Hometown Visit: Swimming Snafus

 

(Thanks to Travalon for help with this blog post title.)

Yesterday I worked from home and was somewhat productive, then right after work Travalon and I hit the road. We made a stop at a Mexican restaurant in Mauston that somehow took two hours, but my seafood enchiladas were so good. However, during the long wait I'd eaten so many chips and salsa that I could only eat half my real dinner, and it sat in the car for two more hours before we got to my hometown. Travalon found this surprising flag in the men's bathroom of the (important!) Mexican restaurant.

What?? Why is this in a MEXICAN restaurant? It says "I love Puerto Rico." Huh??

The moment we got to our hotel room, I stuck my seafood in the fridge, then we swam in the wonderful pool that was shockingly full of children at that late hour, and then I went right to bed without blogging.

Today I had my leftovers for breakfast, and they haven't killed me yet. Travalon found a nonprofit coffeehouse called St. James online, so we went there for coffee and got free treats because it was their 13th birthday. Better yet, they are associated with the Catholic church across the street, so the very friendly people gathered there were happy to tell us Mass times. Since the church is six minutes from our hotel, this is what we will be doing tomorrow morning.

Ma and Pa Hat are moving to another apartment, but I'm confused about a lot of things. I thought it was assisted living, but no, it's just another apartment. Ma Hat had sent a photo of a bunch of books the people helping her refused to pack, so we thought we'd spend the day packing them, but when we got to their place, she said the movers had already packed them. She said they came and did it yesterday, and she thought about calling us and telling us not to come, which means I could have been in the Atwood Fest parade with the Brazilian drumming group. Then Ma Hat remembered she had stuff in a basement storage unit, so Travalon and I emptied that and brought the contents upstairs. We are both getting older ourselves and have sore knees, so this was a less welcome job than packing books that don't involve stairs. We took a break to take a walk along the Zumbro River, and Travalon took some photos.

We saw people tubing on the river, which looked really fun, but we have no idea where you rent tubes in town. I told Travalon how, as a kid, I used to follow the creek in our backyard to the Zumbro River, and along the side someone had a compost heap, but I had no idea what a compost heap was, so I thought they had killed someone and buried them in their yard, and that's what the bad smell was. Guess I was kind of Gothic as a kid.

After that we went with Ma and Pa Hat to a Mideastern restaurant that had good reviews online, but a sign on the door said it was closed, so we had a very late lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, and Ma and Pa Hat treated us. Here is the colorful board they had advertising their various menu items.

When we got back, I sat on this chair that used to belong to my great-grandmother.

It turns out both Travalon and I were staring at this box while waiting for further instructions from Ma Hat:

She said we could pack glasses and mugs that were still in the kitchen, so we wrapped them until running out of newspaper. There is a pool at Ma and Pa Hat's current apartment complex, and by then it was in the shade, so Travalon and I decided to run back to the hotel and get our swim stuff, since we hadn't thought to bring it with us. When we got back, Ma Hat said oops, she forgot to tell us that you have to pay extra to use the pool, and she and Pa Hat hadn't paid this year, so we couldn't get in. That seemed so strange to us - whoever heard of an apartment complex with a pool charging extra for access? - but we just shrugged and went to a nearby park with a beach on a pond. Only, when we got there, a guy kept reminding us that the place was getting locked up in half an hour, so if we didn't leave promptly, we'd be locked in. We swam a few minutes at the beach, then we went back to our wonderful hotel pool, which had less kids than last night despite the much earlier hour. When the kids all invaded the pool, we moved to the hot tub and watched the sunset from there. I have watched many sunsets in my life, but I believe this is the first one I've seen from a hot tub.

There is a 24-hour Mexican restaurant just down the street from our hotel, so we went there for a light dinner after showering. Looks like I'll be having half a bean burrito for breakfast after eating too much street corn. The young girl taking our order sometimes seemed confused, so then I would speak in Spanish and she would understand, like with the burrito she kept saying, "Bean or beef?" and I'd say, "Bean," but she didn't get it, so I said, "Frijoles." And Travalon wanted a half order of rice, but she kept saying, "One order of rice?" so I said, "La mitad." Anyway, we got what we had ordered. Travalon looked online to see if there was any information about having to pay extra for the pool at Ma and Pa Hat's complex, and he found a wondrous review of the place that said, among other things, "There are murders here! A grandpa had his eyeballs yanked right out of his head! And the laundry facilities are out-of-date!" That made me laugh so hard - talk about anticlimactic! Not that torture is funny, but following it with such a feeble complaint just made me lose it. Another great line: "People are always trying to burn the place down, either by burning their food or actually trying to burn it down." This person also said there are actual new-Nazis living there, which I believe, judging by some of the tattoos I saw on people there.

As we drove back to the hotel, I suddenly thought of that lame kids' joke: "Guess what? Chicken butt! Guess why? Chicken thigh!" So then I made up even stupider ones: "Guess how? Chicken cow! Guess when? Chicken hen! Guess who? Chicken coup!" So that's the terrible joke I came up with: "What do you call it when the chickens rebel against the farmer? A chicken coup!" Is that even funny? Not really. But I think it's hilarious how not funny it is.

I hear the Atwood Fest parade went fine without me, but they got rained on. So that's what I missed.

Famous Hat