They Don't Have These in Southeast Asia

I've always wondered why public bathroom doors don't just always swing out.  But they don't.  No matter, at least in some restaurants in Minneapolis.  I'm pretty sure this is the best. invention. ever.

A foot opener!

Farts

Miyo (age 4) quote:
"I dream about farts cuz I love farts and I fart every day!"

Don't let this ballerina outfit fool you.  She loves farts.  She farts every day.

What is This? Alaska?

I LOVE that the sun sets so late in the evening here.  Having just come from Central America where the sun sets at 6 PM every day, I kind of forgot how much daylight we get in Minnesota.  Here is the view from the restaurant where I work in Roosevelt MN:

9:20 PM

10:30 PM

11:00 PM

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Fat Belly

My dad and I were driving home from a trip and he was lamenting about how he saw a photo of himself and he was embarrassed of his belly looking big. 

Farmer-sized.

I said, "and thanks a lot -- it's obviously hereditary cuz I got that gol' dang thing too."  He said, "well yours is fat."

I wonder what the heck he thinks his is.

"Great Service" *wink*

For three nights in a row last week I was the lucky random winner of the "waitress roulette" game we play at the restaurant.  In which we take tables in the order that we arrived. 

And by lucky random winner I mean that I got the same group of bad tippers three nights in a row.  Their meals were comped due to a contract their boss has with the restaurant and they were only tipping me on the beers that they had to pay for.  As a result, after serving six men their salads, potato choices, bread, dinners and a few beers, I was tipped a few dollar bills, some dimes and nickels.  Not only that, but they were incredibly drunk/high/chemically altered.  Now, I'm not complaining and I'm not mad,  I just couldn't believe that I got them three nights IN A ROW.  I'm a bit of a Pollyanna though, and so in an effort to see the bright side of the situation, I will admit that I did receive my favorite "tip" ever from a member of this group:

One night, one of them gave me a one-dollar bill, said, "great service", and winked at me.

Thanks, Stinky.  Turns out they're known for smoking the reefer.  Or the pot.  Or whatever the kids are calling it these days.  Well, one night, all but one of them ordered hash browns as their potato choice.  The other had the baked potato.  Not until the words came out of my mouth did I realize how hilarious it was when I arrived at the table and queried:

"Now, who's my 'baked potato'"?

Welcome Home, Kady and an Ode to A Lady Reveals Nothing

I know you think you have great friends.  And maybe you do.  But mine are better.  Guaranteed.  After 8 months away, they welcomed me home with a weekend place to stay, lunches, dinners, shopping, pedicures, drinks, and even a 'Welcome Home, Kady' party.  I was invited to my friend Kerrie's house, and all I knew was that there would be a 'surprise theme'.  I was having a hard time guessing what it could be...maybe everybody would wear a costume and we'd eat food and drink drinks from another culture? 

The night came and Josette told me that I would have to be blindfolded once we got in the car.  Ha!  So we WEREN'T going to Kerrie's!

We were going to Otter's in Northeast Minneapolis...where all my friends were waiting with a big sign, happy smiles and KARAOKE.  My favorite favorite favorite activity in the whole world. 

Teri even sang me a very special version of REM's It's the End of the World as We Know It, for which she had altered the lyrics to be based on this blog.

Try to sing it in your mind to the tune of the REM song.  I'm also including clickable links to the original stories from this blog so you can read up on anything that might interest you:

That's right it starts with Australia, koalas, snakes, and an aeroplane and Kady Hexum's not afraid.

Peeing in a wetsuit, listen to yourself burp - Don't forget the wombat, Tonka was the wombat.  Rollin in a SmartCar, grunt, no speed, the tires start to clatter just like a moped.  Pack on your back, but you bought a rolling suitcase, and an ugly stinger suit with really long arms.

Spank Me galley, smell of gas don't strike that match we might all blow up.  Fale fale sugar cane, and coconut juice.  Scuba diving, sun burn.  Solo now.

Uh oh, brewery, hitchhikers, bicycle with a motor.  Kady cooks, but serve yourself.

Hiking glaciers, listen to your finger bleed dummy with the monkey and the cat poop coffee.  Right?  Right.  Your Thailand buses, Summer-isms, snake wine, bed bugs, waterfall photos.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.  And more to come.

Sick O'clock watch the oscars, don't get caught in Cu Chi tunnels.  Slash and burn bus rides, listen to your stomach churn.  Pee behind a bull dozer, Korean drinking, Seoul fooding.  Eating fish intestines.  Jjin jil bang naked showers.  Light a candle, back in Minnesota.  Mess up guest room.  Watch your dad eat squirrel meat, uh-oh, this means Relax Underwear.  Acted a fool at Angkor Wat.  Kiss my grits I'm a waitress.  My dad has a uterus.  Offer me some Crocs, offer me a date after fart and I decline.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it. And more to come.

The other night I dreamt of Jen Aniston's fan light.  Then I went to zip line.  Diaper and high heels.  Dengue fever.  Granada 6.  Policeman with a Cerveza.  Turd burglar, I'm sick, Machu Picchu, boom!  You went around the world and dreamt of Ben Affleck.  Right?  Right.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it. And more to come.

Why I Love Minnesota: (Reason Number 4,729)

Minnesota chose the Showy Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium reginae) in the early part of last century as it's State Flower.  Can you blame them?  According to the DNR's website, it's just one of 43 orchids growing wild here in Minnesota, but everybody agrees it's the most gorgeous one.  (According to my own opinion and a recent unofficial poll I did this morning of four farmers.)  I mentioned in an earlier post that we have some Lady's Slippers in our yard.  We found some little yellow ones, but now the whole area is covered in the big huge pink and white ones.  They are so gorgeous! 

They first sprouted when I was in Minneapolis last weekend.  My dad called and left me an out-of-breath message, which I will transcribe here for your amusement:

"Kady! Forget the transplanting they're all over between the Heart's cabin and the road. And... they're...Oh, Kady...not a million...but probably...I've seen about ten now and I've seen some plants that haven't blossomed yet. Aw...Kady...anyway...ummm...I'm just gonna be a horticulturist from now on, I'm not gonna be monkeyin' with no deer hunting and...OH MY GOSH!! I almost stepped on two plants without blooms!. Oh my word. Kady They're all over. OH MY GOSH!! MORE!! They're not blooming but the plants are here. They're all over Kady...you can't...it's a sanctuary we can't even walk out here. Bye."

So today, dad and I tromped around the ditches alongside Highway 11 and also Rocky Point Road to bring you these gorgeous photos of our state flower, the "Showy Lady's Slipper":

You can see where they get their name, because don't they look just like a little lady's slipper!?

Look how big they are!

Here's a big yellow one!  I love it's little mustache thingee.

Yellows and pinkies growing together!

Clumps of them all over the place!

Hey Miles, We Found Your Mustache

Summer, 2010:

Summer, 2011:

Now, quit shaving in the kitchen!

The Livin' is Easy

I've been in Roosevelt, Minnesota (which is near the Canadian border) for a little over two weeks now.  I'm glad that I had 8 months in Central and South America before coming here, because the transition to the SLOW pace of life hasn't been such a shock. 

I'm considering getting some chickens!  I miss seeing them around everywhere.  I don't want to touch them or anything, I just want them in the yard.  Wouldn't that be cute?  And then we can eat their eggs. 

If they don't freeze to death this summer...I'm reading reports of 102 degree weather in Minneapolis.  Meanwhile we're still in winter apparently: 

June 7th.  60 degrees.

June 13th.  60 degrees.

I love it.  I LOVE the weather here.  It's cold.  I need a sweater and a scarf.  Most importantly, I'm not sweating all over the place.

I thought I had escaped the bugs and the creepy crawlies from south of the border.  Nope.  There are SO many bugs here.  And they get in the house.  They're buzzing around my ears while I'm trying to sleep...the other day I got bitten by two mosquitos at the dinner table.  What is this, Nicaragua?  And, snakes?  My dad freaked me out the other day with this disgusting thing:

Snakes shedding their skin in the yard.  EW!

But hey, why not hang it on the wall?  We've already got a dead animal graveyard here:

We decorate with moose horns that have been carved to show scenes of dogs treeing bears.

A bobcat on the way up the ladder to my loft bedroom.

My cozy cozy cozy bear-skin-infested loft bedroom.

The other day, my dad and I hooked a chain up to the tractor and pulled out a bunch of trees and stumps and stuff. It was my job to wrap the chain...so I was bending down a lot. I caught myself pulling up my Seven for all Mankind jeans to cover up my butt crack thousands of times throughout the day. I am totally going into Baudette to buy a pair of Wranglers for future farm girl days. The higher the waist, the better. I'm looking for a 9-inch zipper, friends.

Dad's new tractor

Ooh! And we found some ladyslippers in the yard! The rare Minnesota state flower. We only have yellow ones, but they are super beautiful.  In a few weeks, the pink and white ones will be blooming along the railroad tracks and I'll try to get a photo.  Here's a stolen photo of the yellow one:

Photo credit -- cs.odu.edu

Sacramento del Colonia, Uruguay

While in Buenos Aires, I spent $100 to get one more stamp in my passport.  Well, four if you count in-and-out of one and in-and-out of the other.  URUGUAY.  Day trips from Buenos Aires to Colonia are common for ex-pats and foreigners who have to leave the country every 90 days.  Buquebus company has figured this out and provides a really nice ferry service for about $98 US return.  Well, I think it's really nice.  I slept the entire one-hour trip both ways. 

When I arrived, I went to the bathroom, (just me and the cleaning lady which is always fun) picked up a map and started walking.  The first place I ended up was some sort of old fort with a broken down wall and some fake cannons where I took some pictures, blah blah blah.

I walked around some more, got some lunch and then rented a scooter.  It was a fun, lonely day.

This is a picture of how disgusting I am.  I sat down in the ferry terminal at this dirty table with my overpriced croissant and gross expensive coffee, and I saw on one of these trays, another uneaten croissant that somebody didn't want.  So I ate it.

I creepily took this photo without the people knowing.

Colonia is utterly filled with sweet vintage cars.

So: all alone on a fun, lonely day in a totally gorgeous picturesque location, what's a girl to do?  Set the timer and take some self portraits, of course!

Scootin' around

Some more sweet vintage cars

 

Discoveries on the scooter

Whitey-Tighties

Tonight after work Hanna and my mom and I were staying up late and enjoying an episode of America's Next Food Network Star (or whatever it's called) and I had to go pee.  So I went pee.  I'm peeing, and suddenly I hear my dad, who has been asleep for hours and hours whisper, "who's in the bathroom?"  And I'm like, 'oh jeez' because as you all know, he had his PROSTATE removed last year because of cancer and all we can talk about since is his pee problems, so I had to hurry and finish up peeing as a courtesy to my post-cancer dad.  I even decided to run out and wash my hands in the kitchen.  As I ran out, I was horrified to find him in nothing but his black whitey-tighties. 

**So my whole life I grew up seeing my dad in his underwear.  Mostly us kids just didn't look, because, gross!  But the truth was, they were extremely threadbare.  Apparently my mom had a conversation with him pretty recently about how if he was going to insist on walking around in his underwear they were going to have to be black from here on out.  (And as a sidebar to me, she said the trick to get your husband to wearing a different kind of underwear is, 'you gotta throw away the old ones'.)**

Anyway, I sort of thought that would be a funny facebook status, you know, seeing my dad in his 'black' whitey-tighies...and so I started up the computer...and decided a blog post would be better, and right as I was typing, my dad stumbled out to the kitchen in a robe.  My. mom's. pink. robe.  The. one. so. short. it. barely. covered. his. black. whitey. tighties.

Me and Hanna and my mom started laughing so hard, so so so so so hard that we were laughing until we cried.  My stomach started to hurt as I ran for the camera.  But he's so used to my blog as a source of teasing him now that he instinctively hid behind the refrigerator door so as to thwart my effort at a photo. 

"Please dad!  Please!  I'll give you all my tips from tonight if I can just take a photo of you in that tiny pink robe!"

"KADY!  KADY!  KADY...KADY kady kady KADY!...STOP IT!  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?  Why are all the lights on?  DON'T YOU DARE TAKE A PICTURE!  All the lights are on upstairs!"

So then I tried to get a video because he's so hilarious, but my camera was stolen so I'm using my mom's camera and I don't know HOW to take a video, or furthermore, how to get the flash to work so I didn't get a dad gum photo of my dad in a tiny pink robe. 

After he begged me not to blog about this by telling his side of the story--

--and to be fair, here is his side of the story:
"You wake up in the middle of the night to go pee after a HORRENDOUS surgery, and somebody's in the bathroom.  Somebody's ALWAYS in the bathroom.  Anyway you get made fun of...but your throat is dry and you need some water, so you try to cover up, but it's dark and who knows where your real robe is, so you just grab what you think is your robe and...Kady it's a very small house.  It's not meant for a tourist 'traction."

So later on he came out in a Smith & Wesson T-shirt with a gun on the front that says "BANG" and plaid pajama pants, slippers, and a button down Carhartt hunting shirt.  Noticing me noticing him, he said "You have to dress to the nines just to get water nowadays."

And then my mom said, "Listen, Rock Hudson would grab frilly Doris Day robes and wear them."  But she must have forgotten Rock Hudson was gay.

Kiss My Grits, in the Key of G, Please

Tonight was my first night waitressing serving at the Lodge near where my parents live.  I had a total of four tables all night and felt dang stressed out about it.  Of course there were three of us working and of course the two seasoned waitresses servers had probably ten each and called it a slow night. 

I was taught not to set down your drink tray on the table when you're bringing them out (oops) and also not to talk too long (oops).  Apparently people are not there to talk to me.  They're there to eat.  *This one will be tough because I am SO INTERESTING.   

At about 9pm, a man came in and set up a Karaoke machine.  Now, Karaoke is my third favorite activity right behind pinching blackheads and sleeping in.  So it was difficult, nay, it PAINED me when nobody signed up and the Karaoke man sang about 6 songs in a row to get everybody warmed up...people, this is where I come in.  I have like a ton of go-to songs ready for just such occasions, but instead I found myself sweeping and doing dishes, touching wet food no less (least favorite activity), feeling sorry for the Karaoke guy and trying to clean up the kitchen as fast as possible.  At 10:30 I finally finished my shift, threw my apron on a chair, and sang my little heart out to the style of Gladys Knight and the Pips, Gloria Gaynor, Bonnie Tyler...to name a few.

(By then a lot more people were game to sing so it wasn't just me up there...)  Which reminds me of the time I had the best idea for a Saturday Night Live skit.  Say you have a guy who runs the Karaoke night, but he won't let anybody else sing.  He just sings the whole time and ignores requests.  Maybe one audience member gets a song in and then he sings like four in a row.  Hilarious!  Well I guess there already is exactly that skit.  I'll add it to the list of things I invented that already exist.  Like the blackhead popping implement.

How to Make Croutons

We had so much bread when the family was up here that even 18 people couldn't even eat it all in four days.

Yesterday I thought about using up one of the last loaves, but it was as hard as a rock.  And then I thought, "croutons!"  I had never made croutons before.  So I googled it!  'How to make croutons from stale bread'.  I got a million recipes.  Here's what I ended up doing.  First you just cube the bread.  I mentioned that my loaf was rock hard, so first I put a wet paper towel around it and microwaved for a minute and that softened it right up.  Then I sliced and sliced and sliced.  *(By the way I made the cutting board in woodshop in tenth grade.  And my mom still uses it.  Awwwwww...) 

Here's what I look like when I'm slicing rock hard bread.  I call it the 'Grandma Trudy' face.  Also known as the 'Kelly concentrates' face.

You want 1 inch cubes.

Then I mixed a small bowl of olive oil and my seasonings.  I used salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and garlic salt.  Tons of all of it.  You can use whatever you want.  And about 2/3 cup of olive oil per 4 cups of cubed bread.

Toss with the bread cubes and get it all smooshed around.  I sprinkled with parmesan too, and then baked at 300 degrees for about a half hour.  I read anything from 225 degrees for 10 minutes to 375 degrees for 20 minutes...the point is you are slowly toasting this bread until it's nice and crusty brown.  Like a crouton, DUH!  Spread it all out in a single layer, by the way.  You wanna flip 'em over a couple times so they get brown on all sides.

Here's what they look like when they're done.

Super delicious.  For reals.

The End.