Wonderful Moments on the Road

Oh, yes, indeed, there have been those. Wonderful, wonderful times on the road. The thing is, there's not much that's entertaining about nice people and good food and clean hotel rooms, really, is there? I had nothing to say about the Embassy Suites room at Art and Soul in Hampton because it was positively bliss-inducing--I showed you photos, right? We were given a corner suite, meaning that both rooms--the spacious living area with dining area and bar/kitchen-y-sort-of-place, plus the large bedroom--both had floor-to-ceiling-and-wall-to-wall windows, which you know just made me happier than snot. And how can you not love a room with three sinks? Which means there was nothing funny to say about it, no rants, no melt-downs induced by vagrant hairs.


And the people we've met--people we've sat and talked to and with whom we've eaten meals and who have taken us into their homes and studios--they have been fabulous. Beyond fabulous. We spent yesterday afternoon with Kelly and Rhett Johnson [I like this link because it has photos of both of them and their work as well as more links] at their home studios, and, oh, my! It was wonderful. I have photos and some little videos and much more to say, but that's not going to happen until there's more time--this morning I'm sitting in yet another La Quinta room, this time in Des Moines, yet another place we'll probably never visit again. Not that there's anything wrong with it, of course. The room is OK--neither the dirtiest nor the cleanest of the lot, but it's clean enough, and it's two rooms, with two bathrooms, and for less than $70, I can't complain. Oh, I COULD:  two rooms and two bathrooms means double the cleaning with the little antibacterial wipes, which is a whole nother story, since I don't like "antibacterial" anything and avoid it. Except on the road, where it is My Very Best Friend. Seeing as how I don't travel with a gallon of bleach. Sigh.


Anyway, so today we're on our way to Minneapolis to visit Roz, one of my favorite people on the planet, and her husband, Dick. I've never met him, but what's not to love about someone who was named after his dad and so has gone through life being called Little Dick? 


I can't wait!

How to Take Your Fabulous Self on The Road

Today begins our third week on The Road, and I'm just now realizing that, apparently, there is a Road School somewhere in the country, somewhere where people go before they head out into public spaces to insure that they can be the total ass they were meant to be. Because, seriously, there's no other explanation for it. As I was trying to get coffee this morning, before they ran out (and how in the fuck do you run out of coffee when you are a hotel that offers a free "breakfast" (however loosely you interpret that term) every morning? Wouldn't you, after some few weeks, have some idea how much coffee you were going to need every morning? Yes, I thought so.


But no. They ran out of coffee. And since I no longer make coffee in the little coffee maker in the room (and you all know that particular story), I am now coffee-less. Oh, sure, I've had a couple cups already, hours and hours ago. But I cannot get more. And I am grouchy this morning, because, quite frankly, this room sucks the big winkie. I know, I know:  when I score a two-room "suite" with a separate dressing area, all for $65 a night, I should just shut up, right? But never mind that we have room to spread out, even with all our stuff (which, let me admit, is considerable), I am sitting in the desk chair, typing this, with a plastic laundry bag under my butt. No, I have not suddenly reached new levels of incontinence that require me to put pee protection under me wherever I go, although lord knows that's probably just a matter of time, given the fact that 1) I am not getting any younger and 2) I am female (and what is it with that, with the whole don't-you-dare-sneeze thing that starts happening to us in middle age, anyway? Like we haven't had enough Fun with Our Plumbing ever since we turned 13, and now that we, at long, long last, no longer have to worry about ruining every single thing we own with the "spotting," we have to start worrying about peeing on ourselves if we sneeze. Or laugh. Or run. Or blink, pretty much. Isn't that just way, way too unfair?


Anyway. No: I am not sitting on the bag to protect the chair from me. I am sitting on the plastic bag to protect me from the chair, because this room severely creeps me out. I believe that, sometime in the last couple of weeks, it had a major flood. It's damp and dank, and if you don't keep the air conditioner running, it smells of damp and dankness. Mold? Mildew? Rot? Who the fuck knows? The carpet under the sink in the "dressing area" is sticky and kind of puffy, and the bathmat I put over it is now damp, so I'm really just the tiniest bit repulsed by that. And the bottom of the doorjamb in the bathroom is rusted, and--but wait:  if I list everything I've noticed that is creepy and skanky about this room, you're not going to pay a bit of attention to what I'm going to tell you next because you're going to be thinking, instead, about how I might not be the best judge of other people's On The Road Behavior since I appear to be just the tiniest bit picky.


So never mind. Because I have to tell you about what I've learned about On the Road Behavior, the stuff that everyone else seems to go somewhere to learn and which I am picking up merely from observation. Since I don't have the address of the school where you'd go to learn this, I'm going to provide what I've gleaned of the basic instructions here, so you can practice them before heading out on your road trip this summer.


1. The first one is, of course, that everything is all about you. Everything is provided for your comfort and benefit. Screw everyone else. If it's there, it's for you to use, in any quantity that will make life easier for you. Paper towels in the restroom? Take all you might need later in the day. Ice in the ice machine at the hotel? Be sure to fill up your ice chest so you won't have to stop somewhere and pay for ice! Never mind that someone else might want ice for their drinks; your convenience comes first! Don't forget to grab enough fruit at the breakfast bar for the kids to snack on later in the day, and wrap up some extra muffins while you're at it--you never know when you might feel a little peckish.


2. Traffic laws don't apply to you. You're busy. You have things to do, places to go, schedules to meet. Don't worry about speeding--everyone else will get out of your way, and the highway patrol officers will all understand how important your time is. Feel free to cut people off and crowd them out--you've gotta do what you've gotta do. 


3. Don't worry about cleaning up after yourself. That's what those workers in uniforms are for! Just think:  when you're messy, you're insuring they have a job. Never mind that they have an actual job description that doesn't seem to include "cleaning up after people." They love taking care of you. So if your dog has diarrhea all over the sidewalk in front of the convention center in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, just laugh and walk away. Someone else will clean it up! (And never mind that, 24 hours later, they still hadn't gotten around to it; they will--it's not your concern.) Your kid crumbles up crackers and tosses them on the floor? Let that guy with the broom clean it up--he needs something to do!


4. If the trashcan is full and you can't squeeze your trash into it, it's fine to just toss it on the ground next to it, indicating what you think of their lousy trash removal service. You should never, ever have to take your trash with you until you can find another trash receptacle. Your convenience is all that matters.


5. If things aren't exactly the way they should be--if your food isn't piping hot, or your room isn't spotlessly clean--you should complain, and complain loudly and repeatedly, making sure everyone hears you so they, too, can become outraged on your behalf. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? And the louder it squeaks, the more grease it's sure to get.


6. When you're awake, everyone else should be awake, too. All the rooms next to yours have "Do Not Disturb" hangtags on the doors? Fuck them, those lazy slackers! They need to get up and go down and elbow their way into the breakfast buffet line just like everyone else.  To make sure they realize what lazy cows they are, you should slam your door over. And. Over. And. Over. While you're at it, bang your luggage cart into the wall and, for good measure, into their doors! Yes:  think of it as a public service, making sure everyone else is up and on the road at a reasonable hour!


7. Take your dog everywhere with you, never mind that you've never bothered to train your dog to adhere to any kind of rules, and never mind that, at home, your dog spends the days chained in the backyard and has no clue how to act in public. Let it pee everywhere and crap in the grass in front of Starbucks (don't worry:  the baristas will clean it up during their breaks--that's why they have those plastic bags!). Never mind that your dog loses its mind when you leave it alone in a strange place--the hotel walls are soundproof. If they're not, they should be. Let your dog, who recently walked through the "pet rest area," lie on the picnic tables. If someone eats there later in the day, they'll never know it was your dog who left those smears on the table. Not your problem!


8. If there are only two of something left, take both of them:  that will alert the workers to the fact that they need to replenish whatever-it-is. 


9. Other people need to be encouraged to understand how important you are and how valuable your time is. You should demonstrate this by elbowing in front of them at every opportunity, wearing a harried expression and checking your watch so they know you have important things to do. Grab that parking place, that luggage cart, that last map. You've got things to do!


10. In keeping with #2, remember that rules don't apply to you, either. The one that says babies in diapers can't get in the swimming pool or hot tub? That's for other people's babies. The one that says you can't bring glass containers to the pool? That's for other, clumsier people. The one that says "Limit one per person"? Not you. No pets? Not you. Shoes required? Not you. No smoking? Not you. Well, OK, you know they may try to fine you if you smoke inside (the idiots!), so feel free to stand right at the doorway and light up there, opening the door to yell to your wife inside, blowing your smoke into the building. People will understand. 


11. Don't clean up after yourself in public bathrooms. God, no. It's not your job to make sure the toilet flushed and took away your turds. That's someone else's job. Make a little mess on the seat? Don't worry! That's not your responsibility.


12. You know that everything you have to say is of vital interest to everyone else. You're an amazing and fascinating person, and everyone who encounters you wants to know what you're thinking, where you're going, what music you're listening to, your opinion on the food/view/traffic/weather. To save them the trouble of eavesdropping, pitch your voice at a level that makes it easy for them to tune in and find out what's going on in your world. There's nobody whose life is quite as interesting as yours, and you're doing everyone a service by broadcasting it.


And those are the rules as I can decipher them from the behavior I've been researching these last few weeks. I'll keep taking notes to report further as we turn today and head north into Iowa and then, next week, to The East. I think that this will give you a good beginning, though, and should be enough to keep you from appearing a total novice if you're hitting the road this weekend for the holiday. Remember:  you're the best! The brightest! The most interesting by far! You, my friend, are Number One! So get out there and share yourself with the world~~

A Fabulous Afternoon in Lawrence, Kansas

What a fabulous afternoon, indeed! Today we got to do several of our very favorite things:  meet new people, hang out with artists, see a town through the eyes of someone who knows it well.


Thanks to lots of people rearranging their schedules, we got to spend the afternoon with Traci Bunkers, of Bonkers Handmade Originals, Aimee Myers Dolich, of Artsyville, and Kelly Buntin Johnson, of Diddy-Wa-Diddy.

We got to roam around in the fabulous yard of one of Traci's friends.

And then we got to see Traci's studio, which you know I loved a LOT:

Traci's bottle fence. And her pottery

and creepy dolls

and lovely flowers

in her yard, where we met Ruby, who took us to the cemetery, where she walks every day:

And I got to pet Goliath!

We wandered around in the beautiful greenness:

A little Funkiness:

And Kung Fu Grip Jesus:

And a fire hydrant with a knit hat:

And then back to Kansas City, where Kelly headed north to her home studio, where we'll visit tomorrow on our way to Des Moines.  


Ahhhh. It's a wonderful life, indeed. 


XO

Hello, My Little Chickadees!

Hello, hello! Oh, I'm so glad to see you~~it really does seem like I've been gone forever--gone from home, gone from the blog, gone from My Real Life. I sat down to post a note, but now I see that I'm not going to have time. That's the thing:  there's never enough time. It's not like we're hanging out in hotel rooms; we're in them long enough to eat, shower, sleep, and schlepp stuff out to the car. And then we're off again.


We're here in Kansas City, preparing to head to Lawrence, Kansas, for a day with some artists. Why Lawrence? Well, it's supposed to be cool. I don't know--we'll see, as my mother would say. I'm looking forward to it.


At some point I think I'm going to have to take a day off, sit at the computer get some stuff done. As it is, I spend most days riding in the car and then fall into bed at night too tired even to read--and what's up with that? How can you get tired doing nothing? I have no fucking clue, but it's happening to me.


In the places where we've gotten to hang out with people, we've had a great time. I've tried to make sure we don't go too many days in a row where we're just driving and then checking into some low-rate La Quinta for the night, because that just sucks, you know? No hotel is as good as home. Never. They all smell funny and don't have enough windows, and the lighting is bad. And I'm gaining weight because I don't get to get out and walk. I'm used to 3-4 miles a day, and I'll bet I haven't walked that much, total, since we left home.


We have been having a good time. I would like to be working more, but, like I said, that's not happening unless I can figure out a way to do it in the car while I'm supposed to be navigating and there's noise and music and, and, and. So probably not. We've gotten to talk to fascinating people and meet new people and see some really nice places that we'll probably never see again, too bad for us.


So. Maybe later I'll get to sit down here again. If not, I'll be back as soon as I can. I do get to post notes to Facebook from the iPhone, and I try to send photos there, too. It's harder to blog from it because of the jumping through the iPhone app hoops, but I'm going to work at getting better about that--seems the more we travel, the more dependent I get on that "phone." Which, of course, hardly EVER gets used as a phone. It's a tiny pocket computer. Oooh, I sound like an Apple ad~~


I have a whole lot of ranting to do about stuff we've seen people doing on the road--goodlordalmighty, it makes you worry about the human gene pool. We saw a guy yesterday who terrified both of us--whizzing by us at 75 mph+ and then turning to his friend, standing up on his motorcycle, and popping a wheelie down the interstate for long moments. My heart raced forever long afterwards--I just knew he was going to crash and his head was going to sail over and smack into the windshield. Undoubtably the stupidest thing I've ever seen.


So far.




XO

Some Photos For You!

Before we head out this morning on our way to Asheville, North Carolina, for a book signing tonight at Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe, I wanted to show you some photos of what we've been doing. These are not The EGE's photos--he hasn't had time to process his (look at them, delete the ones he doesn't want, save them to his hard drive, give them to me to save to the Macbook and ITS external hard drive), so these are just mine. Not very many, but kind of cool.

This is Chesapeake Bay. We'd never seen it--you have to keep in mind, as I go along these next few weeks, that we've never been east of a wobbly line that runs north from Texas and Oklahoma through Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. And then down along the Gulf to Florida. Other than that, though, The East is all brand-new to us. So here's the Bay, and we both got our feet wet in it. It was a beautiful morning--it started out completely cloudy but then cleared up. It was warm, and we walked in the sand and picked up rocks and shells until I said, "OK, it's time to find a place to pee." Since that was not going to happen at one of their little Porta-Potties, that meant it was time to leave.

Here's yesterday at the North Carolina Museum of Art, newly renovated and way cool.

Everyone had a different favorite--the Joseph Cornell, the Renoir, the Rodin. The EGE and I liked the same one--and isn't that just amazing?


Snort.

This is the info about it:

I'll try to get more photos, but it's not something I even think about most of the time. I'll work on it, though--

And now we're off to Asheville~~

Omigod, We LOVE Raleigh!

Omigod. I hurt all over. You know how when you laugh reallyreally hard, and your ribs start hurting, and then your throat starts hurting, and then you just kind of fall over and flop around on the floor? Well, I'm in a hotel room, so there's no WAY I'm going to be doing anything on the floor, let me tell you. But laughing, o, my, my, my. 


Today we were the guests of The Carolina Mixed Media Art Guild (I do so hope this is the right website) and Jerry's Artarama, and our host/chauffeur/companion for the day was Penny Arrowood, who is absolutely fabulous in every way. She brought us coffee and took us to Raleigh's newly-remodeled art museum, which is just gorgeous, and we got to hang out with other wonderfully marvelous and creative people (and I would put everyone's names and links here, but you know what a disaster that would surely be, what with my memory-like-a-sieve, so it just has to be enough that I'm telling you they were absolutely marvelous in every way and we love them), and then she took us downtown to ArtSpace and then to look at really cool old houses and then to the signing at the store and then out to eat. And that was kind of when it all fell apart. There were eight of us having a fabulous meal, and we started laughing, and then we laughed more, and then Penny drove us back here, and by that point I was begging her, her with her fabulous North Carolina accent, to please, please, please do NOT make me laugh until I pee in your car. Which did no good at all. I did not pee, thankyoujesus. But I may not be able to move tomorrow from the aching of the ribs and stuff.


So on top of having fabulous kudzu that we love and really nice trees in all sorts of varieties, North Carolina has this wonderful group of people with whom we just fell in love. And apparently they don't get a lot of snow, either, which makes it just about perfect.


And now I have to go lie down. Whew. What a wonderful day. I hope y'all's was, too.


XO

What Part of "Public Space" Is Confusing to You?

So I'm walking down the hallway this morning in the La Quinta Inn and Suites in Raleigh (and let me just say this about that: it's one of those that violates my rule about not paying more than $80 for a room at LQ, so I had to use 12,000 points PLUS money for this baby, and it is SO not worth it. Gah. They ought to be ashamed. Not that it's hairy or particularly skanky; it's just tired and worn and in serious need of some updating, never mind that it's the Hip New LQ decorating scheme, which is just an excuse for smaller rooms and less furniture as they go with a faux-Japanese aesthetic that's both sad and laughable).


Anyway, I'm walking down the hall, shaking my head because, as I leave our room, I can hear the tv blaring away in the room next door to ours. Apparently the occupant likes to sleep with the tv turned all the way up to drown out the noise of, oh, I don't know:  a tornado or planes taking off or a nuclear blast outside the room. So it's on "sonic," and downstairs is an alarm that's going off when I pass the first time and is still going off 10 minutes later, and next to that is a room with a yappy little dog going at it in full yappy little dog mode, and I'm like, "What the fuck?" What IS it, people? Does no one anywhere ever, ever, EVER think about the other people with whom they must share what some of us refer to as "public space," meaning the space that doesn't actually belong solely to you?


No. The answer is "no." Or, "Oh, hell no." (No comma between "hell" and "no"--not if you say it like my friend Reggie, who can say "Oh, hell no" with so much feeling that it's like a call to Jesus.)


Our travels, now taking us all over the entire planet, are giving us a close up and personal view of people's overwhelming selfishness as they push past you in doorways and spread their stuff out across the lobby and leave their trash on tables and benches. People in hotels take glasses and silverware with them and then just leave it there, thinking, I'm sure, "Oh, let those workers clean up after me." As The EGE always told his students, "Your mother doesn't work here, and this doesn't belong to you." 


That's the key:  this doesn't belong to you. This road, this air, this aisle, this room, this lobby, this airplane. It doesn't fucking belong to you, and you're going to have to share it. You're going to have to learn what "share" means, and learn it RIGHT NOW.


"Sharing" does NOT mean that it's yours and you're generously-if-grudgingly letting someone else use it temporarily. It means it doesn't belong to any of us and that we all have the right to use it in equal part. So you don't get to take up the whole space or, if you're in a buffet line and there are six biscuits left, you don't get to take all of them because you're really hungry and your friend wants one, too. You selfish cow. (I can safely use "biscuits" as an example because I avoided the breakfast buffet line after the first morning when someone was complaining to everyone that the biscuits were hard as rocks and "she" had gone to get some more, as if this weren't a free buffet, with lots of other people waiting in line behind this person who wouldn't move until "she" brought fresh biscuits ("she" here being one of the workers who had like a bazillion other things to do besides going to find fresh biscuits when there were plenty already out.. It was so crowded and people were in such a feeding frenzy that I didn't ever go back down in the morning. People being greedy about food makes my head smoke. So I can use the example without anyone going, "Omigod, she's talking about me." I'm not.)


Let me just say this:  "free" food brings out the worst in people. My god. They act like they're starving, when you can look at them and tell that is not a possibility. They act like their hunger is more important that anyone else's and that they have to get their food Right This Minute, and they have to get as much as they can and, by god, it had better be perfect, just the way they'd get it if they had Oprah's own chef preparing it especially for them. They get all huffy if it's not perfect, and I just look at them. As a picky eater, I can guarantee that I hardly ever get food just the way I'd like to have it. If I pitched a fucking fit every time the food wasn't to my liking, I'd never do anything but whine and bitch at servers. I'd be sending back every order and standing around complaining until I wasted away to nothing. Sure, if it sucks--if it's got hairs in it or bugs crawling through it, then I bitch. But if it's just not what I hoped it was going to be? I just don't eat it. Because here's a clue: if you didn't pay for it, you don't get to bitch. And if your food isn't perfect, and you don't eat it? You will not die before you get a chance to eat again. And, um, it's probably not going to hurt you to miss a meal, either, OK?


And if you don't own it, you don't get to trash it. Someone I like a lot was telling me--and I probably told you this--about how in the ritzy place they live, parents rent suites at Embassy Suites for their kids' birthday parties so they can go there and trash out the rooms instead of trashing out their own house. I was appalled--I mean, my mouth was hanging open. I can't imagine this. Never mind my argument that it's not OK to trash out a place that doesn't belong to you and that's going to be used by other people, but what are you teaching your kids? That if it doesn't belong to you, it's OK to trash it.


Oh, honeys. I could go on and on and on about this, sounding that "what's the world coming to" and blah, blah, blah. But the truth is that people have always been selfish. And I know that about them. I'm just not usually around so many of them so constantly, out on the highway and in the restaurants. You know. Where you can't help but notice that they think the whole world is like their own bedroom. 


Yikes.


But enough about me. . . .we're off for a day of seeing Raleigh, North Carolina, and I can't wait~~


XO

More Big Birdz

After these are dry, they'll be painted and then sealed--although Paverpol is weather resistant, you want to seal these if they're outside so water won't get in the creases and then freeze and expand and make them crack. But once the Paverpol is dry, it's hard and sturdy. Workshop participants had to agree to send Ty and Marcia photos of the finished birdz, after painting. People in this workshop were totally jazzed all day long.

Big Birdz Part 2

If you get a chance, you've gotta take a class from Ty and Marcia. They're doing stuff unlike any of the other workshops, and they know what they're doing from decades of prop work in the Canadian film and tv industry. 

Ty Shultz and His Big Birdz Part 1

I love Ty and Marcia Shultz. Their Big Birdz workshop yesterday was one of those where you go get other people and drag them in to see what everyone's made--the birdz were sooooo cool. 

And the Last Little Snippet: #5

Robert Dancik's Faux Bone Workshop at Art and Soul, Part IV

Robert Dancik's Faux Bone Workshop at Art and Soul, Part III

Robert Dancik's Faux Bone Workshop at Art and Soul, Part II

Robert Dancik's Faux Bone Workshop at Art and Soul

I thought it would be fun for y'all to get a little bit of some of the workshops here, and Robert was really generous in allowing me to show you some snippets from his Faux Bone workshop with some of his cool tips in working with this product. Here's the first--there are five in all, and they're uploading as I type this, so check back.

Michael DeMeng and His Dremel

Hello from Art and Soul in Hampton!

What a difference a day makes, huh? Goodlordalmighty, it's good to be here in the Embassy Suites in Hampton, Virginia. From the skanky, hairy coffee pot in a not-really-a-La Quinta to this suite, which appears to be hair-free and is one of the nicest places we've ever stayed. It's a corner room, so both the living area and the bedroom have one huge floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window, which is a really, really nice thing. Any room big enough to have three sinks is a really, really nice thing, as well. Big enough even for us and all our stuff. And, honeys, that's a LOT of stuff.


I'm going out now. I've forked over the money ($9.99 a day) for internet service, and I've unpacked a bunch of stuff and gotten it organized, and now I'm going to go poke around in some classrooms and see what I can see. And maybe get outside for a walk--it's in the 70's and sunny, and it's been way too long since I had a chance to really get out and move. 


XO

A Hairy Motel. Jesus.

Note:  This was written on Wednesday morning in Columbia, SC, but I couldn’t get online to post it. I wasn’t about to discard it, though, so here it is now--a day later, but no less bitchy.

You know how sometimes you’re working on a project, and you hit one of those spots that’s just so rough you think surely you should just give up and go back to selling softserve down at the Dairy Queen? Or you’ve been cooking since you were five, and then one day you prepare a meal that goes so horribly wrong you think you should swear off even walking THROUGH the kitchen, much less actually trying to DO anything in it? You know those experiences?

Well, I’ve been traveling since I was born. My parents took me on my first road trip when I was three weeks old. Or six weeks--I can’t remember, but it was some small multiple of three, OK? I’m a fucking EXPERT at traveling, is what I’m saying. Not that I love doing it, and not that I do it particularly well, on every level. Cos there’s, you know, the whole Periodic Melt-Down part of it. But on the whole, I know what I’m doing. More or less.

But things don’t always go smoothly. And sometimes I hit a little glitch that makes me think I should just hang it up and stay home for the rest of my life, never going farther afield than the drive-in at the edge of town. Yes, we do still have a drive-in. We’re lucky that way. Do we ever go to it? No, we do not. Why? You ask. Because you say if you had a drive-in in your town, you’d go all the time, hanging out and watching movies and eating chimichangas and remembering your lost youth, when you used to go with your boyfriend and steam up the windows and then try to act like you’d hadn’t been doing anything when his friends came by and banged on the windows. Well, no. You wouldn’t go to the drive-in all the time. Because, for one thing, you’re way too un-limber to do much of anything in the car except 1) drive and 2) eat french fries. And drive-ins aren’t what they used to be. Have you been to one? Holy moly--they’re like picnics or family reunions, with minivans pulling up into the space next to yours and the people inside setting up folding tables and hauling out coolers full of friend chicken and beer and pulling out 14 lawn chairs and then calling all their friends and extended family on their cells and inviting them to come over and watch the movie with them so that there’s a veritable Woodstock, only without the hippies or the music or mud, but mostly just with the noise and pissing-on-the-side-of-the-car thing going on while you and your former-boyfriend-now-husband are trying to watch 1001 Dalmatians. Or was that 101? Whatever.

Wait. I wasn’t  talking about drive-ins. Or movies. Or pissing. No. I was talking about bad motels. Maybe it didn’t seem like it, but I was. 

Because, oh, honeys, I am in a bad motel. Now, in the scheme of things, it’s not the worst motel I’ve ever been in. No. I’ve been in some bad motels in my life. Ones with, oh, bugs. You know. This one does not, as far as I have experienced, have bugs. I wouldn’t look too closely, however. I am, in fact, walking around right now squinting, kind of keeping my eyes mostly closed and trying not to touch anything. Because this is a Bad Motel, under the sub-category: Hairy.

Bad Hairy Motels. They may be, at least in my considered opinion, the worst bad motels of all. Oh, sure, they’re not up there with the Remains of Bodily Effluvia Hotels, which would be deal-breakers, as in give me my money back or die. But they’re up there.

Last night we get to Columbia, South Carolina, and we’ve been eating in the room the last couple nights. I’ve learned form experience--and from other couples who do long road trips together--that it’s not a good idea to spend all day in the car and then eat dinner in a closed-up, artificially-aired hotel room every. Single. Night. A week or so of this and you’ll be plotting each other’s demise while you’re in the shower. So I found us a place to eat an actual dinner--Bonefish Grill--which was pretty good. The fish was excellent. The service, on the other hand, was lack-luster, and that’s a problem. Because The EGE has had so many students over the years who have supported themselves and helped out their families with jobs as servers in restaurants, he may be one of the world’s all-time great tippers. He never leaves less than $20, no matter what. I, on the other hand, believe that you tip for the service. If you do a great job, you get a great tip--we have left quite generous tips in our day. Very, very generous. So generous, in fact, that the staff still remembers us, years later. If, on the other hand, you seem just the tiniest bit put out that my presence in your employer’s eating establishment is cutting into your time in the back room further developing your unified field theory and you seem to indicate to me by your lack of interest in my dining experience that you’d just as soon I’d have driven on past and foraged for food at the EZ Mart down the block? Well, darlin’, I’m not gonna be subsidizing your video game habit. 

The guy was pleasant enough, but he was obvious in his disinterest in a career in dining service. We placed our order and waited. And waited and waited. I thought he’d surely bring the appetizer just any time, seeing as how we might have looked just the tiniest bit peckish and were gnawing on our arms. But no. He kept on not bringing it, and he also kept on not coming by to check on us, and I decided that, gee, they must have all gone out to plant the seeds to grow the wheat to harvest so they could grind it and make it into more of the little miniature breads loaves for the other starving patrons. 

And then, eons later, he brings our entrees. Our appetizer? Oh, he says, he “must have forgotten” to put in the order. Do we want him to do it now? Uh, no, dude. See, we have these meals in front of us now. If we were to wait oh, say, another eon, while you put in the order for the appetizer and then they went out and hunted the little calamari and trapped it and killed it and grew the soybeans to press the oil in which to fry it? Well, I think not. But I would like another glass of wine.

I tell him this, and I turn to ask him what they recommend with the sea bass, since I’m curious if they have a particular chardonnay they suggest as a pairing, and he’s already gone. He just assumes I want the same wine I had the first time. This is so not a good thing. I like wine, sure, but I’ve cut it out almost entirely except when we travel, and when we travel and eat out, one of the things I enjoy is trying wine with food and seeing how it goes together. Ha. 

So I do not give this young man a huge tip, is the point here. I give him 20%, which I think is more than what he deserves. It’s less than $20, though, and my husband makes the thin lips at my stinginess. 

Then we drive on to the La Quinta I’ve so carefully chosen for our night’s lodging. Looking back at that choice, I have no idea why I made it. If I could get online this morning, perhaps I’d know why, but I can’t--never mind that they say there’s wireless internet throughout the building. This is a lie.

So we check in. I know it’s trouble as soon as we drive up and it’s obvious that this has not always been a La Quinta. Who knows what it was before, but it was something sad and failed. And now it’s this. 

And it’s full of hair. On the floor, on the counter, on the blanket. You know those woven cotton blankets they use in most hotels now? The ones that, while they’re not laundered nearly as often as they should be (daily. Duh), at least don’t hang onto hairs as if they’re in the middle of some sort of symbiosis? Those blankets. They’re the ones that took the place of those horrible fuzzy polyester blankets that DO engage in a close personal relationship with stray hairs. They’ve never met a hair they didn’t love, and they hang onto them with a fervor hard to fathom. Well, that’s the kind of blanket they have here. And it was full. Of. Hair. Long black hairs, and dog-looking hairs. Short hairs.

I took off the blanket and put it behind the recliner (no, I NEVER, ever sit in those). And I went down as asked for another blanket, thinking that perhaps they kept the new blankets behind the front desk until someone asked for them. The guy brings me another fuzzy, surely-hairy skanky blanket. I decline and ask for an extra sheet. He looks at me like I’ve asked for a slinky and a weed whacker, but he gives me the sheet and I come back to the room and prepare to call it a night. I put the packet of decaf in the in-room coffee maker and pick up the pot to rinse it out and fill it with water, and goddamn if it’s not full of little tiny black hairs, exactly as if someone’s fucking SHAVED THEIR BEARD over the coffee carafe. I nearly come unglued at this.

And then I get on the phone and call La Quinta Elite Status Private Line (snort) and rant for a good five minutes. 

And then I get a stomach ache. Because it’s not that I’m picky and like to complain and find other people’s stray hairs an easy excuse to do that. No. It’s that other people’s stray hairs are disgusting to me. Nauseating. They often make me gag. Never fear--I don’t puke, as a matter of principle, so this isn’t going there. But feel lousy? Forever and ever? Boy, howdy. 

So this morning I’m grouchy as all get out. My stomach still hurts, and I can’t get online, and we have another long day of driving ahead of us. And I’m sure--absolutely sure--that I’ll be leaving this room with hairs that were not with me when I came in. And that’s just wrong. 

Hi-Speed Internet Access, My Ass

The reason this La Quinta's Internet access is not working is so that guests will not tweet and blog and email everyone they know saying, "Omigod, flee!

I have a whole post about this, but I can't upload it until I have access. I can, however, say this one thing, thanks to the
Miracle of 3G: if you stay in the La Quinta in Columbia, SC, remember: Beware the Hairs in the Coffee Pot.

Magnolias

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Mississippi. O, My.

GeoTagged, [N33.60321, E85.83277]

Some Photos

GeoTagged, [N33.60321, E85.83277]

OK--these are from the iPhone. It will let me post only 1 photo at a time, so stay tuned. This crossing the Mississippi.

Hello From Birmingham!

This morning we're waking up in Birmingham or, rather, one of its suburbs:  Homewood. When I booked rooms, I looked for La Quintas with 3-diamond ratings by AAA. Sometimes I could find only 2, but I took those into account when looking for places to stay. And then looked for cheap. So for this room, the total was $62.14 for a two-room suite--separate bedroom with an actual door. Two tv sets, mini frig, microwave--you know. Nothing fancy, but big enough to spread out, which is a big deal when you're spending 8+ hours in the vehicle on the road every day. Now if I could just find places where we could walk. But since we get to the room about 9 pm (after going out and foraging for food--which went GREAT last night, because the iphone found a fabulous Whole Foods for us, and I got a SALAD--yay!), there's really no way I can go out and find a good place to walk. You don't want to walk in the dark around a hotel. How come? Dog crap. Not everyone is wonderful and carries those little baggies and cleans up after their dogs like my favorite dog people do. The grassy areas and paths around hotels are rife with dog crap. Just lovely.


Tonight we'll be in Columbia, South Carolina, and tomorrow we'll be in Hampton at Art and Soul. I thought I knew how many miles we were driving each day, but the online mileage calculator seems to bite the big winkie, since it was about 100 miles off yesterday. I told The EGE it would be a shorter day driving, and it was almost exactly the same--about 100 miles more than I thought. I try to keep it between 350-400 miles, so we can stop and see things, get out and stretch. But it's been 500 miles a day, and we don't see much except highway. 


I hope to have more exciting things to show you just any time now. So far, though, not much but miles and miles of interstate. Not for long, though! This is the only stretch of the trip where we have things to do and people to meet. Just us, the road, stitching, and lots of bad singing (that would be me; The EGE was in choir and can actually sing).

Catfish, Coffee, & Pith

Nothing pithy to say this morning. Except how much I love the word "pithy." I love it because it's a useful word that means exactly what it needs to mean (it comes from "pith," meaning the strong central core of something. It used to mean "spinal cord," which is where you get "frog pithing," which is where you insert a needle into the spine of a frog and kind of scramble the cord so as to make the frog better suited to being dissected in high school biology class. This would be the week when I developed bronchitis (yet again) and had to miss the entire experience. I had an uncanny but ultimately very useful ability to develop severe respiratory infections whenever there was something I positively, absolutely could not face. I remember three occasions:  the one time my parents tried to force me to go camping:  the fever started within an hour of their explaining to me that the "restroom" wasn't behind the tree, it WAS the tree; the week I was supposed to give an oral book report in 9th grade, back in the dark ages when I was perhaps the shyest person ever to have lived on the planet; and the week when the biology teacher explained that, yes, we were each responsible for killing and pithing our own frogs, something that was so abhorrent to me that I managed to stay sick until long after my poor frog had any remaining nerve function left at all. He was a very, very thoroughly dead frog by the time I, still hacking and coughing, made it back to school.))))


Where was I? Oh, pith. So something that's pithy has a lot of pith to it (duh)--it's strong, meaty, central to whatever-it-is. And, as I was saying, I have none of that this morning. Nope. No pith at all. Just a couple notes from our first night on The Big-Ass-Eastern Road Trip. We're not in the East yet, but today is a big deal for us: when we leave Shreveport heading east this morning, we'll be going into what is, for us, uncharted territory:  somewhere we've never been before. 


At least that's what we think. Because we both would have SWORN that we had a lousy experience in Jackson, Mississippi about 25 years ago, when we were refused rooms at various motels until we learned a very, very valuable lesson:  we learned to drive by the office and check out the person at the desk. Then we'd park in the back. If the person had been black, The EGE would go in; if white, then I'd go in. We'd pay cash and get the key, and only then would we appear together. This has served us well in a variety of ways, mostly in that it taught us to really pay attention to people and what they're not saying. Our memorable meal in what we would have sworn was Jackson was in a diner where we were seated, grudgingly, next to the door to the restrooms and then observed throughout our meal as if we were an exhibit in some prehistoric Deep Southern Taboo Tableau. We swore then we'd never go through Mississippi ever again.


Yet here we are today, preparing to pass through Jackson. And in doing that, in looking at the map, we realize, with some degree of astonishment, that it could not have been Jackson all those years ago. On that trip, a road trip to Disneyworld (we were young, and Disneyworld was the height of a good time for us), we left home at midnight, with homemade cheeseburgers (The EGE made/makes the BEST cheeseburgers (then) and grilled cheese sandwiches (now):  three of more kinds of cheese, thinly sliced, between two pieces of bread, which are slathered with your spread of choice (butter for you purists; olive oil spread for us) and then pan fried on both sides until crunchy. Same way with the cheeseburger, except add--gack!--meat.)


So we leave at midnight, because that's how we rolled back then:  we went everywhere at midnight. We went dancing at midnight, we went out driving around at midnight. We were night owls. Oy:  we were SO young. We'd stay out until 2 or 3--we'd dance until the club closed down, and then we'd go somewhere and get a drink--not an alcoholic drink, as The EGE has never been a drinker. We'd get a Coke or something and then ride around, talking and listening to the radio. Or the 8-track. 


Good lord.


So we left at midnight and drove all night long, hitting New Orleans a little after dawn. I remember (whoa!) driving over the French Quarter on the interstate and looking longingly down at the narrow streets, having always wanted to go there and wander up and down them. I don't know why I hadn't planned a trip there, but I hadn't, and we drove by in the early morning haze, with me vowing to come back some day (now we go every summer). And we drove all day until we got to somewhere, somewhere we've always referred to as "Jackson," but which obviously was not. Mobile, maybe? Tallahassee? I have no clue. Neither of us does.


We may stop in Jackson today, spend some time seeing what there is to see. I have no idea--it just depends on how it feels, you know? Sometimes you can roll into a town or city and you can just tell there's something cool there, something worth checking out. Other places are just soulless, and you can tell that, too, just by rolling down the windows and sniffing the air. You know you won't see anything but malls and Wal-Marts and Sonic drive-ins.


Windows don't "roll" down any more, do they?


OK, catfish and coffee. We had fried catfish last night from Crescent Landing. I'm not going to put a link there, as the link sets off a warning about malware on your computer and says to continue at your own risk. So we didn't even know if the restaurant was open on Sunday night and just took a chance. It was, indeed. And we did have fried fish, the only time we eat fried fish ever. Or fried anything, pretty much, having virtually given up tater tots, our only fried indulgence, seeing as how they really don't provide us with anything we actually need.


The fish was fabulous, as always, but I hate how I feel the next day. Fried food will sit in your stomach like a lump of wax, heavy and greasy and sad. I'll be gentle with it today, not adding anything to it until it manages to boil away the grease. Ick.


And the coffee. Goodlordalmighty. I had THE worst cup of coffee this morning. Now, I'm not a coffee connoisseur, despite my daily trips to Starbucks. I will drink Folger's, I will drink decaf, I will (Wendy, quit reading this RIGHT NOW!) put Benefiber in my morning coffee. (This makes Wendy cry in a most piteous fashion; she IS a Coffee Connoisseur, and my putting fiber powder in my coffee makes her gnash her teeth and weep). I will drink Hotel Room Coffee, but in La Quinta's, I'll go down and get a cup of coffee and some creamer from the breakfast bar. This is usually, for me, decent coffee.


Not this morning. This morning I got a mug (and are you surprised that I travel with my own lovely little mug with a red interior and hearts on the outside? You're not?) and brought it back to the room and (Wendy, go away!) put fiber and creamer in it and took a sip, and I swear it tasted as if they had made it last week and forgotten to warm it up this morning:  tepid (and isn't "tepid" so much more expressive than "lukewarm," somehow?) and acidic and just nasty as all get out.


Here's what's worse:  I drank it. Yes, I did. Why? Because I'd put the damn fiber in it, and I'm traveling, and I don't want to waste what I packed. Jesus. So here I am, choking down a cup of coffee that makes me have to squinny up my face just to swallow it. That's sad. Really sad.


So, to recap:  good fish, but heavy in the gut. And bad coffee that made even ME whimper (Wendy would have filed a report).


And now off to Jackson, Mississippi, where we may or may not have been before. Whichever it is, we won't be spending the night there--even though it's 2010, we're not really ready to spend the night in Mississippi. Some of y'all will understand that, and some of y'all won't. It doesn't matter--I'm sure it's a lovely state, and we'll take photos as we drive through. And on to our destination for tonight:  Bombingham Birmingham.


Can you tell I have some issues with the Deep South? Yeah, and I live in Midland, Texas, not even within spitting distance of any liberal enclave worth mentioning, Austin being too far away to hit with spittle. Those old experiences are hard to forget, even for my feeble memory. We try not to think about the guy in the pick-up with the rebel flag and the gun rack who chased us on that trip. It's a wonder we ever left home again. And, until now, we've kind of avoided a whole big swath of the country. Time to get over that, indeed. (You know you're all Grown Up when the idea of spending a week at Disneyworld just doesn't have quite the appeal it did when you were first married. I mean, sure, we'd love to go. If, you know, there weren't a lot of sticky, screaming kids. No long lines. Clean restrooms (hey, it's Disneyworld!), a good vegetarian restaurant, a wine bar. Comfortable chairs. You know.))


Off through The South. We'll report back.

And Now I'm REALLY In Love!

So in response to that last post, about the quilted skeleton, Pattie posted a link to photos of the house of a woman who bought one. If I ever have to live in another house, this is the one I want to live in. Maybe a little more orange, but that sunroom-turned-dining-room! Yowza! Of course, I'd lickety-split turn it into a studio and then live in there all the time. . . .


Go look. And drool.


(I was going to post one of the photos here, but the pop-up says all the photos are protected by copyright law, so you're just going to have to go look.)