deep fried snickers bar on a stick while watching cars smash into each other at high speeds with the additional option of puking your guts out on the Zipper, all for only about $10.  Only in America, people.  God Bless the USA

I saw a few of my lunch room kids there and they all said hi to me.  I even had one excitedly show me his entries in the small animal barn.  He shared his knowledge of bunnies while also giving me the controversial low-down on his big brother's upcoming wedding as only an eight year old can.

My kids are so used to my hermit lifestyle that it seems my going to the fair by myself, of my own free will freaked them out a bit.  When I told Angel #1 what I had done, he couldn't have been more amazed if I had told him I'd jumped a plane to Baghdad to go conquer the Taliban.  I guess I need to force myself to go out more.

Today I spent the morning mowing the lawn.  It took about twice as long as it took WE to mow, but then again, I don't set the mower on rabbit speed and race over the grass so fast that I miss half of it either, so the yard looks pretty darn good.  I am missing my little WE though.  It's cucumber season and I made a batch of refrigerator pickles, one of his faves.  Previous summers, I would make a huge batch in an ice cream bucket and keep replenishing it, which I needed to do often because WE would just take the whole bucket up to his room and chow down.  Last week, I made a small batch with a single cuke and though I've been slowly eating them, the level isn't going down nearly as quickly as it has previous years.  The last letter I got from him, he said he misses pizza and jam, his girlfriend said in her last letter he said he was missing Twix candy bars.  I think he's missing familiar food from home and would be thrilled to dig into a big batch of refrigerator pickles right about now.  Poor little guy.

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