Strong Words, Softly Spoken

So, this past weekend Alex & I headed south for the 24th or some crazy number annual Mullet Toss at the FloraBama. My family participates in this every year basically because it’s an excuse to lie on the beach and drink all day long. I haven’t been in several years, and seeing as how I’m moving to California and won’t be in AL for the next one, I decided I needed to go and drug Alex along with me.

My mother is a beach addict. I mean, I have no doubts that she would live on the beach if that were apossibility. And when I say live on the beach, I don’t mean in a house. I mean right there on the beach, in a chair, all day long, every day. She’s always been the type to plant herself on the beach at 8am and not move until it’s dark. So in her usual fashion, I get a phone call at 7:30am Saturday morning telling us that we need to get up and get ready to go. Ugh. Really? Ok.

So we get to the beach at 9:30ish and find our spot and set up camp. My favorite thing about the Mullet Toss is people watching, because your crowd typically consists of either college-aged kids or Dale, Jr. lovin’ rednecks (this is not to say all Dale, Jr. lovers are rednecks). There was a group of what I assumed to be frat guys directly to our left who came about an hour after us and the first words I heard from one of them was “where’s the funnel?” Now, I know that frat guys know how to drink….but is it really wise to be funneling beer in the hot sun on the beach when you know you’re going to be there for 6+ hours? Not for me, thanks.

This brings me to what my last post was about. Makeup. On the beach. WHY? There were girls in full blown makeup and PERFUME walking by us. I just………………………don’t see the need. You’re going to be there for hours upon hours, in the heat, sweating. That’s just a waste of makeup if you ask me. Then again, I’m not one to put on makeup everywhere I go, so maybe I just don’t get it.

So anyway, we did the beach all day Saturday. Then we wanted to go see the new Harold & Kumar movie. Out of 3 theatres in the area, it wasn’t playing at any of them. What’s up with that?

Since we couldn’t see the movie, we went and had ice cream and then to Adventure Island so Alex could play the Spiderman pinball machine. Alex still had a few quarters left and asked me if I wanted to play ski ball, and we turned toward it and see tickets just pouring out of one of the lanes. Nobody was there. They were just pouring out. So we stand there for a few minutes, looking around us like we were on candid camera or something, and nobody ever came back. So we put the extra quarters in and played a couple of games, and at that point Alex declared that the tickets were ours and we took our 285 tickets and went to the counter for our box of dominoes.

Sunday – we drove to Mobile to see the Our Body: The Universe Within exhibit. http://www.ourbodytheuniversewithin.com/ if you don’t know what it is. It was fascinating. You should definitely go if you have the opportunity. It’s in Mobile through the end of May or beginning of June. Something like that. Anyway, I really didn’t know what to expect. I had seen pictures but seeing it in person is totally different. To be honest, it didn’t seem real. It seemed like something made for a movie. I have a weak stomach and I thought I’d have a hard time looking at it, but the fact that it didn’t seem real really helped that. Although, the feet and the hands….yuck. But the rest was great. There was even a section on prenatal – fetuses at 1 month, 3 months & 5 or 6 months. That was probably the most interesting to me, as morbid as it is to be looking at dead fetuses.

After the exhibit we had to head home. One big problem though. It was raining and my windshield wipers weren’t working properly. Several months ago I, stupidly, tried turning them on while there was still ice on my windshield and had to take the car in and have them repositioned after that. Apparently they weren’t positioned correctly because now they tend to get caught up in each other at times. I should’ve had them fixed a long time ago but it rarely rains here so I haven’t really had to worry with it. But seeing as how we were 3 hours from home and there was a chance of rain the whole way, we were screwed. We were really screwed mostly because we couldn’t fix them and had to take our chances.

So, we get out of Mobile at 3:15ish and go about 20 miles only to come to a dead stop on I-65. An accident. Fanfreakintastic. We sit there for 45 minutes – with me being completely irritable about it – and finally we started moving. Great. Only now we’re having to fight to drive with hundreds of other cars who were stopped with us, so I’m pretty much driving and stopping, driving some more and slowing down, you get the idea. We make it to Evergreen, which is about an hour south of Montgomery. Traffic comes to a dead stop again. ANOTHER ACCIDENT. We’re stuck here another 20 minutes. Shoot me. FINALLY we get going and traffic clears up and we make it home about 7:00 last night, only then I had to go back out and get the dog from my parents house. And of course, it starts pouring on my last 10 minutes of the drive back. Thankfully, I made it home…but do you know how difficult it is to drive in the rain, in the dark, with broken windshield wipers?