Friday was the first time I hit the Minnesota State Fair. We had to be there by 10:30 to get seats to Tonic Sol-Fa. They’re a great a cappella group that hails from MN, and seats always fill up fast. We managed to find seats in the second row, right on the end, which is important with a one year old in tow. She was able to run, dance, sit without being in the way of too many people. Mostly just my sister, who had to get up to chase her and dance with her. Rocketdog actually lost her seat for awhile to a woman who pushed her bags into me and sat down. It wasn’t until Rocketpuppy tried to come over to me that the woman realized she had taken someone’s seat. And yet, she didn’t move until the show was over. Thanks lady.
The rest of Friday was filled with good (great!) food, lots of walking, many jokes, and bad fashion bingo. We made up cards to cross off whenever we saw such gems as: Tie Dye (a state fair must, apparently), animal print, pimp hats, and too short short shorts. The too short short shorts prompted BILOSORD to mention that there are a lot of hungry butt cracks at the fair. I will also never, ever live down saying “I just need camel toe to win!”
Saturday was the only day that brought doom to my birthday weekend. It’s also the day I almost got The Hippy and myself killed. I hadn’t slept much the night before, or even the night before that. I was tired–TIRED–and had spent the entire day on the verge of tears. Because that’s how I roll. We had a long drive up to my parents’ cabin–someplace I’d only been once in the last ten years. Frankly, I wasn’t 100% sure how to get there, but I trusted that my mother had given me good directions. Which was, incidentally, stupid. There was apparently a point that I needed to turn, but no one told me that. The Hippy said he should have figured it out, because we were going west, not north, at that point, but it didn’t occur to him. I finally said, “I feel like we should have gotten somewhere by now,” and he said, “Me too” and thumbed the map a bit. And I started crying. I didn’t know where to turn around, and I was feeling frustrated. The Hippy, while able to think very quickly under pressure, doesn’t care to have resistance in making things happen. And I was resisting. So his voice was rising a little. It was the classic ‘Yelling isn’t helping” “I’m not yelling. You’d know if I were yelling” situation. So I kept crying.
We finally turned around, we knew where we needed to go, but at that point the crying was completely involuntary. Also involuntary was my breathing, which kept getting shallower and shallower until I was hyperventilating. When I couldn’t stop, I started getting really dizzy and thought I was going to black out. At that point, The Hippy grabbed the wheel and told me to pull over, but I pulled over sooner and much more abruptly than he would have liked. Much further off the side of the road, and we probably would have rolled. He kept telling me to get out of the car so he could drive, but I was afraid to move. The last thing I wanted after almost killing us was to pass out on the side of the highway. I eventually made it to the passenger side of the truck, and by the time we met up with my parents my breathing was back to normal, but I was spent. It took a long time to act like a human being, but I was able to pass it off as being overtired (which wasn’t a complete lie).
Sunday was the corn feed. We ate corn. It was yummy. Enough said.
Monday was another day at the fair. Because I love the fair. For no good reason. But I love it. Before we went to the fair, The Hippy needed to do some homework. We’d gone out to buy my present on Saturday before going up north (A Kitchen Aid mixer–SQUEE!), and he came groggily into the living room saying “Happy birthday….” I thought maybe he was going to do a little cleaning up before starting his homework, because he grabbed a piece of brown paper that a framed print had been wrapped in and wandered into the kitchen. Then he came back into the living room carrying my giant mixer box covered with the brown paper. “Happy birthday; I got you a present.” He set it on my lap, and I couldn’t stop laughing. “Open it! Open it!” he kept saying. It was all very cute and sweet, and I actually started tearing up a little.
Since the hyperventilation incident didn’t happen on my birthday, I consider this the first birthday in possibly forever that didn’t suck. It was actually really awesome. The only thing I’m disappointed about was missing out on Australian Battered Potatoes at the fair. But at least I got a crepe this year. And falafel. Yum. I can guarantee I will be making those potatoes. Yum. Or num num for my tum tum, as the Hippy likes to say.
