Somewhere in Eau Claire Wisconsin, a beautiful young professional woman (me) extends her delicate lady fingers out an open car window, lightly rubbing the middle and thumb together as if sifting through sand. Suddenly the wind picks up and carries her booger right back into the car.
She quickly looks at her husband to make sure he does not see.
Today was my mom's one year Deathiversary. That is to say she died one year ago today. I haven't said that out loud on this blog yet because I've just had probably the worst year of my life and your mom dying is never funny. And I guess I only like to write about things that are funny.
Well - I'm back Jerry! Here's something funny:
I woke up at 4am on this, the morning of my dear mother's deathiversary to myself literally crapping the bed. Pooping in the bed. Full-on diarrhea poop. No warning. I wasn't sick. I didn't eat anything weird. Poop.
I knew my siblings might appreciate the irony and also the poop story (we are an intelligent humor bunch, us). So I sent them all a quick text on the old Mass-textomy.
"I don't know if you've noticed but I drive not violent. 'Non-violent driving' they call it."
"It's time I stopped dreaming young men's dreams. I need to start dreaming of sitting on the couch listening to the neighbors and watching Trump settle the world's affairs."
"I buy my eggs in twins."
"You try to help other people, and then YOU suffer. That's been my life."
Have you ever seen how pineapples grow? It's SO COOL. I suppose I just thought they grew on trees like any good tropical fruit, but then on a trip to Samoa I got to see that they grow right out of the ground.
Insane.
These pictures are from Ponta del Gada Portugal, where they have a pineapple plantation. Really it was multiple greenhouses with about 2500 plants in each one.
I was ASTOUNDED to learn that it takes 18-24 months for one to grow. Did you know that you can also take the tops off of them, plant them, and then in just 24 short months you'll have a new, mini pineapple that you can eat?
Well you can.
It just feels like they should cost $25 and not $7 because of how long they take?
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. Enjoy! This story originally appeared on August 15, 2013: My friends and I stopped at a Mills Fleet Farm on a recent girls' weekend trip, because, obviously. There was shopping to be done. I still needed some dark denim Wrangler farm girl jeans and some Cowboy boots. Because, obviously.
I tried on some other shoes, too:
I posted that picture on Facebook, because, obviously. Ten minutes later, I received a text from my little sister Kasey. She had apparently also just paid a visit to the old Fleet Farm:
Like a couple of freaking twins separated at birth who get reunited and show up to meet each other for the first time in the same freaking dress.
Last night when I got home I was alone and so I checked all the usual places for monsters in my house. The basement, the main floor shower, the upstairs shower, etc.
I found nothing, and so I crawled into bed with my dog and drifted off to ... and right before sleeping I realized that I didn't look under the bed.
OH GOD.
So I started thinking "what should I be scared of?" and the only thing that came up was the fish/guy from the movie the Shape of Water.
And then I laughed because that is not even sort of scary! And then I went to sleep.
And it's a good gosh darn thing my brain didn't go here:
My dad lives in the very way north of Minnesota, only a few miles from the Canadian Border crossing at Warroad.
A short drive from there (as long as you have your passport), is the very northernmost part of the lower 48 states, the Angle Inlet aka the Northwest Angle. There was a cartographer's mistake like a million years ago when they were drawing the shape of the USA and so this tiny section, obviously originally intended to be "in Canada" instead was assigned "to Minnesota" and I'm glad too because it makes Minnesota look really cute at the top. But to get there you pretty much have to drive into Canada and then back into Minnesota - because ain't nobody got time to drive all the way there in a boat.
Anyway, I had never been there. And on a 2017 trip to my parents' place, I fully planned to visit, (uninteresting detail to follow) but forgot my passport. So I made Zach FedEx it to me.
Crossing the border at Warroad is slightly confusing - there is a great big beautiful brand new giant building on the left hand side of the road and a big arrow and so I got confused and went in there, but sort of figured out as I was walking in the door that I was at the USA customs, and not the Canada customs and so in typical Kady style, I "HAHAHAHAHAHAAA THIS IS US CUSTOMS RIGHT? NOT CANADA? HAHAHAHAHAHAH OOPS can I use your bathroom?"
Then you drive up like you're going to Winnipeg, but take a hard right at a gas station that sells strange religious fiction novels and potato chips in flavors we don't have in the United States, for CANADIAN DOLLARS.
And then you drive and drive and drive and drive until pretty soon it gets kind of scary because nobody's around and you're on a gravel road for about 30 miles but it takes a least an hour and then suddenly your car's antiquated map system indicates you're approaching the border again, this time back into Minnesota:
And that's basically it - that's the "border". Just a blue sign saying: "WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES, YOU ARE ENTERING ANGLE INLET, MINNESOTA."
From there it's an honor system thing. You're required by law to go to the "customs building", which is basically just a videophone where you can either press "PUSH TO CALL [American flag]" or "PUSH TO CALL [Canadian flag]".
I'm serious.
And then, you're in the Northwest Angle. It's a little town where a lot of people live (most of the license plates read North Dakota, interestingly enough.)
I drove around for a while and then found a little bar and had some Molson Canadian (obviously), chatted up the Native kid bartender, learned all about how he and his siblings attended Minnesota's only remaining one room schoolhouse, and about how, when the teacher mentioned in the article I just linked to retired for a time (or moved away I can't remember), they all had to ride a bus every day back and forth 75 miles to Warroad.
Shiny black rocks along the shore
Minnesota's only remaining Public One-Room Schoolhouse
Breaking news over here at A Lady Reveals Nothing. Did you know that the United States experienced a full and total Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017? The path of totality landed somewhere in Missouri - way far south of here, but that didn't stop my cool mom from purchasing eclipse glasses from Amazon six weeks in advance of the event.
Oh we waited with bated breath on the front porch every day as the Eclipse date approached. They weren't coming and they weren't coming. Mom went into her Amazon account every day and reported the updates ("nothin!", or "they're in Bemidji!" etc).
The day came but the glasses didn't. It turned out to be fine, since we had complete cloud cover. You can view my reporting on this, LIVE, here and here.
Anyway - after the hullabaloo was over, on that very day at 6:21pm, don't ya spose the UPS man showed up with our glasses?
6:21pm, 8/21/17
That's OK. We had fun with them. The following Monday we stared right at the sun!
When my mom went into the hospital, I ran to the local grocery store to grab lots of Doritos, cheese snacks, mixers for the alcohol we snuck in there, and tons of juicy gossip magazines.
This is what was on offer:
and don't get excited about that VOGUE either. It was VOGUE Knitting
I've been using a Corporate plane to get up to see my Dad. Not my Corporate plane, mind you, but the Corporate plane of a well-known Minnesota Company that flies it's muckety-mucks from Warroad MN to Minneapolis MN and back on the daily and Lucky Me! They let any-old-Joe ride on this plane for a mere $100 donation to a local Warroad charity. (Bless 'em). My parents live 11 miles from the Warroad International Airport and I live 5 miles from the MSP. Only, these planes fly out of a tiny little airport located between MSP Airport Terminals 1 and 2 (otherwise known as Lindbergh and Hubert Humphrey). This little bitsy in-between airport is called "Signature Flights" and you have to call on a little phone from your car to get into a parking lot which leads to a smallish building but then after the building you can literally walk right onto your tiny little plane. There's no removal of liquids there's no taking off your shoes there's no seeing if there is liquid "medical marijuana" in your purse (even if you are a totally type A good girl who would never use such an "illicit drug" but only secured it clandestinely from your hairdresser because she seemed like somebody who would know something about such things and also because your mom has cancer and she's dying and you will do anything including committing what you're pretty sure is a felony to ease her pain).
ANYWAY:
It feels so FANCY!
Imagine during the Super Bowl (!) - all those famous people (!) flying to this exact airport (!)- and though I've never seen a famous person there, I'm sure they have been and that makes me feel...really...really...famous myself.
So, every time I go through there I sort of hold my head higher than I normally would (because normally I'm just a girl, picking a booger with her thumb). One particular time, however, and this time is the subject of this particular story, it was a Monday morning and it was 5:30 and I was the ONLY. PERSON. ON. THE. PLANE.
FANCY!!!
So - imagine how I felt. Walking in to this exclusive airport - just having gotten off a PRIVATE. PLANE. Just me (!) and the pilots (!)
And I was wearing my cute jeans and my cute down jacket that's only 18 years old but I bought it in Austria so, you know, it's pretty cute, and my slouchy beanie hat that all the cool girls wear and here I am, and people are LOOKING.
They are flipping their heads around to see WHO IS THAT GIRL? and I feel so gorgeous and rich! and exclusive!
And then I went into the bathroom (the one with really really thick napkin-y hand towels in a basket). And:
A couple of summers ago - I got invited to go on a boat trip with some good pals, their parents and friends - Zach was working in Vermont unfortunately, so I went solo.
It was as epic a day as you can imagine. We zoomed down the St. Croix River, between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The weather was perfect, the conversation dynamic, the drinks were flowing. There were other boats to wave at. I may or may not have mooned them. Anyway, it was SO FUN.
At some point on a boat, as a woman, the question will always be: "where do I pee?" and usually the answer is, "in the River", but I could NOT resist this strange contraption and decided to use it just because I was probably under the influence of alcohol.
Bathroom?
WHAT?!?
Anyway, I did my thing and it was just as weird and fun as you would think. Then it came time to flush the toilet.
Even though you can clearly see in these photos that there are instructions on how to do so - I didn't figure that out. At the time.
I just kept pumping and pumping that pump thing. But nothing happened.
And so I LIFTED THE LID to investigate, and then found a different lever to pull. Pulled that lever.
Got splashed. In the face. With my own pee. I screamed like I was in the middle of being murdered and the entire boat of people came running to find out what happened.
I've been flying back-and-forth to Warroad MN to visit my
parents on the Marvin Windows corporate propeller plane since May. It's fun and
I feel fancy every time and I love getting there in an hour and 15 minutes vs
driving 6.5 hours.
Last month and for the first time I got to ride their jet. No
propellers. Leather buttery seats. Fancy fancy. Oh man it goes fast! The same exact trip
takes 45 minutes. But let me tell you the take off is terrifying. I have never felt such speed in my entire life and I have ridden the fastest train on earth (Shanghai Maglev China). Anyway it goes one million miles an hour and you go
straight up. STRAIGHT up. Seriously. When we got up to cruising altitude I turned to the woman next to me and asked her "are we in space?". I was seated across from her children (this jet had a four-seat-face-each-other-thing) and they giggled the entire time and that was the only reason I didn't bawl my eyes out from sheer terror.
But that's not the point of my story. The point of my story is that when I first got in the jet I noticed that same woman in the very very back of the plane with one of her kids. She looked like she was confused and didn't know if she wanted to sit way back there with him and I am nosey and so I already knew from eavesdropping that she was traveling with her husband, two little boys and giant pregnant belly (which was filled with twins as I was to find out later). So I stuck my nose in even further and offered to take the way back so she could sit in the four seat thing with her whole family. I smugly went to take my hero's position all the way in the back. (Seat change explained below). I am SUCH a good person. Ask anyone. I couldn't find the seat belt though? I searched and searched. Then a man came and sat right across from me and we were sitting so close to each other that our knees were intertwined. Face-to-face. I was like, "oh man I hope I like this guy because this is AWK.WARD." He had a book which was a good sign just in case. But his seat for sure had a seat belt. I stood to look better for my seat belt, which meant he had to stand too to let me look and turn around and stuff. Finally it dawned
on me that the seat was probably flipped down and I needed to flip it up to
find the seat belt.
This is how to say "She pooped in her hand" in Afrikaans. In Espanol: "se kaka in su mano". Swedish: "Huite hannen". I used to collect how many languages I could say that in. I was up to five at one point.
My most embarrassing story: Or, one of them. (I have learned to tell my own embarrassing stories, otherwise Kasey will tell them and not put the proper spin on it. As we know, she "likes to expose.") Anyway, one day, after getting home after having run a half marathon (brag), I took my shower and decided to air out and not get dressed immediately. So sue me. I wanted to check my online class or something and so I got in front of the computer. Now, and this is very important: I do not sit on chairs whilst naked. Especially on a fabric office chair EWWWWW. (FYI)
I was sitting on my foot.
Anyway again, I felt somebody knocking at my back door if you know what I mean and realized kind of urgently that I had to go number two. But, I knew that my computer takes a while to perform certain functions. And so, I decided to wait for the urgency to pass (like it allllllways does) and just click a few more times before running down to the bathroom. And then it hit me even more urgently. I had to go. Like right now. I started running. If you've been to my old house on Lake Nokomis, you know how long a distance it was for me to get from my room to the bathroom. It's like a mile. And -- so I ran and ran and ran and ran and squinched the entire way. I almost made it too, to the foot of the stairs. And then. All I could do was hold out my hand.
I mean I was trying to win and everything - who has time to "wait for the toilet"? Getty images
