Day in the Life of an Idiot

 So, despite not being in the mood for any REAL roadside attractions, by chance we stopped at a Culver's in Deforest, Wisconsin, that was directly across from Sissy, the Cow..



Image: Sissy, the fiberglass dairy cow (me for scale).

Sissy stands in front of a "cheese chalet" which also has a mouse climbing the signpost.


Image: How to say "I am in Wisconsin" without saying "I am in Wisconsin" (a painted wooden cut-out of a  mouse so hungry that it is willing to attempt to eat a sign that says "cheese" but isn't even a picture of cheese.) 

If we had been in the mood, we would have stopped in the chalet. We debated it for about ten seconds, but we were all just in a "let's just get home" mood. Even so, I was happy that the travel gods not only blessed our trip through Chicago on the way back--y'all, your good wishes performed a miracle, we were through Chicago on the way home in record time. I don't think I slowed to more than 40 mph (64 kmh) through the entire city, and we decided to just go STRAIGHT through downtown. So, thank you to all of you who wished us better luck on the way home. WE GOT IT. 

Yesterday, Shawn caught up on laundry, but otherwise we very consciously did NOTHING in order to recover from the trip. I think it was really smart of us to come back on Saturday so that Shawn would have a day to get her feet back under her before returning to work. 

Despite starting out under an air-quality alert with a lot of smog and then driving into misty rain near Madison, I'd say that the first day of our trip out to Connecticut was a rousing success. 

For those of you just now tuning in, Shawn and I are on an extended road trip to pick up our son, Mason, from university. He's ending his junior year (3rd year) at Wesleyan, which is located in Middletown, Connecticut. Because this is also sort of our family vacation, Shawn and I always try to plan an extra day of travel so that we can do a little light exploring of at least one state along the way. (Depending on how we go, we tend to pass through several: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.) This year, despite it being my home state and the closest to Minnesota, where we are starting out, we decided to start with a meander through Wisconsin. (We will do more of the same on the trip back home.)


Image: a steampunk-junky scrap-metal cockroach

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Image: Traditional strip quilt (machine sewn) on hanging on display in a small town quilt show.

We are up in Siren, Wisconsin this weekend visiting our friends' cabin. It's a little cold for a dip in the lake, but we had been seeing signs for a Quilt Show this weekend in the nearby town of Weber. The four of us piled into the car, grabbed our masks, and headed to the Weber High School gym to check out the fabric art.

I had a BLAST.

I am often really fond of these kinds of small town events. We actually had to leave immediately after we arrived because the ladies taking the $5 admission didn't have a way to take credit cards. We should have thought of that, honestly, but it was no problem to hop into the town and stop by the local bank's ATM.


Image a small quilt of a circle of stylized houses.

Each quilt came with an artist's statement. Some quilters noted things like, "There is one piece where I used the 'wrong' side of the pattern. Can you find it?" to telling meaningful stories about who the quilt was made for.


Image: example of artist statements. This one ends with a very Midwestern commentary, "...I think this turned okay. Even if it is a bit loud."

There were lots and lots of lovely traditional quilts, but I took a few pictures of the more unique one. One of my favorites (which of course means I got a somewhat blurry picture of) was a "portrait of Frankenstein's Monster."


The quilt

My favorite part of this quilt is the detail. It doesn't look like much from a distance, but if you get close you can see that the quilter stitched in words relating to the novel:



Image: The words written into the quilting of the Frankenstein's monster included "monstrosity" and "deformed."

Here's one of a parade of geisha:

Image: The kimono are all overly lovely.

And, one of my favorites was one that had been quilted for a nerdy nephew because it featured a number of his favorite t-shirts and flourished with a bunch of dragons because he was a big D&D player. In the center, the quilter had even included the D&D logo:


Image: D&D quilt

Anyway, we spent a lot of time wandering the gym. We happened to come on the day when visitors could vote for favorites, so we walked around with a pencil and a slip on which we could vote for small, medium, large favorites. There was an odd size and a "challenging" category, too. That kind of made the whole thing extra fun, because you looked at each one wondering if you could bestow a winning ribbon on one of these. 

It was tremendous. Highly recommend doing something wonderfully mundane like this every once and a while.

The excitment over various "snowpocalypses" is so yesterday. And yet, what did we get on Sunday? More snow. Blah, blah, a dozen or more inches. Blah, blah, I struggled to get my car out. Blah, blah, everything is white and almost beautiful, but completely buried.

It's hard to compete, too, when people who have never seen snow in their lives, like in Atlanta, are dealing with stuff we get every day around here. AND, on top of that, people are out there protesting in blizzard conditions.

On that note, I had an interesting exchange with a neighbor who helped me unstick my car from the roundabout. I'd rolled down the window to talk about the stupid rain that we're getting on top of the ten inches of snow, and he said, "You know, for all the crappy weather we get, we ought to have a higher standard of living in exchange." I'm sure he was thinking about Norway or Sweden, but my first thought was, "We did. Before Pawlenty. Before Michele Bachmann and the other crazy teabaggers." And it made me think about why people are taking to the streets in Madison. Having decent wages and good schools with happy teachers and fire fighters and police officers and garbage pick-up and decent wages and good health care and dozens of other services that union employees provide *is* what we trade-off for living here and putting up with the winter.

My mother wrote from Texas where they snow-bird in a trailer park. Before Madison exploded, she was talking about how garbage seems to pile up outside of businesses there in Texas and no one cares, and how ALIEN that is to a Wisconsinite like her. She said something like, "I guess we're just more civic-minded in Wisconsin."

I'd say. :-)

One thing I have to do (on top of making my 2,000 word quota for Tate) is write another Mouse vingnette for y'all to have tomorrow. I was smart to have done those three ahead of time, and now I'm totally feeling the pressure. Though I think I'll use it as the carrot to my stick. If I get Tate done quickly, I'll write some Mouse.

Shawn is home today since she's one of those "privledged" government employees. She's sitting across from me rather grimly balancing the check book. Yeah, we totally live the high life. (Not.)

The Red Wing gig was much as expected. Four people attended (although technically only three, since one of them was the manager/owner.) Weirdly, I had one of my best EVER readings (though if you want to hear me read the first chapter of Dead If I Do, it's also on-line at Vampires, Witches & Geeks: Tate Hallaway Reads (Out Loud!).) Driving back into town, I saw one deer on the side of the road who was watching the passing traffic almost as alertly as we were all watching her. Hopefully, she got to the other side (and not the OTHERSIDE) okay.

This weekend was kind of... well, both intense and deeply relaxing. First of all, we planned to go visit our friends' cabin in Siren, Wisconsin. About an hour before we were leaving, I powered down the window and it stuck. In the open position. I drove it to my usual mechanic, hoping against hope that they would be able to do something quickly to just pull up the damn power window and leave it until I could deal with the stupid thing on Monday. No luck. Every solution seemed to require removing the door and there were a lot of other cars in the queue ahead of me. In a flash of inspiration, I called a nearby Ford dealership. They could take me, but I had to come now, as their mechanics quit for the day at three in the afternoon. I sat there for about two hours and it cost an entire surprise royality check that came for the MANY BLOODY RETURNS short story, but they got the job done in time for us to leave before the horrible rush-hour traffic hit. More importantly, since I knew I'd be driving back Saturday night for the gig at Eye of Horus, I didn't want to have to deal with a car window wide open parked on Lyndale Avenue in Uptown, you know?

The weather in Wisconsin was... chilly. We woke up on Saturday morning to 35 degrees F (2 degrees C). My friends' cabin is on the point of Crooked Lake and it was windy as all get out. Mason and I valiently tried to play near the beach, but the cold wind kept driving us inside. I made a fire and we played a lot of board games, but it was tough on Mason (who had been planning on boating and building sand castles).

That night I drove the hour and a half back into Minneapolis for the Eye gig. It wasn't badly attended. No crickets, at least. For a fourth book in the series, it drew an impressive dozen or so. The very best part, however, was that *I* got a free book. Corrine Kenner, the author of TAROT FOR WRITERS is a fan of mine, and came to the reading bearing a gift copy of her book (which I'm planning to review on my Tate site.) Plus my friends (and former students) Mel and Shawn both came, which is always fun.

On Sunday I woke up cranky. I didn't sleep well -- probably thanks to that tall mocha I got at that biker cafe that's just down the block from Eye of Horus to help me with the drive home. I also think I was feeling bummed because the weather had totally turned around. It was GORGEOUS and I didn't want to go home yet. I didn't feel like I'd really gotten a chance to relax -- even though hanging out with Ger and Barb is the farthest thing from stressful. Shawn and I debated back and forth about staying an extra day. She had work today, of course, but maybe she could go in late? Take a vacation day? Mason and I went down to the shore while Shawn stayed up at the cabin to pack and try to decide how anxious she was about work. As we sat in the sun and played at burying each other in the loamy sand, a purple martin came and perched on the dock post just inches over our heads. It sang and sang so joyfully that I knew when I saw Shawn coming down the beach that she was going to say, "We're staying!!"

I'm so glad we did.

Mason and I spent several hours just playing lazily on the beach. We dug holes in the sand, buried various body parts, and generally just did that stuff kids are supposed to do on summer days when there are no plans. We even took the little rubber, inflatable boat out for a row along the shore (oh, any you can really tell how improved the water quality is near where Ger and Barb put in restored natural shoreline, versus all the artifically clear docks. The wildlife increases exponentally.) When we weren't near/on the lake, we sat in the sun reading (all three of us!) That night we ordered a pizza and Mason passed out early (he'd been staying up to read late both Friday and Saturday nights.) Shawn and I watched a little satalite TV... except we ended up on a show about the possible end of the world and the whole global warming section depressed us both so much we had to turn it off. Then we went to bed early and got up and left this morning.

We were back at home by noon, after making the usual stops at a cheese factory and the Espresso Cabin. Wisconsin cheese, btw, is unsurpassed in the world, so don't mock... although I did buy a type of cheese I haven't seen since I was a kid: salami colby. Yum!!!

Plus until you've had squeaky cheese (aka cheese curds) for breakfast you haven't lived.

The weather today has been astounding. I got my proposals delivered finally, and am now hoping to continue work on Mouse as well as get started on Tate's YA series.

How was your weekend? I suppose most of you are getting ready for WisCON. I'll be in LaCrosse over Memorial Day weekend instead, so have fun without me.