DEAR WISCONSIN, I LOVE YOU. Sorry for all the bad things I’ve said about you in the past.
Kaye invited us to UFO Days in her hometown this weekend, so Cindi and I headed down there on Friday afternoon. You see, Elmwood has been visited by UFOs since the 70s, and every year they hold a celebration to honor their extraterrestrial visitors. In true Wisconsin fashion, it’s mostly about the booze. But who can go wrong with booze and aliens? We got there about four, and immediately set to work on the partying. We ate cheese we’d procured from a local factory, and mixed up drinks in Nalgene bottles. Before the festivities began, we wandered around town, stopped into a cement bar, got silos of the champagne of beers at the Cenex for $1.65, bought flashing UFO Days necklaces, laid in the yard and on the deck in the killer heat, and met Kaye’s parents’ friends and random neighbors wandering around town drinking. At 9pm, the band started, and even though Kaye had sworn that nobody actually danced at the street dance, I was determined. No one wanted to walk down to the festival yet, but when I heard strains of Sweet Home Alabama wafting from two blocks away, I was off like a shot. It wasn’t quite true that no one was dancing; there were two couples already grinding near the stage (which was on a flatbed trailer, by the way) to H3O, the cover band who sported alien-related tshirts, and whose guitarist looked scarily like The Nuge. There were a couple guys standing around watching, and there was me, grinning like a dumbass, wearing a cowboy hat. Bad cover band + small town festival + Wisconsin? This is the formula for the best day ever. After a couple songs, I walked back to get Cindi, and the rocking-out began. From 9:30 to 2am, we danced barefoot in the street, only stopping for the band’s intermissions every hour or so. During the breaks, we’d walk back to the house to refresh our drinks and try to convince Kaye to come along. She finally did, and even danced. The later-in-the-evening portion of the event was a blur of sweaty dancing and flirting and possibly even some laying-down-in-the-street. We met guys, and each of these guys was quite dedicated to the getting-in-the-pants, and, coincidentally, each of these guys was also MARRIED; one of them was only found out when I happened to notice his ring. So, apparently, UFO days is where married Wisconsin dudes go to pick up Minnesota girls who are just in town for the night. At the end of the evening, Cindi and I were laying on a blanket in the backyard laughing, and I saw two shooting stars. YAY! Saturday morning, Kaye’s parents were moving around way too early, so I dragged myself into the kitchen for coffee, bagel, painkillers, and water, followed by shower and toothbrushing, at which point I felt marginally alive. Cindi and I wandered over to see the hot cars at the car show around noon, returned to the house to make sure Kaye wasn’t dead, and then headed back to town. On the way back, I had to keep flipping through my playlist to find fast-paced songs, lest I doze off on the road and kill us in unspectacular fashion on an interstate in Wisconsin. Nobody wants to go out like that, yo. Saturday night, I went to Suzi and Matt’s wedding reception at the ultrahot VFW in Richfield. It was, without a doubt, the most-fun wedding I’ve ever been to. Their theme was beach/hawaiian, so all the dudes were in aloha shirts, and the women wore flowered skirts or sarongs. Everyone got lei’d as they walked in the door. They handed out little bottles of liquor with tropical drink recipes. We ate and drank, and then we danced. Oh, I really cannot get enough of the dancing lately. I am the ultimate dancing fool. Once the DJ started taking requests, I was up there every ten minutes. After he started going on and on about how much he loved my tattoos, I started pretending to not be able to hear him. I think the best moment was seeing an 80-year-old lady dancing to Run-DMC’s Tricky, even though the DJ told me it didn’t strike him as that kind of crowd. Haha. After much dancing, the family headed back to the hotel on the shuttle bus, and the rest of us migrated into the bar. Matt came up to me at least six times, demanding to know why I’d jumped out of an airplane without him. I tried to invite him, but Suzi vetoed it, as it was a week before their wedding. I promised we’d go again next summer. I lost track of Jane and ended up hanging out with Matt’s friends, who are all ridiculously awesome; I heard afterwards that some guy was telling Jane that dudes like me because I’m EXOTIC. Um, I seriously cannot stop laughing about that. Not only because it’s ridiculous, but because it’s the third time I’ve been called that. I’m guessing it doesn’t take much to seem exotic at the VFW in Richfield, you know? Hahaha. Sunday, I dragged my ass out of bed at noon and took an absurd amount of time to accomplish the basic task of pants-application. I picked Cindi up and we went to Jumi’s for a day of hardcore chillaxation in her yard. We were joined by Peter, SJ, Desi, Bill, Katie, Jon, and some cute boys who showed up as I was leaving, so I’m not sure who they were, even though one of them swore we’d met. Anyway, we spent the entire day doing the following:– laying on blankets in the grass
– sitting in chairs in the grass
– hanging in the hammock
– running through the sprinkler
– shoving ice in each others’ clothing
– playing other similarly-stupid and yet highly entertaining games. As you can see, that was a highly ideal way to spend a Sunday, and we discussed the fact that it would be really, really nice to just do that all the time. Today it was torture to even corner the block and dash into the courthouse to reach air conditioning again; it’s strange that I barely noticed the heat all weekend, but just knowing it’s like that outside today is kind of gross. Thankfully, my only plans for this evening are to stop and talk to Jon at Uptown Tattoo about our next date, to go to the gym (I’m going to give up on attempting to walk outside and just hit the treadmill when I’m done with the crosstrainer, because I DON’T WANT TO DIE), and to scale Mount Laundry, which is currently the highest peak in the entire midwest. Awesome. I just started to panic a little about the fact I’m leaving for Chicago on Thursday night, so I made a to-do list, and now I’m calm again. I like that it’s not the needing-to-do-stuff that makes me worry, it’s feeling like I may be forgetting something. The second I make the list, it’s practically done. So! I’ll stop back before I leave town again. And here, before I go, is something ridiculously cute: my niece, Melody, was last Friday’s Weather Baby!! (I can’t figure out how to link to it directly, so you’ll have to click on the past videos. Hers is currently at the top of the list under ‘related items’. Tschuss.
Jenni