Get In The Van. I Have Candy. The End of the Road.

Well, Gentle Readers, it is here.  The day I finally stop talking about our trip.  But I only get 10 days of paid vacation, so it's sort of a big deal in my life.  I love my job and all, but who wouldn't rather get paid to stay at home and pursue their own interests?


Like stalking musicians.


So we're in Nashville, and I've cased The Black Keys off-the-grid recording studio.  As we're walking away from the front door, a dude with a spiderweb tattoo on his neck and black skateboarding clothes pulls up at the front of the studio and gets out with a computer case and two bags of groceries or takeout food.  He is punching a code at the front door as I'm begging the kids to go back with me and get a pic taken with him, but the kids are all, "You're going to get arrested!  Let's get out of here!" and I informed them that they were never going to be good stalker groupies if they don't work their way up the food chain in these situations, but by the time I finished my life lesson the guy was in the building.  We left the studio and went to the diner that Dan Auerbach said in an interview that he frequented three times in 24 hours - Brown's Diner.  They had cold frosty mugs of beer and delicious burgers, but no blues-rock musicians.

Photo of me, creeping on Dan's lunch spot.

Our stalking was not yet finished.  We moved on to Third Man Records, owned and operated by Jack White of the White Stripes, Rancotuers, and The Dead Weather.

Jack and Meg White, when they aren't busy being humans.

The kids were more comfortable here because this studio is open to the public.

Making rock star faces after buying stickers

 for their cello cases.  Because we are cool like that.

We also visited Ryman Auditorium, where Minnie Pearl, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline performed.  I'm not a country person or a Grand Ole Opry person, but you can't deny the history in this building.  Kudos to Nashville for preserving it after the Opry moved to their new location on the outskirts of town.

YD now wants to get a new dog and

name it "Minnie Pearl".  I'm sure MP would

have been honored.

Nothing else too exciting happened after that, except that I found some awesome stuff in the funky shops along the Vanderbilt University area, we had amazing burgers at Fido's, and the houses in the historic, Civil-War era neighborhoods are amazing.  Oldest Daughter noticed me looking around the city, falling in love, and on the last morning she put her foot down.


HER:  "No.  It's not going to happen."
ME:  "What!!?"
HER:  "We are not moving to Nashville.  I see you thinking it."
ME:  "I don't know what you're talking about.  But it IS a cool city."
HER:  "I am starting high school this year.  If you wanted to move, you should've
done it in 2009.  You have me, and then two more kids to get through high school, so you are stuck for the next 10 years."
ME:  "Well I'm 42 and I don't have as many years left in my life, so if I want to move, we move.  I'll take you to some nice concerts.  WILCO is playing next week."


Would I move to Nashville?  In a heartbeat.  But of course I was thinking about the kids and their schools and friends, etc.  But there is something about your 14-year-old telling you what you can and cannot do that makes you get a little obstinate.  Because she's right - I'll be 52 before I can move without it adversely affecting anyone.  I'm starting to see why my parents put a hot tub room in my bedroom three weeks after I left for college.

Dinner on the ride home.  With a side of Dramamine.

We sweated, we stalked, we lived to tell about it.  The kids got in the van.  They had candy.  They threw up.  But not in that order.  I hope everyone got a chance to take a little summer getaway.  I am now officially done talking about this trip.


The End


p.s.  It is August, which means it's the Second Anniversary of this blog.  Last time I had a giveaway and then didn't get the prize out for seven months, so that was a personal FAIL.  This year, since I have been slacking a bit blog-wise, I am going to post every day this month.  I didn't say they will be good posts.  This is definitely quantity over quality.  And I *might* end with a giveaway if I think of something good.  Thanks for reading, Wifers!

Get in the Van. I Have Candy. Part 3

Just to clarify, I wasn't really *that* tipsy last Thursday night, but I was tired and feeling my Patron.  Because I am old.


I didn't blog over the weekend because last weekend was the Bix 7 race in the Quad Cities, and RAGBRAI stopped in Davenport and the riders dipped their bicycle tires in the Mississippi.  Since I generally avoid exercise on the advice of my barista, I did not participate in the Bix with the 18,000+ runners, and I wasn't one of the nearly 300,000 people who have biked across Iowa.  However, my sister-in-law and her family stay at our house annually for the Bix, as they are exercisers, and I make guacamole and open a bottle of wine and listen to their tales of  people vomiting on the race route from overexertion.  You can see why I didn't make time to write.  Vomiting fascinates me.  So does exercise.  But I prefer to do neither.


Speaking of vomiting, I left you when our family had left Hotlanta and made our way to Nashville.  Many texted and asked if I was going to see Elvis.  That is MEMPHIS.  And of course, Graceland is my Mecca, so we'll be heading there in the next year or two.  How can the children complain about not getting to see Disneyland when they've been to GRACELAND?

 "We're caught in a (tourist) trap...we can't walk out..."

No, we went to Nashville.  And I have an announcement -

I have found the Mother Ship.

I'm in complete and total love with Nashville.  I love everything about it.  The beer, the heat, the cowboy boots, the inexpensive jewelry, the funkadelic shops, the awesome food, the slight drawl, even the Grand Ole friggin' Opry.  The whole thing.  I want to lick that town up the side of it's face.  And I sort of did.

We pulled up at our hotel, which I found on priceline because my sister works for Hyatt, but the entire Hyatt line was inexplicably booked, so I booked the best three-star hotel I could find.  We pulled up in Nashville and here is how we were greeted:

I don't believe that included the heat index.
Where the hell is Chardonnay Tony when you need him?

I left the fam in the AC van and checked us in.  The front desk had two women working behind it.  One of them was busy with a police officer, who was loudly filing a report for something stolen from one of the rooms.  The other one was named Svetlana, and she was from Latvia.  I know this because her nametag said "Svetlana, I'm from Latvia!" and she looked as though she didn't understand a damn thing that was going on.  She stood under two ceiling tiles that looked slightly moist and very bowed.  We stared at each other for a moment, she sighed, and decided she had to take me on.  We started our stilted dialogue.

"You have room....?"  Thirty minutes later, the police officer had filed his report for boxes of sample products worth about $35 each, stolen from room, and Svetlana and I had forged some kind of understanding that involved me surrendering my credit card to her and getting a key in return. 

I returned to the Van of Pain, and led my familia through the hotel lobby, where they looked around and assessed the scene.  As soon as they saw the pool, all was forgiven.  On a whim, I texted my friend Stan, who lives with his family in a bucolic Iowa town in which I used to live.  Stan is a lighting designer (did I mention a multiple-Emmy nominee?  I didn't?  oh.) who happens to do quite a bit of work in Nashville, so I asked him what we should see while in The Music City.  Stan texted back - "ME!"  Stanley, in the dream job of the century, had just flown in from London, where he is lighting the iTunes Festival.  He was in Nashville for one day only to light country singer Luke Bryan at the Grand Ole Opry for Jimmy Kimmel Live that night, and flying back to London the following morning so he could get back to light Coldplay and Linkin Park and such.  Loser, right?

Stanley and Oldest Daughter being Shiny Happy People.

In the happiest of accidents, Stan got our White Trash Express through the backstage guard hut and inside the GOO on the best backstage insider tour ever.  My children now despise me and CH, and are petitioning Stan for adoption.  Here are a couple of pics:

I told The Son to hit the power to the

entire building.  Good boy.

The lighting was perfect, the family unprepared.

The closest OD will get to being onstage

with Jimmy Kimmel.  For now.

My thoughts exactly.  It's like this guitar

WANTED me to steal it.

CH does a little camera work.

So much fun, best time ever.  We left our friend and the GOO behind us and drove the White Trash Machine to the hotel, where we spent the rest of the night in the pool, soaking our bunions.


The next morning was The Big Day.  It was time to teach the children how to be good groupies.  I am a hug fan of The Black Keys.

Yeah, these goofy looking guys from Akron who

have a fatass gritty sound.  Love them.

So Dan Auerbach, guitarist for The Black Keys, recently built a studio in Nashville.  I know this because I am a very thorough stalker.  And I found the address, even though the Keys would prefer it is secret, because it is not a public studio.  You might as well be waving a donut and a latte in front of my face, because there I was, parked in my Iowa minivan with my family behind the studio at 11:30 a.m.  The Black Keys are currently working on a new album in said studio, and took a few weeks off of touring in July to work on said album.  Here is what we are looking at from the van - back of the studio, barbed wire on top of the fences, and a lovely deck above where one might go to have a drink and a smoke in between takes.

Cool vintage green station wagon-type vehicle

with a brand new BMW X3 next to it.

But I didn't write down the plate numbers

because I have standards.  And didn't think

of it until we left.

While we are sitting and contemplating our next move, an Escalade pulls up to the keypad and rolls down the window, and a dude looking suspiciously like the producer Danger Mouse, who produced the multi-Grammy winning album Brothers for The Black Keys, taps in a code and waits for the chain link gate to open.  He stares at us.  We stare back at him.  He pulls into the compound and the gate closes.  The kids start getting nervous.  "Mom, we need to leave before you get arrested."  "No way, we are getting a picture in the front."

Security camera?  Check.

Prison lighting?  Check.

Large padlocked mailbox? Check.

Huge peephole in a steel door?  Check.

Mom climbing the chain link fence?  Undocumented.

It is 10:36 on a work night and I have to get up at 6:30, and my server is now rejecting new photos, so I promise I will finish this vacation series tomorrow and never mention my damn trip again.  Part 4, Conclusion, tomorrow night.

Get In The Van. I Have Candy. Part 2

So, Part 2.
(Remember, sequels are NEVER better.)

We try to take a weeklong family vacation every summer so that I may make Shutterfly photo albums lovingly captioned with snarky descriptions of our hi-larious times together.  This way, when the kids are in their 30's and complaining about their bad childhoods, I can throw my stack of family fun and nutty hijinx on the table and say, "What now, you ungrateful bastards!?  You got nothin' on me and I have the Shutterfly books to prove it!"

As I mentioned in the last post, there was a lot of drama and even more Dramamine on the first leg of our trip.  (Fear not, Gentle Readers, the worst part of the trip is now over.)  We drove through Southern Illinois, which honestly makes Nebraska look a little exciting, and lo and behold, we saw a sign for Metropolis.  Wha?  You mean SUPERMAN's hometown?  Current Husband is a huge fan of The Man of Steel, so SNAP! We fell right into the Tourist Trap.

Poor YD was still not feeling great. 

But c'mon, honey, rally!  It's Superman!

It's a bird!  It's a plane! 

No, it's my new gigantic knockers!

Able to leap bored housewives in a single bound? 

I certainly hope so.

(And?  When am I going to learn to

suck in my gut for pictures?)

At 11 p.m., we finally rolled into our friends' driveway in Atlanta.  The family we visited moved from our hood over a year ago, and they're the kind of people who will not only let you fly your freak flag, they will raise your freak flag if it isn't up already.  Needless to say, good time were had by all.

The kids played the "I'm the floating head creeping

in the back of your picture" game all week.

We occupied the kids so we could go out drinking.

(Oh put the phone down, they did it to themselves.)

And YD organized a game of Marco Polo,

but apparently she misunderstood the rules.

We really went to Atlanta just to visit our friends, so we didn't go out too much, and besides, it was about 175 degrees outside, plus humidity, which brought the heat index to 280 degrees.  The only thing that could cure our Beiber fever was a bartender with cold chardonnay and a moustache tattooed on his finger.  We were in luck.

He is known in Downtown Decatur as Chardonnay Tony.  

We stayed up talking into the night.  (Back to the friends, not Chardonnay Tony.) We awoke in mid-morning, and drank the best French press coffee ever. (Me and Tony.  Obviously.) We ate.  We drank.  We lounged.  Then we drank a little more.  We watched the funniest damn PBS special ever, which my friend Angie gave to me and has absolutely changed my life, simply called "Ferrets".  It about ferret breeders and the biggest ferret show in the country, The Buckeye Bash.  Here is a little snippet for you, but I HIGHLY recommend you buy your own copy:

That damn ferret song goes through my head all the time.  Then I made them watch this classic movie, because doesn't EVERYONE sit with friends they haven't seen in a year and watch ferret videos and cheesy 70's movies?

Oh yes, Barbra.  My love for you is ageless and evergreen.

And thank you for covering Kris Kristofferson's nipple.

There are so many terrific things about spending time with people you love, but of course, all good things must come to an end.  We pulled away from Hotlanta and headed for the hills of Tennessee, where we enjoyed our Family Stalker Adventure in Nashville.  Stay tuned for Part 3 of "Get In The Van, I Have Candy".  It's like you are trapped on vacation WITH me.  The call is coming from inside the van...get out!

   

Get In The Van. I Have Candy.

Hello Wifers!

I've been a bad blogger, and I know it, but sometimes it feels good to be bad.  No, really.  It does.  Grab your puke cups and let me tell you all about it.

Saturday, July 16, 5 a.m.
My alarm goes off.  I ignore it.

Saturday, July 16, 8 a.m.
I've been pushing the snooze for three hours.  At 10-minute intervals.  Anyone who roomed with me in college knows this is not an exaggeration.  I wake up in a panic, and realize we are now two hours past when I wanted to be on the road for our 13-hour drive to Atlanta.  Shit. 

Saturday, July 16, 9:30 a.m.
We are finally on the road after a solid hour of MomPanic.  We stop at the first McDonald's on our trip, in Bettendorf, IA.  We order breakfast, because I cleared out the fridge yesterday so things won't mold while we are gone.  I order orange juice for the kids, because it's healthy and will offset all of the other crap we are eating.  (This is called "foreshadowing".)

Saturday, July 16, 9:40 a.m.
Current Husband looks at me in a panic and says, "Oh No."  This means we must find the nearest McDonalds immediately, as they have the cleanest bathrooms.  His uber-sensitive digestive system has failed us all, 10 minutes into our 13-hour trip.  We find said McDonalds in Moline, IL, where the kids and I will sit for the next 15 minutes while they abuse me for letting Daddy order a sausage biscuit.

Saturday, July 16, 10:35 a.m.
Finally, we are closing in on hour first hour down on the trip, when Youngest Daughter says, "Mommy, when you find the next bathroom, I need you to stop."  Really?!?  She can hold out a little longer, right?  "Um, Mommy, my stomach is a little upset."  Crap.  Hello McDonalds.  Here we are again.  I pull up into a spot, and walk around to the van door on her side, and find to my dismay that she is still in her pajamas.  There is a man in an SUV next to us, apparently waiting for someone, and we are providing a nice distraction for him.

ME:  "Honey, you have to put some clothes on to go into McDonald's." 
YD:  "Why?"
ME:  "Because you can't be out in public in your pajamas."
(NOTE:  Unless you are me in 2003 and you are sleep deprived and desperately need Motrin for a sick kid and the only grocery store in your small town closes in 10 minutes.  Think you will see no one, run into school principal, school nurse, and pastor. Understand you deserve this.)
YD:  "I don't have time, Mom, ...BRULLLLP."

THIS IS WHEN YD VOMITS WARM ORANGE JUICE ALL OVER SIDE OF VAN, HERSELF, AND ME.  MAN IN SUV LOOKS AWAY IN HORROR. 

We march into McDonalds, both covered in warm puke, past full line of people waiting for drive thru who undoubtedly deleted orange juice from their order.  Or left altogether.  I take poor little YD into bathroom and wash her off, change her clothes, and stand under hand driers so the vomit on my shorts will at least dry so we don't have to smell it in the van.  We get back to the van, and the SUV next to us is surprisingly gone.  I dig through our luggage and find a clean pair of shorts, and change into them behind the McD's dumpster because I honestly do not give a shit anymore.  I'm done impressing anyone here.  We discuss returning home.  CH and I decide to carry on and hope for the best.

Saturday, July 16, 11:22 a.m.
YD vomits again in plastic grocery bag in back seat.  I blame Rush Limbaugh, whose voice seems to be settling CH's intestinal discomfort.  We stop at a BP, because our theme has become "environmentally damaging".  I clean YD up again, and buy some Dramamine, which God made for situations such as these.  CH and I again discuss abandoning travel plans, but we've both taken off a week of vacation, we have non-refundable hotel rooms in Nashville, and our friends in Atlanta are expecting us at 9 p.m. and have scheduled accordingly.  We carry on.  The Dramamine works. 

YD and her puke cup, upgraded from her pajamas and a plastic bag.

All told, we visited seven McDonalds bathrooms in 15 hours across five states.  I'd like to take a moment to thank McDonalds for keeping their bathrooms cleaner than your average gas station.  The Son was tapped to take one for the team, because I don't use a bathroom without buying some product.

He's a giver, that one.  Only a 12-year-old boy

would still be packing away food next to

a vomiting third grader.

Will we make it to Atlanta?  Or will our ADHD take us off the road to unplanned and uncharted destinations?  Stay tuned for Part 2 of "Get In The Van. I Have Candy." on Tuesday!