The haul from Atlanta to Northern Indiana is about 11 hours. Clifford had to work that day so we we’d be driving overnight arriving around 6AM. We didn’t run into any issues, really. The mountains were relatively clear and we didn’t hit much snow till Indy.

The thing about Northern Indiana is there is a whole lot of nothing. There are fields, and more fields. There are tiny towns spread sporadically throughout, but this is a part of the country built on farmers’ backs. There isn’t late night Chinese delivery (there likely isn’t any Chinese delivery). Pool halls open till 2AM are few and far between. There are no comedy clubs or nightlife along that long lonely road home. Clifford and I were driving through sleepy little towns in America’s Heartland where things like gas stations and restaurants are not open 24 hours a day.

So when at 5AM, technically on Christmas morning, an hour away from what I still truly considered my home, Clifford tells me he has to pee, I smile knowingly and a little annoyed.

Let me explain about the “annoyed” – the final hour of any long road trip … you know what I mean. You’ve been in the car for God only knows how many hours and you are done. It’s fun at first. You pop in your audiobook or plug in your ipod. There’s an energy you have when gearing up for that long drive ahead. You’re pumped to see your family/friends/scenic spot that has given the road trip its purpose. You’ve stopped to eat or stand as needed along the way. Then you’re in the final homestretch where you stop for nothing. Blood clots be damned, you will do whatever you have to do to not stop the vehicle until you’ve reached your final destination.

Me: Can you hold it for like an hour?

Clifford: Uh, no.

Me: Please? I beg of you…

Clifford: No. I seriously have to pee. I’ve had two red bulls and four cokes since our last stop. I have to go now.

I smiled and nodded. “Well that’s unfortunate because there won’t be any place to stop between here and there. Everything’s closed. You’re going to have to pull over on the side of the road.”

This is where Clifford looked at me like I’d grown three heads.

Clifford: There must be somewhere. A gas station. A fast food joint. Anything.

Me: No, I’m afraid not. Nothing is open this time of the night or rather this early in the morning, and if something was typically open, it will be closed for Christmas for sure, I promise you. Things always close for Christmas here.

He looked at me like I was making it all up. The funny thing is, Clifford had been to my house several times before. He knew the drive. He knew the stops, or lack thereof. I didn’t exactly understand what was so hard for him to believe.

Clifford: I can’t just pull over and pee on the side of the road.

Me: Uh, yes, you can.

Clifford: Seriously, I can’t.

Me: People do it all of the time and we haven’t passed another car since Noblesville, so yeah, I’m pretty sure this shouldn’t be a thing. Nobody is on the road right now. Just pull over.

Comprehension had finally dawned that if he had to go that badly, the side of the road was really his only option at that point in time.

Clifford: Well, where do I pull over?

Me: Anywhere.

He grew up in Africa for crying out loud. Why was this such a big deal?

Clifford: I need to at least pull onto a side road or something. I’m not just going to pee on the side of a state road.

Me: Then whatever, just turn onto a road, park the car and do what you’ve got to do.

Clifford saw a side road up ahead. There was a farmhouse on the corner and another house about a quarter of a mile up the road. Everything else was fields covered by snow.

Her turned down the old side road and just as I thought he was about to stop, he started to pull off the road completely, skipping the shoulder and driving directly onto the field.

Me: What are you doing?!!!

Clifford: Pulling over.

Me: Why are you in the field?!!

Clifford: It’s frozen and I didn’t want anyone to notice us parked on the road.

Me: Because a truck with its lights on in a random field on Christmas morning is much more inconspicuous…

He rolled his eyes and was about to get out of his Dodge Ram (with a hemi) when he realized he had another dilemma. We had left Atlanta with about 50 degree temperatures. We were now in Indiana where the truck was registering 18 degrees outside. Clifford only had on his Birkenstocks, sans socks, and no winter coat. Everything else was packed neatly away in the bed of his truck and rather unreachable.

He groaned as he opened the door. I felt the freezing cold air hit my face hard. I was thankful in that moment for my amazing bladder control as I was not envious of what he had to do.

I felt like he was Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own. It was the world’s longest pee as I sat there waiting for my husband to return and finally he did. He was shivering and talking about how cold it was outside. As he revved the engine and placed the truck in drive, ready to head home, the truck wouldn’t move. You could hear the tires spinning, but it wouldn’t move.

Clifford: What’s going on?

Insert A-ha moment here.

Me: The ground isn’t frozen. We’re stuck in the mud.

Clifford: No way. They’ve had snow up here for weeks.

Me: Doesn’t mean the ground is frozen.

We looked at each other. Now, given Clifford’s and my temperaments, this is normally where we play the blame game and argue rather heatedly about being in such a ridiculous predicament. We hadn’t slept in over 36 hours. We’d been on the road for ten hours straight. We both had on sandals and no winter coats.  We were an hour away from home and we were literally stuck in the middle of nowhere in Indiana in 18 degrees, surrounded by snow and ice and no cell service (it was 2005) in the middle of a field…

We started laughing. This was pretty hilarious stuff.

Clifford devised the plan. He thought it was genius. I didn’t, but let’s go with genius for the moment. Clifford did have a shovel in the back of the truck. He would dig us out and we’d be fine. So, he exited the truck in his Birkenstocks, grabbed the shovel and went to the back of the truck to start digging through about six inches of snow and I have no idea how much mud. I was to slide over to the driver’s seat and try to move us forward when he gave me the okay.

He called to me and said I should be good. I hit the gas and all I heard was spinning. No dice. I could hear Clifford out in the cold, frustrated, teeth chattering, as he continued to dig. I sat in the toasty warm truck cab waiting for his directions.

After another ten to fifteen minutes, he told me to try again. Tires were still spinning. We were still stuck.

He came up to the driver’s side window and knocked. I jumped. Then I laughed when I looked at him. He was frozen from head to toe, but oh so cute with that shovel in his hand, trying desperately to save the day. I rolled the window down and he promptly explained to me that he was going to have to push the truck and I was going to have to hit the gas as hard as I could to get back up onto the road AND  I was to keep going until I was on the road 100%.

The road was nothing but ice, which had me a little worried, but out of the field and onto ice seemed to have more potential in that moment.

I kept the window open so I could hear Clifford yell at me to go. I waited anxiously for my cue. Suddenly I heard it, “Go! Go! Go!”

So I floored it and suddenly the truck just took off toward the road. I was gunning that puppy so hard, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to control it once it hit the icy way. I did fish tail a bit, but we were gold! I looked in the rearview to smile at my newlywed husband who had become my hero, but he was nowhere to be seen. I began to panic a little. I should have been able to see him in the mirror. I slowed the truck to a stop, but in the center of the road so we couldn’t possibly get stuck again. I jumped out of the truck calling his name. Where was he? What happened?

Clifford was lying face first in the muddy snow. When he’d pushed the truck and I took off so suddenly, he lost his footing and planted his face deep in the snow.

I laughed. I laughed hard. Hysterically might even be the word to use here. I couldn’t not laugh. Here we were, somewhere near Wabash on an old country road, trenching a farmer’s field in 18 degree weather just so my husband could pee. As he got up from the ground, he was covered in mud and snow from head to toe. He looked at me, then at his clothes, and started laughing, too.

He couldn’t feel his feet or fingers pretty much the rest of the ride to my parents’ house. Whether it was the sleep deprivation or the absolute absurdity of the situation, we kept laughing for the remaining hour of our trip.

I would do that Christmas all over again. That moment was one of the best we have ever shared. I don’t have the words to ever do that scene in a random unfrozen but snow covered field justice. All I can say is that it was absolutely magical and it still makes me smile to this day.

Merry Christmas! I hope your holiday is as eventful as mine was nine years ago today.

The age old question- If you could go anywhere in the world, with no restrictions, where would you go? I usually tout the typical go-tos: Scotland, back to Ireland, Fiji (because who doesn’t say Fiji?), Chicago… Everyone has a list of where they’d jet to if money and time were of no consequence.

The hilarious thing is, if I was asked that question today, my answer would be Fort Wayne, Indiana. I NEVER in a million trillion years would have EVER thought that Fort Wayne, Indiana would be my answer to that question. If you’ve ever been, you know how completely hilarious that is. It might be the second largest city in the state, but that’s not saying much in a region consumed by cornfields and basketball hoops.

The thing is, I spoke to Chelle (my best best friend in the whole world) on the phone, and I realized how much I miss her and how much we need best friends in our lives. I also realized I haven’t seen my best best friend in over a year. That kinda sucks, really.

Awesome best friend moment. Sucks it’s been a year.

We always have such an amazing time together. We have inside jokes and we laugh at everything. We have a rich history and sometimes it just feels so nice to speak to someone who’s been a part of that history (and who never judges that history because they have one, too).

After winning tennis sectionals back in the day.

About to head out for a fun night in Chi-Town.

We do totally stupid and random things together because we think it’s funny. Seriously. Totally stupid and random stuff. For example, we picked an arbitrary day and drove all of the way to Oregon, Ohio because we found it on a map and because it was random and stupid and because we wanted a road trip like Thelma and Louise (minus the Brad Pitt prostitute thing and violently driving off a cliff together, of course). To O-r-e-g-o-n, O-h-i-o. Let’s just say it’s exactly what you’d imagine and we couldn’t stop giggling the entire time we were there. We also ended up in Michigan on the way home, but that’s a story for another post.

We can tell by the tenor in our voices how we’re feeling or what sort of a mood we’re in. We know our fake smiles from our genuine ones. We can sit in comfortable silence. We can look at each other and have an entire conversation about whatever’s going on around us without even speaking a word. It’s a really cool thing to have that kind of a connection with someone.

In talking to her, I just kept thinking about how I wished I was in Fort Wayne, having a glass of wine with my favorite girl, because though this can be a wonderful time of the year, it can be an extremely stressful time as well. Best friends are needed for those stressful times. Thank goodness time and distance are never factors when it comes to the tightknit bonds of our finest friendships.

Of course it stinks I live about 650 miles south of Chelle, and I can’t just hop in my car and be at her house in a few minutes, but that doesn’t affect our friendship. In fact, sometimes a great distance like that can close some pretty sizeable gaps.

So today, this December 12^th of 2014, let it be known that I would be happy to be sitting somewhere in Fort Wayne, Indiana with Chelle by my side, sipping some Shiraz or maybe sharing a donut because sometimes the day dictates that you just have to have a donut.

For my lovely, hilarious and often uncouth (which is why I adore you) best friends Chelle and Darewood. Keep doing random stupid stuff, my friends. 

Random

Random

Stupid

Stupid

Stuff

I’ve spoken about teepeeing before (some call it rolling, some spell it TP’ing, but spelling it the way I do makes me laugh). If you don’t know, teepeeing is taking rolls of toilet paper and tossing them into trees. It’s also one of the most prevailing pastimes in the Hoosier State. Now I can’t speak for anyone south of Indy (where you run into city folk or Kentucky), but in Northern Indiana, particularly rural Northern Indiana, once fall hits, yards, trees and bushes are fair game and decorated with glorious streams of Charmin (glorious only if you’re any good at it. Believe me, I’ve teepee’d with many a person who has hideous form).

Here’s the thing, if you were worth your weight at all, you had way more than just 12 rolls of tender tissue in your arsenal. You weren’t just bound to toilet paper when sabotaging a person’s property. You had soap (to smear on the windows). Toothpaste (to put on/around/under door handles). Shaving Cream (for anywhere). Toothpicks (for sprinkling in the lawn). Oreos (to smear on brick houses). Bologna (to eat away the paint on one’s car). And as I was reminded on the Facebook thread – roadkill … (only in Indiana, folks)

It was a 7^th grade Halloween slumber party at Mardell Kauffman’s house. There were, I don’t know, between 10 and 15 of us there? Everyone brought something to contribute. Now it’s been about 22 years, so if anyone reading this was there, please forgive the hazy details or any minute inaccuracies. In fact, I’d love for you to add your recollections of that momentous evening to the comments below.

I remember everything we brought being placed in one room. We had enough toilet paper to wrap the White House three or four times and enough “other stuff” to have us paying Bill-Gates-sized fines for the rest of our lives (because this is technically vandalism we’re talking about here). It was absurd.

At some point, we geared up to go. We piled into the back of Mardell’s dad’s pick-up truck. Again, we had a lot of girls, so we crammed into the truck bed covered by blankets to keep us warm (and hidden from the police). It was late October in Northern Indiana, for crying out loud. We were lucky we weren’t buried in two feet of snow.

I can’t remember whose house we hit first or second or third. But this gaggle of girls hit plenty in the sleepy little town of Millerburg that night. We would unload down the road a bit from our target, and stealthily make our way to the yard. There really is a technique to getting a long stream of cotton white paper flowing in the wind. For instance, if you don’t leave a long enough tail when you toss, the paper stays close to the roll and you get nothing from your throw.  You also need to have decent aim. You have no idea the number of times I’ve teepee’d alongside those with less aim than a Storm Trooper. Many a roll of toilet paper has been lost in the trees or on a roof top through the years, never to be seen again.

That particular night, chock-full of giggles while dashing from one dark corner to another, the wind in our hair and the solidarity of fast friends breaking the law, binding us together for one night of fun, was only intensified by a Hatfield/McCoy style feud between the Kauffmans and the Rinks.

Enter: the roadkill. I never really wondered about the bucket and shovel on the back of the truck bed when we left the house. But as we moved from one locale to the next, Mardell’s dad would stop the truck and Mindy Sark (bless you my sweet Mindy!) would hop off the back and shovel up whatever possum or raccoon happened to be laying in our way; then she tossed it into the bucket for safe keeping. SO NASTY. My understanding was this was going to be a bold move by the Kauffmans in the next round of “back at ya” antics between the two families. Roadkill on the Rink’s doorstep. A highlight of any 13 year old’s Halloween bash.

The most memorable moment of the evening, though, was our last stop. The finale. It was Jeremy Delcamp’s house. Jeremy lived down a long long lane. This is not exactly optimal when you are trying to do a quick chuck and run. Now Jeremy had been hit pretty recently, so he and his brother were a bit more aware of any out-of-the-ordinary noises being heard on a Friday night. Long story short, we were made.

I remember hightailing it back to the truck, piling in, and Mardell’s dad taking off at the speed of light down the back country road. Then sirens rang out. Whether the Delcamps had called the cops or we were just that unlucky, we found ourselves being chased by the local Fuzz.

Now Millersburg is notorious for their speed traps. They would clock you for nothing over and you’d still get a ticket. So the ante was certainly raised by teepeeing in this particular neck of the woods, which I won’t deny was a little bit of the thrill. And suddenly that thrill was about to get us busted. But Mardell’s dad was a king of subversion – and apparently at maneuvering a speeding pick-up with a throng of tweens being tossed around on the back bed.

It felt like we were flying 80 mph through the town. The cops were right on our tail. And I don’t know how he did it, but somehow Mardell’s dad got us safely to the house where we promptly exited the back of the truck and hid in the Kauffman’s garage. We watched as the flashing lights sped past the property. Somehow, we did it! And without getting caught.

The funny thing is, yes, this was a party so there were a few more people than per usual, but I remember almost every other weekend (during football season particularly) being dedicated to crazy antics like these. Fun times with our friends, that’s for sure. And not always with roadkill – thankfully.

Here’s the thing – never mess with a Hoosier when toilet paper is on the line … we will win that war. Every time. I promise.

What’s your best teepeeing story? Email it to me or share in the comments below. I’d love a good laugh.  

Elkhart County Fair … nothing like it anywhere.

Yeah, I did 4-H. I got the ten year member pin. I usually entered the Drawing category, though I did enter my guinea pig Martha in my first year. I wasn’t very big on the club’s meetings and activities as I got older, nor very keen on selling geraniums, but I’m still proud to have been a part of the organization. I mean, it scored us a parking pass and free admission to one of the coolest events a Podunk town could have.  Oh, and it taught great values and all that jazz, too.

“I Pledge my Head to clearer thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Hands to larger service, and my Health to better living, for my club, my community, my country, and my world.”

The fair has it all. It has the crazy Midway with creepy carneys, dangerous rides, and rigged games. It has that food aisle that smells like fried everything. It has farm animals, dairy barns, harness racing, demolition derbies, exhibit halls, elephant ears, tractor pulls, queen contests, rodeos, concerts and a parade.

As a kid, it’s the place that felt like Disneyland. Cotton candy on a stick, clowns, prizes, kiddie rides and a fun house. As a teen, it’s where you went to hook-up, smoke your cigarettes and flaunt your short shorts.

One summer a friend had invited me to the teen dance night. I thought it was going to be awesome. An actual event for individuals our age, dancing to good music and meeting new people. Instead, it was where I learned grinding was a dance move. I learned how much skin one can show and not get arrested. I also learned how to simulate sex on a dance floor in front of hundreds of other teens. It was probably one of the most disgusting and offensive things I’d ever attended, and that includes a county fair in North Florida. Felt like I needed a shower after both occasions and something to gouge out my eyes to make the icky visuals go away.

Another great memory was eating at the Taco Stand. It was my favorite eatery on the food strip. Immediately following suit, I got in line for the Crazy Dance, one of the newer rides at the time. You sit in a two seater while you’re jerked around from side to side, banging your head against the compartment all while spinning in circles at rather unsafe speeds. That day I’d gotten heat stroke and puked as soon as I exited the ride. But you bet I was back on that horse the very next year. Inappropriate dancing, unsound rusty rides, and puking up tacos are what make the fair so fantastic. You only live once.

One of the coolest things about having such a huge county fair, is that it brought in some pretty big musical talent for its attendees. Some of my favorites were Ray Stevens, CCR, and The Village People … there were probably even bigger country names, but I could care less about those. I think the biggest and best I’d ever attended was actually two summers ago. I hadn’t been to the fair in over ten years. I was home on a brief vacation and my dad got Chelle and I tickets to see Styx. It was unfreakingbelievable. Check it out here and here.

Chelle and me ready for Styx.

Lawrence Gowan

Tommy Shaw

Somehow, no matter how sun burned, dehydrated, sore, tired, and painful the fair is, it’s forgotten the moment they close those admission gates and you can’t wait till the next year. If you have never been to a fair, I suggest you make the trek.

What’s your best fair story? Email me or submit it below.