I take my dental care very seriously.

1. I had this picture of my mom and Baby as my desktop on my work computer for like ten minutes but I had to remove it because I kept stopping what I was doing so I could go back and look at it and then I'd get all teary because HE IS SO WONDERFUL.



2. My 15th high school reunion is on Saturday. Cue the teenage angst flashbacks. At least I've learned the value of eyebrow maintenance since then.

3. I forgot to put on deodorant today. I've never been a stank-master or anything so I'm sure I'll be fine, but I can't help but sneak whiffs JUST IN CASE. Let's all cross our fingers that nobody catches me.

4. I just made plans to go to bottomless mimosa brunch with my friends John and Tony. John was like "I hope I get to read about myself on your blog again" and I was like "Lady, if bottomless mimosas are involved, YOU CAN COUNT ON IT!"

4a. Hiiiiiiiiii, John!

So look for a bottomless mimosa related update sometime after July 19th.

5. I am losing my part time job, which is a bummer because I liked working for the site, but they needed me to be available overnight and for more hours per week that I was comfortable with so we're parting ways at the end of this month. Mama's got a mortgage to pay and I can't monkey around with my ability to meet my day job obligations.

The silver lining is twofold:

A. I am now available for bottomless mimosa brunches.

B. I am now available for almost unlimited baby squeezing.

6. Two facts:

A. I love my dentist.

B. I have crappy insurance and my out-of-pocket for my cleaning/exam will be $110.

This means that until I get a new gig with less-retarded insurance, I have to find a new dentist. This is shocking, especially if you're familiar with how much I love Dr. Dan. I've been seeing him since I was like 19 or 20 so this is a SERIOUS breakup. Sniff, sniff.

This ALSO means that because my teeth are fine and have always been fine and I won't need any serious dental techniques performed on my mouth, I will be selecting my next dentist based on looks.

Hottie dentists of the world, HERE I COME!

USS Hornet Cocktail Party

Anyone who knows my family knows that my dad is ALL ABOUT the USS Hornet. It's his baby, his pride and joy. He was on the Hornet in the Marine Detatchment back in the late 60's (which means that he was one of like 50 Marines on board a ship of 2000-ish Sailors) and was there for the Apollo 11 recovery and has all kinds of good stories and stuff. My dad was one of the guys who helped clean it up after it was saved from being sent to the scrap yard and ten years ago, they made it into a museum and last weekend was the big 10th anniversary open house.

Now, if you're a Holt, or really, even if you just KNOW a Holt, you've probably spent plenty of quality time on the Hornet. We've been to events and BBQs and on tours and really, we're kind of over it, but we all love my dad and want to be supportive of his stuff so we make appearances every now and again. Unless you're my mom, in which case you avoid the Hornet like the plague, but she doesn't like getting caught in conversations with retired military guys or the wives of retired military guys, so she's excused.

It had been a while since I'd clocked any time on the Hornet so when my dad said that they were holding an open house and that he had invited a bajillion people I knew I figured WHAT THE HECK...so I put on my walking shoes and joined him on the Hornet last Saturday.



When I got to the Mar Det area (look at me and all my fancy Marine slang!) I found my dad holding court with a gaggle of lesbionic ladies who wanted to see his video of the Apollo 11 recovery. And OH HAI, my dad figured that since it was an open house, there should be refreshments so he brought beer and wine and chips and dip for people who came to hear his stories. So the lesbians and I had some wine and we watched the video.

When the ladies left, my dad left me in charge while he went to the bathroom. Nobody wanted to talk to me, but that's fine because really, if I had walked by and saw a non-official-looking chick sitting in the Mar Det lounge drinking wine out of a red party cup and saying hello to the passersby, I would have kept on walking too.



So I entertained myself:



My dad had the top bunk, which was VIP because nobody could lean over and barf on you:

The MarDet cocktail lounge:

So anyway, while he was gone I did have one conversation and it was awesome:

Me: Hi.

Lady: Hi. What is this area?

Me: It's the Marine Detatchment area.

Lady: Oh.(Looks confused)

Me: There were a small number of Marines on board with the Sailors.

Lady: Oh.

(And I should point out here that she looked totally normal, educated, non-retarded, etc.)

Me: (smiles and takes a sip of wine)

Lady: What's a Marine?

Me: Um. A Marine. Like, someone in the Marine Corps.

Lady: (Shakes her head, looks at me like I'm speaking Chinese)

Me: The Marines. Like, as opposed to the Navy or the Army or the Air Force.

Lady: (Still doesn't get it.)

Me: It's a branch of the military.

Lady: (Stillllllllllllllllllllll doesn't get it.)

Me: (Trying to figure out how in the hell someone could A) be alive in the world and not understand what I'm telling her and B) be on an AIRCRAFT CARRIER and not understand what I'm telling her! It's not like she was in the Marine Detatchment area of the CONSERVATORY OF FLOWERS or anything!!!!)

Me: Ummmmm...they ran the brig.

Lady: OH! THE BRIG!

Me: Yeah. They were like the police on the ship.

Lady: OH! THE POLICE!

Me: Yeahhhhhhhhh. NOW GO AWAY STUPID LADY!

Except I didn't tell her to go away, I just turned to rummage through my purse for nothing in particular and waited for her to leave.

Other Hornet-related items:

1. There were a ton of Boy Scouts on board. There always are. I don't know why. Maybe there's a patch for visiting an aircraft carrier. But never before have I noticed how RUDE Boy Scouts are. I mean, I guess I expect kids in general to be little shits but I expect Boy Scouts to be polite. THEY WERE NOT. They were cutting in front of me, not allowing right-of-way up and down ladders and were just generally barreling through. The worst part though was that their parents were just standing around watching them be rude so finally I lost my temper and yelled LADIES FIRST!!!!!!!!!!! at a few of them and I heard the mom laugh! I wanted to tell her that her kid needed to be taught some manners, but then someone farted so I kept my opinions on their crappy parenting to myself and moved on.

2. The Hornet wasn't built with any ladies' rooms and most of the bathrooms it does have are prettttty much just communal toilet rooms. Like rows of toilets with walls between them, but no doors. And really, the walls only extend to the end of the toilet seat so if you were sitting there you'd be able to see the knees of all the people in your row and you'd be looking across and facing all the guys pooping in the other row. (And my dad has a story about how they somehow got a bucket of pistachio ice cream and how they ate it with their hands, while sitting on the crappers.)

So how did they modify this bathroom to meet the needs of the ladies? They hung up shower curtains. Frosted clear ones. And they hung them in line with the short walls so if you want to use this particular rest room (there are modern ones upstairs), it's kind of a maneuver and the people next to you can see your knees and the people across from you can see you sitting there.

It's a life experience, folks.

Midwestern Adventure, Day Three: Kansas!

I wish I had a witness to the insanity that was Kansas, but this was a solo road trip so whatever I tell you in this post, just assume that it's 100 times MORE bizarre, okay? Because really, Kansas was a T-R-I-P.

First of all, Kansas's landscape couldn't compare to Missouri and Oklahoma. It was pretty dull, but WHOA BESSIE the sky was awesome:



Most of you know that the big attraction for me in Kansas was the World's Largest Ball of Twine, right? When my brother first announced that he was getting married in Iowa I immediately Googled all the road trip worthy things in that neck of the woods and I didn't come up with much, but the Ball-o-Twine somehow became the big ticket item.

My road trip philosophy is this: Pick something random and off-the-beaten-track and go there. Hilarity will ensue. The caveat: Don't stay in craphole motels because they rain on your parade and you might get bed bugs. For reals.

So my whole trip was me aiming for a bunch of random spots, but with 4-star lodging carefully integrated into my travel plan. The trouble with the twine was that it's in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE:


View Larger Map

This is great for my sense of adventure, but it SUCKS for the "not into craphole motels" side of me. I ended up finding a list of B&Bs in the area and while I'm also not into the whole B&B thing, I figured that was better than the Super 8. One of them, The World's Largest Ball of Twine Bed Without the Breakfast (seriously), touted itself as a one unit cottage adjacent to the ball of twine and at the low, low price of $30 (payable in cash that I was to leave on the table!) and I figured that okay, I'd roll the dice and hope that it was as homey as the woman who owned it said it was.

And, um, I guess it was:





Cute, right?

But here's the inside:









Overall, I'd say it was kinda dismal. And I'm annoyed that I can't find the picture I took, but there was a big sign on the fridge alerting people to the fact that GAME CLEANING IS NOT ALLOWED. Because you know how dirty Monopoly can get and all.

It wasn't even 8PM when I arrived and I had a few hours to kill before I'd be able to fall asleep so I got the bright idea to go across the street to the bar (because the restaurant was closed on Mondays and the town was all of six blocks long so I was hard pressed for other things to do) and have some dinner and a couple of drinks so I had the chance of actually falling asleep.

So I went to the bar, as seen here the next morning without all the pickup trucks out front:



I have a lot of nerve but boy howdy, I really had to talk myself into opening the door because "walking into a rural Kansas bar by myself" is not high on the list of safe things to do. There were about ten men, one KID and two women inside. I pretended they didn't allllllll turn around to stare at me when I walked in and I went right up to the bar, sat down and ordered a sandwich and a Jack & Diet.

That Jack & Diet eventually turned into SEVERAL Jack & Diets (though I suspect that they were heavily watered down) and a few shots of peppermint schnapps with the men at the bar. It was bizarre and surreal and when I told my brother the story of it all the next day he was like "THIS IS HOW WOMEN END UP AS MURDER MYSTERIES ON A&E!" True, but my homies at The Corner Bar & Grill were lovely.

Mostly.

Here's my overall'd friend Leigh:



So this guy Leigh (he spells his name the girl way) spent the first half of the night totallllllllllllly hitting on me and the second half of the night pretending he didn't know me.

Why?

Because his girlfriend showed up to lay claim to her man.

Guess why she was there?

Because even though *I* couldn't get a cell signal, the whole rest of the bar had been texting people telling them that there was a pretty new girl at the bar (awl, thanks guys) and word got out that Leigh was hitting on me and she came to make sure I kept my new girl hands off her man. I didn't know any of this until they told me about it later in the night but they all thought it was HILARIOUS that he was 100% trying to romance me one minute and the next he was telling her that he hadn't even spoken to me. I mean, he had a ZERO percent chance, but it was pretty funny, particularly since my bff Toni and the lady bartender Teresa HATED her and I had accidentally caused a Jets vs Sharks standoff that they said the town will be talking about for weeks. Alls I know is that she was old, trashy and REEKED of fabric softener. Like she washed her hair in it or something.

Other highlights from The Corner Bar & Grill:

They launched a toothpick and a straw into the ceiling in my honor. I don't know why this is so exciting, but they made several attempts until one stuck and then I had to climb on the barstool and sign the ceiling:





Notice the kid in background of the toothpick-launching picture? He was eleven. It was 11PM and he had repeatedly asked his dad to take him home but his dad (a Gary Busey look-alike) was HAMMMMMMMERED. I was like "OMG IS HE GOING TO DRIVE??" and they were all like "No, duh...his kid is." That would be his ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD-KID.

OMG.

He was a sweet kid. The dad was sweet too, but maaaaaaan, he was drunk.

Here I am with my Cawker City bff Toni:



There was dancing:



And shenanigans:



And drunken confessions that they thought I was going to be a bitch when I walked in, but that I was welcome back at the Corner Bar & Grill any time. It's unlikely that I'll EVER EVER EVER return, but they gave me a bunch of tsoskes and they were SO MUCH FUN and I apparently gave Toni my phone number because she has texted me several times since I left.

Other fun facts:

1. You can rent a three bedroom apartment in Cawker City, KS for $141.00 a month!

2. Toni's car starts via light switch:



3. My whole tab for the night was $21. V-A-L-U-E.

I don't know what time I finally hit the hay at the Ball of Twine Inn, but it was late enough that I didn't care that it was depressing and when I woke up around 7AM to use the bathroom I decided that I was too sober to sleep in that bed anymore so I washed the bar smell out of my hair and hightailed it out of there.

I was tempted to just skip town without taking any pictures of the twine but HANGOVER BE DAMNED, I had come all this way...so I added the length of twine left for me by the innkeeper, took some pictures, and headed out of town in search of coffee.



I missed the Twine-a-Thon by just a few weeks:



I signed the log:



I tried looking peppy:



This one is a shout out to my dad:



The thing I don't get is why the ball of twine was SUCH an attraction. I mean, I know *I* was there, but I'm weird. And seriously, it was IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. As in NOWHERE. It's something you have to go way out of your way to see, but the log had entries almost every day and the inn left me some pretty expensive looking marketing collateral and there's a yellow line of "twine" painted all down the main (only) drag and the storefronts are all empty except for twine-related art:





As weird as it was and as happy as I was to leave, I will always have fond memories of Cawker City, KS.

From there I moved on and drove through miles and miles and miles and miles of whatever this is (wheat?):



Amber waves of grain!

So miles and miles and miles of crops later, I arrived here:



If I had cell service I would have called someone and told them to bust out a map and look at the VERY MIDDLE of the lower 48 states because I was standing there RIGHT THAT VERY MOMENT!



There's not much to see out there so I snapped a few pictures, took a few minutes to listen to the cicadas and then headed out of Kansas: