What a Strange Trip It Was

For years, on the third weekend in May, we've gone to the bead show in Grapevine, Texas, and to Main Street Days, where there are wine tastings, vendors, live music--Tom Braxton was there one year, which was fun. We missed last year because we were on The Big-Ass Eastern Road Trip, so we really looked forward to this year. Especially The EGE: we haven't been out of town since the quilt festival in November, and that was lo! these many months ago. He misses road trips. So I made reservations, set up things with the cat sitter, and got ready to head out.

Except that, by last Thursday, I knew I was sick. Not just the sniffles, but bronchitis, with its ceaseless, bone-jarring cough. I've had it enough times in my life to recognize it, and it's never pretty. But I was determined The EGE was going to get to have a road trip, so I manned up.

Snort. Yeah, that's what I did. Truthfully? I'll spare you the whining and just say this: I slept all the way to Dallas. I never sleep on the road because it's my job to entertain The Driver. But I slept this time. Just dead, flat-out zonked.

We checked in, went to get food--I put us in the Doubletree Hotel on Central, half a mile from the new Whole Foods and Nordstrom's Rack, where we shop for shoes, and Northpark Mall, with the Apple store--and got wet in the rain. And met amazing people: when I asked the man at the front door if there were a shortcut to walk to Whole Foods (it was right there, but on the iPhone there was no apparent way to get there; turned out there was a big culvert thing, so you couldn't walk straight to it), he told me how to get there through the lower parking garage and then left his post, took us down in the elevator and walked us through the labyrinth to the exit. We thanked him and started walking, and it almost immediately began raining. We decided to turn back, turned around, and there he was in the shuttle van:  he'd gone and gotten it and come to pick us up so we wouldn't get wet. He dropped us off at Whole Foods. Everyone in the hotel was like that. I'd definitely recommend staying there, esp. since we got the $15 upgrade to a Room with A View and had two full walls of floor-to-ceiling windows on the 15th floor. Lovely. And it was less than the La Quinta Inn & Suites of Doom where we've always stayed before. (I'm boycotting that chain, in case you don't remember.)

Saturday morning, after I spend a couple hours hacking and coughing and blowing my nose and fortifying myself with caffeine, we head to Grapevine for the bead show. We park, noticing that there aren't nearly as many cars as usual, and go in. I always stock up from Jane's Fiber and Beads, and we go there first. But they're not in their usual corner. We look everywhere, with no luck. Finally we go back to the front table and ask and are directed to a tiny little booth in the middle. Instead of the people who usually man the booth, people we know and talk to every year, there's a woman we've never seen, harried and not too friendly, with less than 1/10 the usual selection. I ask if she has more beads, and she says, "Everything I have is out." I look at the paltry offerings and wonder why they even bothered to set up here--they're also at another show in another state, and it seems to me that they shouldn't even have bothered to send someone to Grapevine if this is all the beads they could spare. I shopped for a friend and then bought everything I could use: two tubes of size 11 beads. That's it. $5 worth of beads because THAT'S ALL THEY HAD. Talk about disappointing. Sure, I could buy beads online, but beads are one of those things I like to see in person. This year, though, I don't have a choice:  I'm running low, and this is the only bead show anywhere nearby.

We walked around some, but I was exhausted. Plus you know how when you're sick, your brain doesn't work well? It was like that. I couldn't really think and just wanted to lie down and sleep. I did find some way-cool ceramic skulls and bought a bunch of those--you have to pay attention: everyone else was selling these for $3 a strand for the little ones; this guy was selling them for half that. I imagine how irritating it must be to buy and then discover from a friend later that you paid twice what they did.

Then--the coolest part--we ran into Dale Wigley, who spends half the year in California and would have been there now but was in town for the not-wedding of a great-neice, a fabulous story about how this woman was supposed to have gotten married this week and had lost 70 lbs in preparation for the wedding but had finally accepted the stories everyone was telling her about the less-than favorable things the groom-to-be had been saying about her and so had called off the wedding and was having a big party instead. We stood around and marveled at the apparent idiocy of the no-longer-engaged-young-man who sabotaged his future marriage to someone who had just inherited $10 million. Dale has the best stories, always. We talked to a couple more people we knew, and then we headed down the street to Main Street Days. About halfway there--just a couple blocks--I gave up and let The EGE go get the truck while I sat on a bench and rested. Oddly, there wasn't the usual steady stream of people and traffic. When he picked me up and we drove into the middle of town, we realized that Main Street Days was not happening. Turns out it was LAST weekend. Why didn't we check this? Because for all the years we've been going to the bead show, it and MSD have always been the same weekend. Always. So while I checked the date for the bead show, I didn't check the date for MSD.

Yeah: lesson learned. I'll check next time. You betcha. I just assumed they had some sort of arrangement because the crowds drawn by one event benefitted the other. Apparently not. That's what I get for assuming anything.

We went to Su Vino, our favorite place for wine, and had a tasting and bought a case of whites and almond champagne, which is the most fabulous stuff in the world. Getting a case of wine into the truck was way easier than it would have been if the streets had been blocked off and we'd had to schlepp it a mile, so that was good.

And then we set out for Rockwall to hear Asleep at The Wheel, The EGE's current favorite group. He wanted to dance to them, but since there was no way I was going to be dancing, seeing as how walking was really pushing it, we'd agreed that we'd just go and listen. It was a free outdoor concert, part of Rockwall's Founders' Day celebration. So we drove across Lake Ray Hubbard, which I always think of as Lake L. Ron Hubbard, for some reason I don't understand, since I know nothing about L. Ron Hubbard [whoa: even less than I thought; I thought he was like the RonCo Chop-O-Matic guy] and don't even know why I know his name, if I actually do and it's not some other name. We got there in time and started trying to find a parking place. All the "Event Parking" signs seemed to indicate four parking slots in front of a dentist's office, or half a dozen in front of the post office, so there was a lot of driving around the one-way-street-infested downtown area. Finally we pulled in behind a truck parked on a residential street, and another truck pulled in right behind us. We sat there for a while, The EGE with an odd look on his face, the truck idling. He was watching the truck behind us in the review mirror, and finally he said, "We'll just go."

"But, but, but--" I sputtered. Why? We'd gotten here, he could hear Asleep At The Wheel live, we'd found a parking spot. Why weren't we getting out? He said it just didn't feel right, and we were going to go. He'd been watching people watch us as we drove around looking for a parking space and then watching the guy driving the truck that pulled up right behind us, very tight, as if to box us in, and had decided that this wasn't a place we needed to be. I grumbled about what, exactly, did he expect if he's going to listen to a redneck band in a little town in Texas, but I wasn't going to argue. We've been a ton of places in our life together, and generally we've been treated well. But there have been times when that was not the case, and while we like to imagine that in 2011 things are all warm and fuzzy everywhere, we are not naive. I don't remember this happening before, or not in a long time--where he's gotten the feeling that things aren't quite right--but I trust him. He is not a drama king, and if he feels  uncomfortable, there's a good reason.

So we left, drove back to Dallas, got food, and went to the room and ate and went to bed. We'd thought about staying until today, but what was the point? Why pay to stay another night when you're too sick to do anything?  So yesterday we came home. I didn't sleep on the way because the sleeping I did on the way there screwed up my neck, which is no fun, esp. since I'd just gotten it adjusted and put back all good and comfy last week, and now it's wonky again. Because the chiropractor has done such an amazing job with it (along with yoga and a special pillow and blah, blah, blah), I forget what it was like before, when it would catch and I couldn't turn my head. I'm remembering now.

Geez, what a lot of whining! I remind myself of my grandmother, who talked of little but her illnesses and aches and pains and, alternately, those of her friends. I think of that every time I start whining. Not that it stops me from whining, mind you. I'm a wuss. I whine. I like a lot of sympathy.

So I was thinking there must be a lesson in all of this, if you're a person who looks for lessons in all things. I generally don't because my brain is generally too busy with plots and plans to always be all the time looking for lessons, gah, but: I had six hours on my hands yesterday, riding home, not sleeping and also not talking because talking makes me cough so hard I can't breathe. The lesson, I think, is that if you have a good attitude, you can have fun anywhere, any time. Even when things don't work out and you've gotten the wrong date and your plans get screwed up, you can have fun.

Unless you don't feel good. When you're sick or unhealthy or just generally in bad shape, it's impossible to have a really good time. When you feel lousy, that's pretty much all you can think about, since it takes all your energy just to function. Just to breathe. It reinforces my belief that it's worth everything to be healthy--the diet, the sacrifices, the tedious exercises. Of course there are things you can't avoid, but I wish I'd paid attention to that voice inside. You know the one--we're not talking about schizophrenic voices; we're talking about your own little voice. Sometimes I will hear, "I'm so tired. I'm exhausted." But I ignore it because I figure it's just The Slacker Me trying to get out of work of some sort. I was brought up by parents who believed that the purpose of life was Hard Work, and I've totally internalized that. Lucky for me that I found work I love because otherwise I'd either be 1) miserable working hard at a job I hated or 2) feeling guiltily slothful. So when I hear that little voice, I think, "Oh, buck up. You're not tired." Turns out I usually *am* tired, but by the time I realize it, it's too late.

So listen to your body and to that little voice. Take care of yourself, adjust your diet, get more sleep. Anything's possible if you feel good; very little is if you feel lousy. I'm sitting here feeling grouchy thinking about all the things I could be doing if I felt better. I'm not sick enough to lie in bed, but it will be a while before the cough goes away. When The EGE's father was diagnosed with heart disease, many years ago, his doctors told him to be very careful not to get a cold and a cough because the stress of the cough could be fatal. It seems odd until you get one of those coughs that just kind of grab you and won't let go. Then you go, yeah, those are some powerful forces.

Another lesson? Don't try to travel when you're sick. You think you can tough it out, but it's just not worth it. You're spending the money, but you're not having the fun you thought you would. Eh. Better to re-schedule, no matter how disappointing.

OK. No more whining! I finished another project before we left, and I'll try to get photos of that so I can show you~~