Out and About with Cheryl

I know I promised a few posts about Michaela, but I didn't want to forget these stories of my latest encounters with the outside world. And besides, it's my blog. I'll post about her next time... I promise.


1. Dan was off this week and we went one day to Great Escape for lots of Family Fun. It was a great trip and we saw tons of manager-looking type people walking around, talking into walkie-talkies. We saw in the paper a few days later that the CEO of Six Flags had visited Great Escape that day. Needless to say, the whole place was sparkling and the attendants couldn't have been nicer. We got some fun pictures from the day which I'll post soon.

Because there is a water park attached to Great Escape, there was lots of interesting, colorful people to look at as we were walking around. Add to that it was a pretty toasty day, and I came to these two conclusions:
1. Lots of women have tattoos. And some of them are not very good tattoos. Like they have unicorns in them.
2. Lots of women do not look at themselves in a full length mirror wearing a bathing suit and honestly assess the state of their person before going to an amusement park/water park.
Wow.

Walking around we spied several groups of older teenagers. We passed a nice-looking, fairly well put together girl who was about 17. She wore a t-shirt that read "GET ME DRUNK AND WATCH THE SHOW" in huge neon letters.
Double wow.
Hopefully every single one of those shirts ever produced is somehow burned by the time my girls are 15.

On the way out of the park, you have to walk through the obligatory gift shop. Available for purchase was a shirt which read, "Mess with me and you mess with the whole trailer park".

2. Yesterday I brought the girls to the library for a quick visit. Look at the fish, pick out some books, play on the computer- it's a great place. We went to the circulation desk and an older man, a little funky in a "I'm comfortable about being a guy and working at a library" type way (let's face it... the place doesn't exactly reek of testosterone) and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Library Guy: (to Michaela) So how's life in big sister land?
Michaela: Good.
Me: She has it so good she doesn't even know how good she's got it.
Library Guy: That's a good place to be. It's hard to know when things are good.
Me: (Thinking this is actually a pleasant interchange) Yeah, (honestly agreeing with him) it takes a fair amount of insight to realize life is pretty good. (I mean it's hard to see your life objectively and to be grateful for what you have.)

(This is where the whole thing falls apart.)

Library Guy: Yeah, I mean, do you realize how rarely two people are really in love with one another at the same time??
Me: (Speechless) Yeah.
Library Guy: Usually one person is into another but the other doesn't really like the other, you know? It's just so rare.
Me:(Not making eye contact anymore) Yeah. That's true.

I was just so stunned by this turn. It doesn't read as weird when I'm writing it, but at the moment it was such a strange leap from a very casual adult talking to a kid to a deep discussion about unrequited love. Very strange.

3. Ahhh, now to my favorite. I'm shopping in Walmart (do I go anywhere else?) last week and honest to goodness overheard this question posed by a Hispanic female shopper to a Walmart Associate near the meat section.

"Do you have any other pig's feet? 'Cause you only got one out and they don't look pretty."