Bittersweet

• I'm in Minneapolis.
• I found an apartment.
• I start my job in a couple weeks.
• I'm shopping for furniture.
• I'm going to Puerto Rico.

 

All of this should be making me very happy, and it is, technically. But I'm also really sad about having to be a grown-up and why can't I just live with my parents and secretly take pictures of my dad looking out the window through his binoculars for the rest of my life?

 

 

 

 

I moved out of their house on Thursday at precisely 12:14pm. Check this out:

*sob*

 

"You Know What I Like to Do?"

I'm in Puerto Rico with my sister and some friends, one of whom has a funny habit of swapping head for toes on the bed while she sleeps. In other words, she puts her feet by the headboard and her face by the footboard.

Exhibit A

Which reminds me of a story...

When I was about twelve, I had a friend who had HUGE boobs. Of course I had none. (I'm still waiting for them to come in.) Anyway this poor girl was really private about her boobs and I had thus far never been able to sneak a glance — not even like for swimming or sleepovers. She always changed in the closet while the rest of us 'two-backs' changed right in front of each other because what did we have to hide?

Well. One time she spent the night. My bedroom was attached to the bathroom by a tiny doorway that everybody but me banged their head on. And if you looked from the foot of my bed into the bathroom you could see the shower against the far wall. The shower had one of those sliding door situations, with a mirror on one side and a foggy glass door on the other. The way the tracks were set up, you were supposed to put the mirror by the shower head and the foggy glass door further away because the mirror was on the inside track. Correct door placement prevented water from going out the shower between the cracks in the two doors onto the floor outside, which was carpet (ew), but that's not the point of this story. The point of this story is that sometimes guests didn't know how the doors were supposed to go. Now, I didn't mean for this to happen, but it did: My friend with the boobs decided to take a shower and put the doors the wrong way and I accidentally noticed and I was so curious about those boobs that I swapped heads for toes on my bed and sort of watched her take a shower.

Yep. I did.

This is pretty embarrassing to admit. Just remember I was only twelve and still waiting for the boob fairy to pay me a visit. Anyway at some point during her shower, she looked out the foggy glass doors. I felt sure she was looking right at me! Busted! I didn't dare move. What if she saw me scramble to move? Then she would know I was watching her! I had to think quickly!

Instead, I stayed still and pretended to be sleeping when she got out of the shower. Casually and nonchalantly, I remarked, "You know what I like to do? I like to wake up in the morning and flip around in the bed and lay my head at the foot of the bed."

For the rest of our friendship I had to wake up in the morning and flip around in the bed and lay my head at the foot of the bed, because that's what "I like to do". The next morning, she put her towel over the foggy part of the glass. For privacy.

Hal-isms, Vol. 34

"That's probably the second time in my life I've been wrong. The first time I thought I was wrong. But I was wrong."

 

"I wonder if I should even bother. I got turds all over the garage."

 

"I cleaned 'em up. There's a china kid who's hungry."

 

"Kady. If I had it to do over. Well, actually I probably wouldn't have had kids."

 

"I'm a connoisseur of steaks. I eat venison. I'll know if it's done or not."

 

 

 

Protecting his family. In only his socks.

 

Photo Special: Karnataka, India

 

Sunday Favorites: Bathroom Priorities

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on March 7, 2011:

 

 

I've been out of the country for the better part of a year, so maybe my view on this matter is skewed. Has this weird phenomena caught on in the United States? Are they replacing all liquid soap in public restrooms with either foam or mist spray? I'm just going to come right out and say that I hate spray soap. Is this a new thing? I push the button and if anything comes out it's a mist. What happened to the gelatinous soap of my childhood? The kind that makes a nice soapy lather that gives the illusion of cleanliness after a dirty bathroom experience and perhaps a day filled with dirty, germ-filled experiences?

 

And that leads to my next question. Mom, when did they invent liquid soap? Shortly after they invented color, perhaps? I don't remember life without it. I do remember thinking that bars of soap were disgusting in public bathrooms, and sharing that belief and a friend telling me the most poignant words I have ever heard:

 

"Soap is always clean."

 

In other words, rub it a little and get it movin', and you got yourself some perfectly good soap. I don't know the science here, but I have run with that for the last 18 years. These are just my opinions, folks. I would love to hear yours in the comments section.

 

And while we're on the subject of public restrooms, for your reading pleasure, a list! My list of preferences in a public bathroom: (in order of priority)

 

1. Toilet Paper

2. Lockable lock

3. Water

4. Liquid Soap

5. And if not liquid soap, Bar Soap

6. And if not bar soap, Spray Mist Invisible Fake Soap

7. And if not spray mist invisible fake soap, Hand Sanitizer. But I hate Hand Sanitizer.

8. Flush Capability

9. And if so, Foot-kick ready flush

10. Privacy from lookie-loos

11. Privacy from heary-loos

12. A way to mask scent if necessary

13. Dry floor

14. No hair anywhere

15. A nice picture on the wall

16. Seat is firmly secured to the toilet

17. Proper inner-workings of toilet, illiminating the need for frantic basic plumbing

18. Towel to dry hands on

19. Exit door that pushes outward, not pulls inward for hands-free purposes

20. Sanitary napkin dispenser, preferably at the low low rate of 10 cents

21. Garbage can in stall

22. Helpful signs*

23. Toilet seat liner (but you're only going to find this in California and/or the Minneapolis airport.)

24. Good lighting in mirror for zit pinching

25. Mirrors at angle for weight loss illusion

26. A planter with bamboo of some sort

27. Stones in bottom of sink

28. New age and/or relaxing music playing

29. Basket of mints

30. Hand lotion

31. Hairspray available

32. Individual non-disposable towels

33. A woman to hand you individual non-disposable towel

34. Heated toilet seats*

35. Princess sound maker*

 

See? Helpful.

 

 

*Added to list since visiting Japan, the heavenly headquarters of the world's best bathrooms.

 

 

 

Another Mom Video Story

...Yet again I didn't get the whole thing on video. I don't want her to know I'm recording because I don't want to compromise the hilarity, you know, so instead I fumble with technology and end up with half a story. But here she is, telling about the time at the grocery store when she inadvertently shopped from another customer's cart, thinking it was one of those sale item carts. Also starring Butch and Sandie, the neighbors here in Roosevelt.

 

 

Give the Gift of Silly Pants!

When I wrote about silly pants in India I got a comment from a favorite reader and loyal friend whom I love to death. She said she thought they were really cute, so Summer and I bought her a pair for a little souvenir from our trip. You may recognize them from the post I did about the Creepy Starers on the train, pictured below on the left. Turns out they're not only a dual purpose skirt/pants, they also make great Creepy Starer protection!

 

 

Well, she loved them! And we loved her Thank You email. I got her permission to copy it in its entirety for your reading pleasure:

 

Hi Kady & Summer...

I received my silly pants today!! Thank you so much!! I was so hoping you guys would send me a pair. I went out to get the mail and when I saw the package was from you two, I said, "oh, pleaaasssseee let it be silly pants"..I really did. I was so excited and I tore open the package and then I said, "yeah, silly pants". I was on my way to the Dr. and I didn't have time to try them on. But, tonight..I put them on and here's how it went.

I had on a turquoise sweater, so they didn't match color wise or material-wise. My sweater looked too warm with them. When I first put them on, I went to my full length mirror to look at the fit, and I swear, it looked like I had this huge penis hanging down. With a raised eyebrow and a "huh?" I tucked the fabric back and then I turned around and looked in the mirror at my rear. It looked like an elephant butt with huge testicles hanging at the back of my knees. I said, "oh, these are silly pants. They sure didn't fit Summer & Kady like this in their pictures." I thought, I really probably won't ever wear these.Then something magical happened. I removed my sweater and put on a soft sports bra that I sleep in as pajamas. I turned around and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I caught my own attention and I said, "WHAT?"...I actually looked pretty sexy and really hot. And when you look sexy, what do you do? You start dancing and posing. So, I was doing the, Look Like An Egyptian Dance...I started posing in all different figurations. And then I thought...I should put on some really high heals and pose in these Egyptian poses and take some photos and send to the girls. I want them to know how much fun I'm having in these silly pants and how much I appreciate them and how ridiculously sexy I look. Anyway, then I said, "yeah, but if I do, they probably will do some 'clogging' about it and post these photos on 'that way tube thing'. So, I decided to brush my teeth and while I was doing so, I continued to dance like an Egyptian and like Jeannie in I Dream Of Jeannie, all in front of the mirror. It was then I also remembered that the silly pants were from India and not Egypt. It was also at that time that I decided I WOULD wear these silly pants. Where, you ask? I'm not sure. But be assured, I will rock them!

Love you guys,

"R"*

The moral of the story? COMMENT ON MY BLOG. THERE MAY BE BLING IN IT FOR YOU.

*not her real name.

 

Roosevelt 'Rent Romance

 

I love living with my parents SO much. Here is an example of the types of loving, nurturing, tender conversation I'll miss the most:

 

Dianne: "Gol dang it Hal! Now I gotta rewind this."

 

Hal: "Have another glass of wine, Dianne."

 

Dianne: "I don't need a glass of wine! I need to hear my show!"

 

Hal: "Oh sure, whenever I want to say something..."

 

Dianne: "KEEP TAAAALKIN'!" (rewinds The Bachelor)

 

 

Nagano

The way that I travel does not lend itself well to planning ahead. It's really not possible to buy expensive guidebooks to do research and learn everything about multiple cities/countries and I couldn't be bothered anyway. (Too lazy and too cheap.) Instead, my strategy is to trust the other travelers that I meet and find out as much as I can from them about what to do. I was chatting with a mother-son traveling team in Kyoto and that's how I learned there was a MOUNTAIN. IN JAPAN!

 

Well, duh. They had the Olympics there. I forgot. Whatever. I can't remember everything I ever know. So I rearranged a few things with my loose itinerary and headed up to Nagano on my way to Tokyo from Hiroshima. (It's not on the way.) While I was there I was able to rent a complete snowboarding get-up and borrow a pair of cozy big socks from one of my hostel mates.

 

Rented. All but the coffee.

I woke up early and hopped on a free shuttle to the mountain. I buddied up with three friends from my hostel (the socks girl and two Aussies). The girl with the socks had a lesson and so she broke off from our group leaving me with the two dudes. Well, it's not their fault they have no snow in Australia and had only been a handful of times. I regretted my decision to hang with them pretty quickly. I ended up waiting for them a lot and finally had to part ways and spend the rest of the day by myself. After all, I spent way too much money on train tickets and a lift ticket and equipment to spend the whole day sitting on my butt waiting.

 

And then I got in touch with the nature.

 

Best. Day. Ever.

 

Snow!!!!

I'm so sad to be leaving my parents' place on Thursday! When I'm not laying on the couch or eating or drinking wine or cross-country skiing I'm shoveling snow (well, just the once). But my dad didn't have his boots on and we came home to a drift across the walkway that we couldn't pass.

This is like 50 pounds of snow.

The big news is I start work in Minneapolis on March 11th. But I'm taking a much needed vacation to Puerto Rico in between (all this hard work). So I'm heading to the big city this week! Now, how many more mom-cooked meals is that? 40? 41?

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Sunday Favorites: Clamato Jugs and Other Valuables

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on September 14, 2010:

 

 

Cleaning out my dad's garage was pretty tough. He saves lots of seemingly worthless things. But, in his mind, they are priceless. Because everything has a use. If he needs to fix something, he always has just the right 2 X 4 to nail to it or the right screw to screw into it. He even has excess lawn mower handles in case the lawn mower's handle needs fixing he can just weld a new one. Even though the current lawn mower is 20 years old and has never needed a new handle. But throwing stuff away hasn't been easy for him. The quote I kept hearing over and over was, "it's not worth anything, but it's valuable. Valuable."  My sisters and I boxed up a bunch of stuff he couldn't part with, and joked that we should just label every box, "VALUABLES." Here's an example of the kinds of conversations we were having all week:

Me: "Dad, why are you saving all these Clamato jugs?"

Dad: "For peein'."

Me: "Can I throw them away?"

Dad: *faints*

____________________

Dad:  "These riggin' straps ain't worth anything, but they're valuable."

Me:  "Can I throw them away?"

Dad: "Kady!  the Value!"

_____________________


He's very organized.  And every little box contains a different kind of nail or screw or hook or cord or tack or what-have-you:

And here we have a bag of 27 plastic crow decoys.  For shootin' crows.  (They got packed for the cabin):

My dad has a TON of bungie cords. He will pull over on the freeway if he sees a stray bungie cord to pick it up. I don't think he has ever paid for one. He just collects them, and according to my mom he has never and will never use them. One time they were hauling something somewhere and were trying to figure out how to tie whatever it was down. My mom suggested they use one of his bungie cords. He about fainted. Right now, they are boxed up to be moved to the cabin. Not loose, to use for the move.  Boxed up, to be moved. And hung. In the new garage. For not using.

Tonight's Hal-ism: "My achin' a**. My achin' legs. My achin' knees. I'm a dyin' man. And now I'm throwing away valuable Clamato jugs."

"I'm on Vacation!"

Both Summer and I slept about 15 hours for four days in a row when we first got to Nepal. However I was the first to get up and get going in the afternoon. Which made me better than her, and less lazy of course. So when the breakfast waiter asked me where she was, and I replied that she was "still sleeping", I loved his reply to me, (who had just woken up at 1pm):

 

"Your friend sleep? Very long time."

 

Sadly, this is the only photo I got of Summer sleeping. So lazy!

 

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"Hash?"

Traveling through India as women hardened both Summer and me into almost unrecognizably mean versions of ourselves.

 

Summer even punched a man.

 

After leaving India, our new and more horrible selves traveled through Nepal. On two separate occasions, while innocently window shopping on the streets of Kathmandu, out of the blue I was sidled up to from behind by a gross dirty stinky man hissing in my ear, "You want some hash?" and both times, I jumped right out of my skin, as if they had hissed "BOO!" (It didn't help that he said it in Gollum's voice.)

 

"You want some hash?"

 

 

I decided if it ever happened again and if I had the frame of mind to do it, I was going to punch the next guy. Why in the heck would you scarily approach a woman from behind and hiss into her ear? I was going to take it upon myself to teach the lessons of decency to the gross dirty stinky men of the world. Ladies like Kady Hexum do not appreciate being approached in that way, nor would they be buying any HASH "from the likes of YOU, Thank-You-Very-Much."

 

Well, it happened a third time. And I was prepared for it. I steeled myself, spun around, and wound up to flatten him. What I saw in his hand stopped me instantly. And in that millisecond, my mind replayed what he really had said:

 

"Tiger Balm?"

 

You got lucky this time, Poor Tiger Balm Salesman; you got real lucky.

 

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Miyajima Island

Just outside of Hiroshima, Japan, there's a beautiful little island called Miyajima that's totally worth a visit. It takes about an hour from the A-Bomb site, but it's an easy tram ride. And if you're like me, you can totally snooze open-mouthed and snoring and get woken up by the tram driver and you're there!

 

And then you get to take a ferry! (I love ferries.)

 

 

Upon arrival to Miyajima, the first thing you'll see are the zillions of deer walking around willy nilly. I saw little kids petting them and so I figured it might be OK, but you know, deer are vicious creatures and I couldn't be certain it wouldn't turn and maul me so I played it safe.

 

Vicious!

This torii gate at high tide appears to float on the water.

 

I was traveling with a couple of dudes from Australia, and we decided to meet at the island and hike up Mt. Misen. It's only a couple kilometers up and back down, but the guidebooks said it takes four hours to do it round trip. We decided we didn't have enough time before dark and so we took the cable car most of the way up, hiked to the summit and then RAN back down.

Hilarious!

View from the rope way. (Cable Car.)

As if I hadn't just ridden the cable car 80% of the way up.

 

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Hal-isms, Vol. 33

"Doggone it! He's gonna take away our guns."

"What's wrong with your boss that he don't want you to shoot things?"

"I'm watchin' Dancin' With Wolves!"

"You gotta admit Norwegians are a better class of people."

"Why do pregnant ladies always have to show off their bellies?"

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I Told You

 

 

We had some serious snow last night and after my dad got it all plowed up an unidentified animal trotted up our driveway, peed, pooped twice and dropped little bits of blood everywhere and then ran behind the garage and into the woods.

This is like Christmas for my dad. What kind of an animal was it? What did it eat last? Why was it bleeding? Where was it going? We walked up the driveway to inspect the poop and get some questions answered. I told you he's always digging in animal poop!

Tomorrow those gloves will probably be hugging me. Ew!!

 

See the little dots of blood? I suggested maybe it was a girl animal during it's embarrassing time.

You have to smell it to see what kind of animal it was. Duh.

"Can't I do anything without you taking pictures?"

 

 

The verdict? Probably a coyote. There was deer hair in the poop, which was a good clue. Also he said it smelled just like coyote poop.

 

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Frozen Bike Ride in Kyoto

Do you feel sorry for all these people I force to take my photo?

 

I had romantic visions of riding bicycle on my entire trip through Eastern Europe, Sri Lanka, and India. And why shouldn't I? I became quite the hipster cyclist wannabe last summer in Minneapolis.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way and I only ended up going for one sad little hour-long ride in Nepal. One ride in almost five months. Pathetic! So in Kyoto, Japan when I saw a flyer in the hostel lobby for $2 off the $8 daily rate I agreed to it in my mind before I even considered the weather. Or the walking distance from my hostel to the rental shop. Who cared? I had nothing else to do.

Ooh I froze. Well, I had no socks. Or rather, I refused to wear the sneakers which had become attached to my feet in India and Nepal with their human feces-exteriors. I was determined to try to look a tiny bit cuter in Japan. No sneakers meant either flip flops or ballet flats, which could not EVER be worn with anything but the tiny little socks you wear inside to keep your feet from stinking.

Yah. Sneakers would have totally ruined this look.

 

Aside from the freezing weather, I had a blast and saw lots of Kyoto's sights. I went to my first Starbucks since leaving the US and saw the man with the extreme combover picking his nose. I went to the Imperial Palace but couldn't tour it because I didn't have a reservation. But that was OK because I rode all around their gorgeous gardens and I saw a man having a picnic with his cat and that made my day.

Then I rode up to the Kinkaju-Ji (the Golden Pavilion) and at a stoplight on the way met a handsome American on a bicycle who asked if I was on vacation. When I said yes, he said he lived here and then rode off. Well la-di-da.

Ooh my feet were cold. I stopped in a few gift shops on the way looking for socks. I was cold enough not to care anymore about socks inside ballet flats. Every pair was Hello Kitty and $10. Highway robbery!

The Kinkaju-Ji was fantastic. Absolutely gorgeous. I hung out there forever and imagined myself walking around in there in wooden shoes and a kimono 500 years ago.

 

After that I rode down to another pagoda and the TV tower and another temple and in the end I think I rode for a total of five hours. It was weird, because it took me about an hour to figure out that Kyoto drivers do not want bikes on the road. You're supposed to ride on the sidewalk! Totally illegal in Minnesota. But, when in Rome...

 

 

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