The tragedy of Cutie

Okay, so a couple of months ago, Mom and I woke up the week before little one's birthday, and thought "What are we going to get Avi for her birthday?"

After a while deliberating, we realized that she had been wanting a hamster (or some other equally furry critter) for about a year.  And we had kept telling her no, since we had the move coming up.  Well, we had just gotten to Japan, so the move was over.  And coincidentally one of the first stores we explored happened to also have a pet section.  Perfect.

So her birthday rolls around, and we let her open the hamster house, and food, and shavings, and whatever else.  So that weekend, Daddy and Avi are off to Makeman to buy a hamster.  Welcome home, Cutie McFluffy.  And there in, the story begins its tragic downward spiral.  It's all fun and games, and every child in our 70 family building is crowded around the cage non-stop.  It's awesome.  It's amazing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure in a poll of public opinion, Cutie can cure cancer.  We were trying our best to let him acclimate, and not really letting him be handled or taken out of the cage that week, to avoid being squished.

At the end of the week, it is time to clean the cage, and change the litter.  Alicia and Avi reach into the cage to gently scoop him up, while the litter is changed.  That’s about the time I get a frantic text, from Alicia asking if hamsters can carry rabies.  After assuring her that they can't (Hey, shut up.  Like you married folks don’t tell little white lies to stay married!), I had her send me a picture of the bite, and ensure that it was actually bleeding (which in my logic would imply a lesser chance of "incoming" infection) and told her to wash it thoroughly with soap and water, and to stop foaming at the mouth until I got home.

Notice to prospective hamster parents, from Alicia:

Hamsters will NOT sniff your hand sweetly and cautiously like a dog, to get friendly.  They will instead, wiggle their whiskers, luring you slowly closer, and then viciously attack, usually lunging straight for the jugular.  In the wild, they have been known to leap to the neck level of grown men.  

When I got home, everything was back as it should be.  Except that no one wanted to play with the hamster, and Alicia had taken to calling him "Killer".  This went on for a few weeks, until things settled down, everyone kind of forgot about the "attack".  But the nickname stuck.  So now, Cutie/Killer would get taken out for his jaunts in the ball, and that still had the attraction value, but anything else was rare.

Meanwhile, Alicia and I were the only ones who would now clean the cage, as even Avi was a little reluctant to touch him.  One night at bedtime, Alicia secretly confided in me that she was secretly hoping he'd die, because she was the one doing all the work, plus he stunk.  This was also about the time that Cutie had to be moved out of the girl's room because he was keeping them awake.  He was notoriously nocturnal, but he had taken to the bad habit of gnawing on the bars of his cage, stripping the cheap Chinese cage paint off the bars.  She seemed concerned that it might not be healthy.  I just told her to relax, and pointed out that he was probably just sharpening his "fangs" for the next attack.

This was evidently the code word for "Fine, I will be the one to change the cage litter out".  Because that’s what happened for a while.  Gotta love being married to someone you love to antagonize.  Anyway, fast forward to this morning…..

We wake up, and are making breakfast.  I hear one of the girls exclaim "Awww look, he got so tired eating he fell asleep in his food bowl"

Alicia promptly pulls me to the bedroom, with a worried look on her face.  "I think Killer died".  

"I doubt it, he's probably just asleep.  He's fooled us before."

"No.  He hasn't moved since last night"

At this point, I gave her a look, and was questioning what she might have finally gone and done….. but I realized she didn’t have it in her.

So we go in, and I drop a drop of water on his nose, to see if it wakes him up, and then we call Avi over, to explain what happened.

She cried for a couple of minutes, curled up on Momma's lap.  Then jumps up and walks to her room.  

Alicia has somewhere to be, but while she's gone, I find a small cardboard box, and hand it to Avi, and explain that she should decorate it, so we can use it for Cutie/Killer's funeral.  It is at this point that I realized that not only is she very much MY daughter, but she also is our "little boy" at times.

As she is coloring and putting glitter on said box, she explains to her sister that it's "Cutie's Death Box".  Daddy goes in the other room to keep from laughing.  Avi keeps coloring and applying glitter.

Once she is done, we go to put Cutie/Killer in the box, and Avi yells to Alicia "Hey mom, now you can come pet him.  He can’t bite you.  He's dead!"  This led to a floor wide petting party/wake of said dead hamster.  Somehow, no matter how stiff a rigor mortised hamster gets, they are still fluffy and soft.  This was quickly followed up by a floor wide hand washing party.  At which point Avi comes back from the bathroom, and asks if now he might turn into a Zombie Hamster, because "That would be kinda cool."

Both of us had to leave the room at that one, and that was the moment that inspired this blog.  But I guess we shouldn’t have to worry too much about how she is handling things.  Her sense of humor has kicked in for that.

So this afternoon, after a discussion on the merits of burial at sea vs burial in the earth (Whew! I didn’t want to have to buy a shovel just for this), it was official.  So Avi and Daddy walked down towards the ocean at the back of base.  Unfortunately, the fence sits just shy of the water by about 45ft due to the tide (SHIT!).  I make a comment that we'll have to go somewhere else, when I get a "Duh!" look from Avi.  I stop for a second, and look back.  "We can still get him there, Dad."

"Baby, we can’t climb the fence.  We'll go somewhere else"

"You can’t throw that far?"

"Are you sure we should do that honey?"

"Cutie won’t care.  He's dead!"

It took one good "are you sure look" before there I was, standing next to my daughter, flinging a glitter covered box with a dead hamster in it, over a 12 ft concertina wire topped fence.  As we walked home from the beach, she stopped skipping long enough to say:

"Dad, it seems like yesterday that we were bringing Cutie home.  Just you and I."

I was choking back a laugh, trying to count the time between then and now, before she added:

"Because it was just a couple weeks, I think."

To quote Kenny Chesney…… That’s when I lost it!

In memory of Cutie "Killer" McFluffy Kotara 

March 17, 2013 - July 15, 2013

(Don’t judge us!)

Exploring Kokusai St.

It's been awhile since we've posted. After finally getting settled, we got back into our "normal" routines and kind of forgot about the blog. We still take a ton of pictures everywhere we go, so I'm sure we'll slowly tell people about our adventures. 

One of our more recent adventures was to go explore Kokusai St down in Naha. Naha is the metropolitan center on the south end of the island, and we had been told it's a street full of little shops and restaurants. We decided to take a taxi, because parking here can be limited or even non-existent.  Lexi was at a sleepover, so it was just the four of us. This was the first time the girls rode in a taxi, which wasn't weird to them, but my first time was when I was 20 and that was in Chicago. I grew up in a small town where there were none, and if I wanted to get to the other side of town, I walked. Something that is unheard of with today's kids.  

The girls had so much fun watching the meter go up, and were worried that the 2000 yen that Daddy had given them to pay wasn't going to be enough. Silly girls didn't realize he had already asked how much it was going to be, and gave them more than enough. I'm not sure how, but Avi is the one that ended up with the 500 yen leftover.

We decided to walk around for a bit before deciding where to eat. There were a lot of choices, and we weren't quite sure what we were in the mood for. We were hungry though, so we didn't actually go into any of the shops to look around.

Most restaurants around here have picture menus, which makes it really easy to decide if we want to eat there. We saw a few places that looked pretty good, but decided to go with a yakiniku place. Yakiniku is where you order raw meat/vegetables and then grill your own food, not to be confused with shabu-shabu, which is boiling your food (that experience is another blog waiting to be written). One of our favorite restaurants is a yakiniku place, so we figured this one wouldn't be too different.  We were wrong.

We see a sign that says "English friendly staff" which is always a plus, and makes ordering easier. We sit down and look at a menu, which in big English writing says "Yakiniku in Naha". We open it up, and nothing is in English. Some pictures of meats you can order, along with prices but no descriptions. I'm sure you're thinking, so what? Just order some meat. Sure there were pictures of cows above the beef, and pictures of pigs above the pork, but I'm kind of picky and not super adventurous. I'm willing to try new things, but not for my whole meal. The one time I have done that here- just jumped right in ordering something I didn't know if I'd like- I ended up eating only thinly sliced carrots for my meal. *see shabu-shabu comment above.
I was also thinking about our favorite yakiniku restaurant, and there is a whole lot of meat they offer that I have no interest in trying. I didn't want to pay 2,500 yen for a plate of intestines. So we settled on a "set" as they are called here, with a plate of beef, plate of pork, 2 salads, 2 soups, 2 bowls of rice and a plate of vegetables. 

Trying to substitute here is almost impossible because of the language barrier. We wanted to switch the soup in our set, to a soup that was in another set. After 2 waiters talking and trying to figure out what we wanted, and if it could be done, we gave up and said just bring us the soup.

We have had to learn real fast how to eat with chopsticks. Alex was already pretty good at it, but the girls and I were NOT. Most places we've gone don't offer any silverware. Some offer baby forks or spoons for the kids, but we are almost pros at using the chopsticks now.  I remember one day at lunch, watching an old couple eating salad and pizza with chopsticks, and I thought to myself "wow, I'm not sure I would be able to eat salad with those" turns out, it's not as hard as you'd think! I'm sure the fact that I had no other way to get the food into my mouth helped.

That purple stuff is called beni imo, a purple sweet potato.  It makes delicious ice cream, but I didn't love it grilled.  The food turned out to be pretty good. We discovered that soaking the meat in our leftover salad dressing, before cooking it was really good.

Poor Alex, spent most of our dinner cooking the food and feeding the three of us. Which is what usually happens when we do yakiniku, but our usual restaurant is all you can eat with no time limit. So you just keep ordering meat until you're full.  Here, it was just the two plates of meat. We could have ordered more, but I think Alex was ready to be done cooking anyway. So he ate all the extras (the vegetables) that we didn't want. There just weren't enough "extras" to fill him up. Our dinner ended with some sort of toffee ice cream that was delicious.

We walked along the street, stopping in a few shops to look around. One store was offering samples of some sort of cookie, we had no clue what they were, but they were delicious so we bought a box. We of course had to stop and take a picture in front of the big Shisa.  (Shisa are a half-dog half lion "guardians" here in Okinawa, that are similar to the guardian dogs seen in Chinese culture, and are descended from the Chinese influence here.  They are every where, and generally found in pairs of a male and female.  In fact, one of the first things we did setting up our house, was to hunt down a small pair to put over our front door.)

As we came to the end of Kokusai Street, and all the shops, we find a Red Lobster. Had I known that was there, that would have been our dinner. Oh well. We grabbed a taxi and headed back to base, unfortunately this taxi wasn't able to drive us back to our house, and dropped us off at the gate. As we walked along the deserted road back to the exchange where we left our car (and keys to the house) I smiled thinking about the memories the girls will have about living in Japan. I have met plenty of people who refuse to leave base, and have no desire to explore this beautiful island we live on.  These are the same people who hate every duty station, and always find something to complain about. We are not those people. Are there difficulties living in a foreign country? Of course, but if we lived our lives refusing to deal with anything difficult or new, we'd be miserable.  We have 3 short years here, and plan to do and see as much as possible.

Kitanakagusuku Sunflowers

 A few weeks ago, we ventured out to a small sunflower festival.  It was in Kitanakagusuku (Nakagusuku City).  Luckily we have great neighbors who knew where they were going, otherwise I don't know that we would have found it.

                              We also found where Cabbage Patch kids are born! ;-)

                        They had little paths throughout the fields, which allowed people to walk through them.

                              If you can't tell how tall they are, here is Avi standing next to them

                There was a small clearing in one part, so we couldn't pass up a family picture.

All of their neighbor friends.  I wish we had gotten a picture of the Japanese paparazzi. As we were taking this picture, there were about 5 Japanese taking it as well.

                          Alex had fun playing with his new lens, and getting close ups of the bees.

They had a ton of beautiful flowers for sale. It's amazing at how many different varieties they can grow at the same time. Poinsettias next to sunflowers?

Unfortunately they were out of sunflowers for sale, which we couldn't really understand since there were fields of them. Seeing as there is a huge language barrier, we didn't know which hand gestures would get our question across, so we all went with the flowers for sale.  Most were relatively cheap, the girls paid around 60 yen for theirs.  That's less than $1.  I am happy to say that all 5 that we bought are all still alive sitting in our kitchen window.

The last 3 weeks have been pretty hectic.  Because of this, we haven;t been sitting down to blog.  but we did dump a few pictures into Facebook.  If you missed that, click HERE.  There a few captions.

Couple of exciting things lately.  We did get our household goods in, so the house is once again topsy turvy, and boxes are everywhere as we determine where best to put "stuff".  As soon as we have it in some form of order, we will make sure to get pics up.

We did get out this weekend for the Cherry Blossom Festival in Nago, and had a good time.  Unfortunately it may have been a week or so early this year, since the blooms were just getting started.  But you can't plan festivals for cities that size, on the spur of the moment, so they set dates, and hope the 70,000 cherry trees throughout town, and on Mt Nago cooperate.  They were trying.  But more than anything, it gave us a chance to explore a new city, and to try a lot of new foods, as well as venture out unaccompanied for one of our first times, away from base, and the generally English adept populations.

You can see the pictures here.

Homeless in Seattle

When we planned our trip out, we wanted to spend a few days in Seattle.  In part because we wanted to visit and explore a new part of the country, and in part to have a few days off from traveling before getting on a plane for 14 hours.  We are so glad we did, and wish that we'd had more time there.

Our first impression was not the best.  We arrived around 6:30 pm on New Years Eve, got our rental car and headed for our hotel. We check in, and have 3 kids who are STARVING, so we set out to find a restaurant nearby, once we realize there is NO SPACE left in the parking garage. We find a pizza place in the GPS less than a mile away, but the roads were so confusing and narrow it took us like 10 minutes to get there.  If you've ever been in Seattle, around Lake Union, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say "city planners is a fabulous concept".  It's an intricate network of one way streets, interspersed with two way streets so narrow they SHOULD be one way.  Every intersection turn is a hair raising adventure of turn and stare into headlights terrified you missed a one way sign.  And with recent changes to traffic patterns, the Garmin wasn't as smart as it usually is.  When our GPS says we have arrived, we look around the intersection wildly, as the light turns back to red, and don't see the restaurant.  So we said screw it and decide to order pizza from the hotel room.  So New Years Eve was spent with Dominos and Coke, with the 5 of us.  Later that night, we realized we did have a pretty good view of the fireworks from our balcony, though.

The next day we walked across the street to a great little cafe called Joey's, on the lake, to have lunch with a gold star mom and another Marine Alex served in Afghanistan with.  It was enjoyable catching up, and the food was great.  Thanks Monica, Jessica, and Vishnu.

We had been told by some friends that went to school here, that we had to take the kids to see "the troll" under the Freemont St bridge.  If you didn't know it, trolls STILL live under bridges, even in this day and age.  The girls had fun climbing all over it, and Avi helped with a little hygiene as well. (And yes, that is an actual VW beetle in his hand, for scale).

After there, a quick cell phone google search for "Seattle sunset views" led us to Kerry Park, a mile or so north.  Alex got a few great pictures of the city skyline, complete with a view of Mt Rainier (which we are told is fortunate that time of year).

Having exhausted our daylight, and warming ability of our "Japan jackets" we headed in for some hot chocolate, and a hot tub.

We spent our last full day exploring as much as we could.  First stop was Top Pot Doughnuts which we have seen on Travel Channel and Food Network, and had to try it.  Any of you who know Alicia, will know that donuts are on a near orgasmic list for her.  So this was a no brainer.  A quick street car ride, and 2 blocks, we arrived, and had breakfast.

We added another 6 or 7 blocks, and tried to go to the top of the Space Needle, but one of our kids suddenly got "sick" on our walk over. We can neither confirm nor deny that it was too many donuts, or nerves about the height, but it persisted,  so we missed the EMP Museum and the Space Needle. But we did get some neat pictures of the Seattle Center area, and architecture. 
 


We took the monorail to where we could catch the bus back to our hotel, and ended up at a mall, where we had lunch and caught the bus back to the hotel.  About 10 minutes later, we realized she seemed fine, and we didn't want to waste the day.  After a Pepto-Bismol tablet, and a promise that we weren't going back to the Space Needle, we decided to go try Pike Place Market.

After a nap, it was off to Pike Place Market. There were so many little stores and vendors, that I'm sure we missed a bunch. We ate some delicious Mac and Cheese at Beecher's Handmade Cheese. Bought some scrumptious pears, oranges and pomegranates from a produce stand, and finished our night off with some Starbucks.

We got another great sunset view from the waterfront along Pike Place, before heading back in for the night.

 All in all, it was a great trip, and we were really glad we got the chance to explore a new city.  It also gave us a chance to decompress, and express a few lessons on crowds, and travel, and behavior for the girls, before going to another country.  We'd love to go back again sometime, and this time maybe leave the kids (with Grandma or something... not leave them in Seattle). 

And those of you who find yourself here on a PCS, I highly advise it, since it will let you get some sleep before the 12 hr nightmare of check in, USO, boarding, etc......(but that's a whole other story)





P.S.  All you Fifty Shades of Grey fans.  In case you were wondering what Escala looks like, we passed along the first floor of it, and took this shot of the tower itself.  A two bedroom unit can be yours for only $619,000 (Christian Grey and red room not included)!

Our lessons for living the Gypsy lifestyle, pt 2

Greetings from Washington!  We have packed up our hotel room in Seattle, and getting the girls some last minute sleep before our 01:30 check in at SeaTac, and decided to give you some more lessons, while we catch up on our normal Wednesday night TV.  So to continue our lessons from the gypsy life, and catch you up on our going-ons (yeah yeah, it is in our dictionary), I give you the continuation of our lessons:

#12.  An AR-15 will fix a zombie.  You can't be fully Texan without a few things.  A pair of boots (we have 4 pairs of pink ones), a truck, and an assault rifle.  Why you might ask?  For zombies, of course!  Everyone knows when the apocalypse kicks off, you grab your chillins' and head to somewhere safe.  Good fields of fire are a must, and that means open spaces.  Ergo, Texas.  So while we were there, all the girls got to enjoy the many delights of being a country girl.  Feeding cows, riding the 4 wheeler, and shooting.  And no one does shooting like Uncle Tim and Aunt Amy.  So we spent our last afternoon in Texas putting rounds down range, and blowing stuff up.  Since we still had "Chris the zombie" from last year, but his blood and guts had dried up, we felt he needed some tannerite for a booming good time.  The girls all got a chance to run through some pistol work, and Alicia got her hands on an AR-15 for a little big gun time.

#13.  SIRI will NOT tell you where your missing Nintendo DS game is, no matter how many of your sisters you have ask her in different tones of voice.  And the only thing funnier than reading that statement, is hearing 3 little girls in the other room, repeatedly asking "Siri, where is my DS game?  Siri, where is Sonny with a Chance?  Siri, where is my Sonny with a Chance game?" over and over, after you have told them to "find it or else"  (And for the record, Daddy found it a few days later, AFTER we left Colorado, in a backpack pocket).

#14. Just because you are born and raised in Vail, does not mean you will love skiing.  Or the cold.  Or the mountains.  Or hiking, or any of that hippie nature crap.  That is a direct quote from my darling wife.  I also remember hearing "I wasn't MEANT to live in Colorado" more than once, while we were in her hometown.  And evidently I will NEVER retire to Colorado.  But two of the girls had a blast skiing, and they all did Daddy proud by trying their best all day, and never quitting.  But Bella, our Vail baby, wrapped up the day with the statement that "next time, I'm staying home with Grandma". 
Our "Vail baby":

 

#15.   The only thing to do in Eagle/Gypsum is bowl.  Somehow, in getting together with friends to catch up, we went bowling 3 times in a week.  And NONE of our games improved with all that practice. (I might even say they got worse.)  And for the record, Bella doesn't like bowling either.


#16.   PCS-ing at Christmas time has it's benefits, but NOT if you're the family pack mule.  When we left North Carolina 28 days ago, we had a car packed with 8 suitcases, and a tub of Christmas presents to GIVE AWAY.  We flew out of Texas with an extra suitcase for the flight to Denver.  By the time we flew to Seattle, we had 8 checked bags, a carry on suitcase, a garment bag, and 5 backpacks.  All of them filled to the max.  The last time I totaled scale readings (in San Antonio) we had 380 lbs of checked luggage.  And that doesn't count the fact that along the way, we have left ratty jeans, worn out shoes, or stained high waters the girls had been hanging on to.  It's actually quite comical to watch us moving through an airport.  Dad has managed to clip 5 rolling suitcases together in a train, topped by 2 duffel bags, and 2 car seats clipped on.  In the words of Goose "No, man, I've got a great Polaroid of it, and he's right there"  (but we can't find it right now).  The lesson is, if you are PCS-ing, don't do Christmas with TWO grandmas en route!


Okay, so we are wrapped up here in Seattle, and should be heading to the airport in an hour or so.  Hope you all are already experiencing a prosperous New Year.  We enjoyed fireworks off the space needle from our hotel balcony, and have enjoyed our time here.  Look for pics of that in a few days.  In the meantime, we will be on the move yet again, and if you managed to find us last time, by the next time you look, we'll be 8,000 miles away.  Carmen San Diego ain't got %$#! on us!

But for those of you keeping tally, we've been 27 days, 4,100 miles, 9 states, all four time zones, and are only 1/3 of the way there.....

Our lessons for living the Gypsy lifestyle

So now that the rush of moving and holidays is over, and we have settled (not so) comfortably into our new Gypsy lifestyle, we thought we'd share a few things we have learned so far.  It starts with things that might be more useful to our military friends, during a PCS, but since we are all giving input, there will be some that will apply to all kinds of people.  So in no particular order, here they are.  The Kotara's essential Gypsy lessons:

#1. Drinking glasses might just be more elusive than socks.  You just don't mate them up as often.  As we're packing up the house (or more specifically, as the moving company is packing up), I pull out the original packaging for a bunch of our stuff (being military, we EXPECT to be moving, so we always try to keep the factory boxes for anything fragile, or expensive in the hopes it will protect it better).  So we pull our glasses down, and we have a box for 16 glasses.  8 tumblers, and 8 juice glasses.  Just like we bought 3 years ago.  So I start putting them in the factory divided cardboard, and realize the short slots only have 6 juice glasses.  "No biggie", I say.  "We have kids, they must have broken a few."  I keep packing (and here's where it gets really weird.... We have 8 tumblers filled, and one still on the counter.  Did we buy them mismatched?  Not a chance, because they WILL. NOT.  FIT.  So if any of our friends have these glasses, and you find you are short a tumbler, and heavy 2 juice glasses, please let us know.  We probably won't bother to trade, but it might ease our sleep at night, because even now, 3 weeks later, this still bugs me.  (And if you want to know what being a Gypsy feels like, as we typed this, and looked for a picture, neither Alicia or I could even remember what our drinking glasses look like)

#2.  The English language is not a set of hard fast rules, so much as an amorphous conglomeration of phonetic sounds.  At least according to our movers.  I never would have thought that we had 3 "gurls" or that I could kept my lawn tools in the "Go Raj".  But I have proof that we do.

#3. You CAN fit 5 people in a full size motel bed.  But I think it might only be possible on your last night in a town, and after all your good byes, and even then only if all of them are crying.  Oh, and if you need help squeezing them all in, pick up two pints of Ben and Jerry's Rabbit Tracks and Chunky Monkey and some plastic spoons.  Somehow I see this being something that will stick with our girls as they grow up.  Ice cream can make all sorts of things better.  Or at least more bearable.

#4. Plastic spoons DO NOT work to eat hard frozen ice cream out of a pint container.  But it provides for some entertaining attempts, and isn't laughter the best medicine anyway?

#5.  Taking little ones out of their comfort zone and everyday environment will show you just how their thought processes work.  We were not 2 days out of our home, when the following conversation was yelled back and forth through a hotel bathroom door:

 

Bella: Mom! What shampoo am I supposed to use?
Me: The shampoo that I put in there...
Bella: I can't find it!
Me: What do you mean you can't find it? It's the only bottle in there.
Bella: But it says for long hair, and I don't have long hair!

Apparently since their bathroom has only ever possessed a wall mounted dispenser of whatever we put in there, this was an intellectual dilemma that she had never had to face.

    

#6.  DLA (Dislocation allowance) was NOT determined by a woman.  At least not according to Alicia.  I understand moving can be difficult, and there are certain expenses that are incurred when you move, that are not associated with the move itself.  This is what DLA is supposed to be for.  To restock the fridge shelf with ketchup/ranch/mustard/etc.  We managed to confirm with our shipper that dry spices were okay, so that helped, but it wasn't until the last day of moving, in our final shipment, which was household goods to go to Japan, that I heard Alicia audibly distraught that she was going to have to throw out 60+ bottles of lotions, face creams, nail polishes, make up, and all the other beauty products that she feels must be necessary to keep her as gorgeous as I see her every day.  And from the cussing in the bathroom as she went through her cabinet at the request of the movers, I'm guessing the $2,600 they give to "rebuild" your home after a move will not cover that.

#7. American drivers are idiots.  In our first 2,000 miles from NC to TX, I witnessed at least 6 near-miss accidents, all of which I could immediately attribute to cell phones.  Every single one of them I had just witnessed passing me while texting or witnessed them just seconds after, still on their phone  (Please, people, put the phones down, and drive.  It can't be THAT important to do RIGHT now, especially if you are choosing to text it, rather than just call).  And this did not include the over 100 people I saw swerving lanes while texting over the two days, or the idiot watching a movie on his tablet, held to the steering wheel with his thumbs, while doing 80mph on I-10.  However, I further reiterated the cathartic nature of a few coins chunked out the window at a car, when he pulled up next to me, pissed off that he had almost rear ended ME, as he devastated my soul with a middle finger reached all the way across his passenger seat.  Hope you enjoy your new paint job to fill the chips, buddy.

#8.   Road rage is a real phenomenon.  And sun roofs can be fun when combined with a pissed off aggresive driver and a fistful of pennies.

#9.  One of the coolest gas stations in the country is in Louisiana.  As we drove through Baton Rouge, I stuck to my habit of driving through the metropolitan area, to get gas on the far side.  It tends to make the on/off of the highway a little faster.  But Baton Rouge doesn't have any gas stations on the westward outskirts.  It has swamps, and a "next exit 14 miles" sign.  so after a quick conference with the low gas light in the van, I decided I could make 14 miles.  Unfortunately the exit at 14 miles, had a small 4 pump station, and

about 25 vehicles.  And no drivers.  Because apparently everyone has to go in, and pay cash in advance.  And then pump.  And then go get their change.  and THEN get in their car and drive away.  So after waiting about 15 minutes, I decide I can do better, and consult the Garmin, to find a gas station 3/4 of a mile away.  Which takes 3 attempts at pulling in, before finding a nozzle that isn't covered in a grocery bag.  So FINALLY pumping gas, the girls disappear into a little smoke smelling shack, full of every conceivable form of gator paraphernalia.  We're talking teeth, heads, necklaces from the Liz Cavalier Collection, gator skull lighters, you name it.  Cool points #1.  But after we finish, and begin to pull out, I see a fence across the parking lot that looks like a purple and yellow maximum security facility for midgets.  Jackpot!  We HAVE to see what this is.  Turns out, the Tiger Stop Station in Grosse Tete, LA has LIVE tigers!  I guess it started years ago, something to do with the home of the LSU mascot.  I don't remember all the details, but somehow, this small gas station in rural LA has had 13 tigers born in captivity (10 of which survived).  I honestly think that is probably better success rates than most American zoos.  Who'da thunkit?  Needless to say we HAD to get a photo.  For legal reasons, I will leave out the photo of me with the little one, screaming in terror as I swung her upwards towards the actual Bengal on the platform.

#10.  If you time it right, you can eat 6 consecutive meals in 6 different states.  We picked the girls up from school on our last day, where they had eaten lunch in NC, to get on the road, and have dinner in SC.  After spending the night in Atlanta, we had breakfast in GA, lunch in AL, and dinner in LA.  After a slumber party with cousins in College Station, we took the girls to breakfast in TX, complete with Aggie pancakes and breakfast tacos, before taking the girls for a tour on campus.

#11.  THE coolest gas station in the country is in Texas, however.  We have always made a point on the way down, to stop in Luling at Buc-ee's.  We were bummed to realize that because of our detour through College Station, and the new toll roads, it would not be practical to go that route this time.  But fortune favored us yet again, and as fate would have it, there was a brand new Buc-ee's just opened that week in Bastrop.  Unfortunately, we didn't need gas, seeing as it was $2.82 for grand opening week.  But that still didn't prevent us from stopping, and spending over 45 minutes roaming and excitedly exclaiming in delight at everything we took in.  After wandering around enjoying Dippin Dots, loading up on dried fruits (cantaloupe, peaches and pineapple), picking out our annual Christmas ornament for 2012, HAVING to have a Dr Pepper Icee (you heard that right, nectar of the gods), finding a sampler of 24 different fudge flavors, and a few other "oh my god how did I ever live without this" trinkets, we checked out, with a bill just under $100.  Thats right folks, I spent the most I have EVER spent at a gas station, and it didn't even include gas.  In hindsight, it would have topped a Benjamin if we hadn't forgotten the bag of Beaver Nuggets we stopped for, in all the excitement.  If you've never been to a Buc-ee's, I highly recommend you stop by.  It's a life changing experience.  I promise.

Okay, so it's getting late, and we're done with our notes up through about December 10th.  We promise we'll get to the rest of our lessons soon (they happen to include firearms, zombies, and artificial intelligence, so it should be great!).  Until then, we wish you all happy holidays, and hope that Santa brought you all that you wished for.  And $10 to anyone who can correctly identify our current location.  But be quick, for a gypsy is never satisfied with here, and is prone to roam....  Until next time.  Adios muchachos!