Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

Okay so back in July sometime, after I got all my hair cut off, Kenny and I loaded up the Blazer with Ben and Jennifer’s posessions, grabbed one of Ben and Jennifer’s dogs and headed down to Florida.

We weren’t happy about heading down to Florida.  Heading down to Florida meant that our best friends were moving many states away, but we knew that God had plans for them and we, somewhat reluctantly, helped them go.

 

Our first challenge was traveling with Trigger.  Trigger is Ben and Jennifer’s dog.  Trigger weighs, I’m guessing, 100 pounds.  At that time, I was still scared of dogs.  All dogs.  Any dogs.  Dogs were barking machines with teeth, as far as I was concerned.  Wrong.  We left Kentucky at five in the morning and I slept for the first two hours because Trigger was asleep too.  The more we travelled, the more the sun made itself known, so Trigger would sometimes stick her head into my space to catch some  air conditioning, but she was a sweet dog who didn’t cause any problems other than wanting to “greet” a puppy during one of the rest stops.   

                       

When we got to Florida, the unpacking began.  There were things to go in Ben and Jennifer’s new kitchen.  There were things to go into Ben and Jennifer’s new bathroom.  There were beds to reassemble.  There were couches to carry and boxes to cut open.  We were making good progress on this (Er…that is, the guys and Jennifer were making good progress.  I didn’t carry much.  I held doors and took pictures.  The idea of walking up that metal ramp into the truck scared me to death.) when the rain came.  And stayed.  And stayed.  And stayed.  I think some people almost went to sleep.  Ben’s grandmother made herself busy unpacking boxes.  Jennifer worked on the laundry room and didn’t even freak when two bugs ran out into the open part of a drawer.  I was wishing I had a book to read.  And Kenny?  Well, Kenny sat out on the porch and watched the rain.  Kenny loves storms.  Something about the coolness of the air during a downpour appeals to him.

 

On Sunday, we went to Ben and Jennifer’s church.  They weren’t yet members of First Baptist Lake Placid, but they are now.  That morning, the youth had just gotten back from camp, so they lead in the showing of slides and the singing of songs.  They talked, they cried, they sang and they danced.  Yes people, they danced in church.  It was mostly a group of teenagers jumping up and down,  but it was so spontaneous as to be infectious.  I still find myself humming “We will sing, sing, sing and make music with the heavens” sometimes.  We also got to sit in on their Sunday School class.  Several of their members were out running some kind of marathon, but we had a nice discussion about spiritual gifts and it was interesting to look around at the church that I was sure had been a school at one time because of the numbers on the doors and the concrete floors.

The unpacking got done and Kenny and I still had some vacation time left, so we went to a mall to seek out a movie.  There was a late showing of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in 3-D and I wasn’t enthused.  I have a hard time with cardboard 3-D glasses fitting into my own.  I was surprised when the glasses looked like sunglasses and enjoyed the movie.  It wasn’t Batman, but I think Ben and Jennifer and Kenny enjoyed it too.  We agreed that the effects really enhanced the movie, though it was disorienting to take the glasses off and go to the bathroom.

Ben provided one last entertaining moment before we had to return to “our” Kentucky.  On our last night, we went out to dinner at a fancy hotel/dining room.  I mean fancy.  It had fireplaces and people in business suits gathered around tables as if they were having meetings.  There were flowers outside our window and we even saw a rabbit in the grass.  We had steak and for dessert we debated between chocolate and non chocolate offerings.  Such temptations as bananas foster and rum cake were on the menu so I asked was I to drive home if the others got treats containing alcohol.  Ben smiled and said “Stephanie, the three of us drunk could drive home better than you could sober.”  Everyone got a big laugh out of that.

 

           

The boys, much to Jennifer’s impatient tolerance and my unwitting amusement, ended up building a monster out of our bread tray, silverwhere and napkins. Ben threw in the ketchup bottle (which was the cutest little bottle of baby ketchup) and even Beth, our waitress, got into the act by bringing us toothpicks and candy to serve as antennas.  The candy idea didn’t work, but we had fun anyway trying to stack things without them falling over.

 

    

The ride back to Kentucky was different without Trigger in the car.  And it was sad leaving our friends behind.  Kenny and Ben, however, have found a way to beat the distance between them by e-mailing back and forth and taking pictures of phones, computers and anything else technology related that happen to catch their eye.  As for me and Jennifer?  Well, I miss being able to call her and say “I want to go see a movie.  Can you take me?”.  I miss teasing her about the way that her thoughts run parallel to Kenny’s and how they must have melded minds at some point in the past.  I miss having a best friend.

 

But Kenny has said we’ll visit.  And Ben says we’re all going to Vegas one day.  Complete with a trip to the Grand Canyon.  The three of them don’t miss a beat.  They love threatening me with scary things.  It’s so much fun to get together.  I hope it happens soon. 

 

 

I’ll put Florida stuff up as soon as I remember to take the camera out of the car.

 

In the meantime, enjoy this little quote that we saw on a sign on our way to dinner:

 

Earth is the Universe’s asylum

 

I repeat…HUH?

This is how it happened:

Last year, around Christmas time, Jennifer found a seventeen room house in North Pole, Alaska.  So, for weeks, I was somehow convinced that we were all going to live together in one house on Kris Kringle Drive.

Fast forward to this Christmas season….er…Thanksgiving season.  See, Kenny and I had gone to see Wicked a couple years ago and I had been wanting to see it again.  I looked it up (http://www.wickedthemusical.com) and found out that it was coming to St. Louis -again-.  Whoo Hoo!, right?  er….not so much.

Turns out, Kenny didn’t want to go.  He’s seen it.  He doesn’t agree with me that it is the best musical ever. And he’d rather not see it again.  So, I did what I always do when I can’t figure out how to get something I want.  I brought it up. Over and over and over again.

This is where Jennifer comes in to the story.  “I want to see Wicked“, she said.

I was happy.  I was beyond happy.  I was getting to see my favorite musical ever.  But…er…What if this was like the Alaska thing?  I had to check.

“Is this like the Alaska thing?” I asked.  Turned out it wasn’t like the Alaska thing.  If Kenny could get us tickets, we were going!

Well, a week later, we had Jennifer’s birthday party, which my parents attended.  We mentioned this trip to them and invited my mom to go too.  (Daddy wanted to go, but he is a Minister of Music, so he didn’t feel that getting back late on a Saturday night would allow him to be prepared for a Sunday morning service.  We’ll take him next time.)

So, two days after Christmas, Jennifer, my mom and I were off to St. Louis.  Jennifer and I started out our trip playing the soundtrack to -her- favorite musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat.  We bonded over “One More Angel in Heaven” and giggled our way through

You know you had a dozen sons

Well now that’s not quite true

Mama and I also found out that Jennifer’s car is named Glorianna. (That’s “ah-nah”.)  Glorianna and Jennifer make a good team.  We had a smooth trip to Missiouri.  A very smooth trip.  Jennifer has a future as a professional driver if she ever needs it to fall back on.

When we got to the hotel, we had a very helpful check in man.  He took our picture and gave us some good directions.  I never did get his name, but we are grateful to him.

Mama took care of food.  We ate at Cracker Barrel (www.crackerbarrel.com) .  We thought we were going to have to race a bus load of people, but it turned out to be all right.  I so would decorate my home in Cracker Barrel if Kenny would let me.

After dinner, it still wasn’t bedtime yet (we made realllly good time to Missouri!) so we visited the Galleria where Kenny and Jennifer and Ben and I had seen the Superman movie on our previous trip. Our choices were The Great Debaters or 27 Dresses.  We decided to go for funny over sad, so we went with 27 Dresses. I was hoping that we made the right choice, because the last Katherine Heigl movie I’d seen was Knocked Up and, despite its fanbase, I didn’t really like it. Also, I’d only seen James Marsden in old timey movies.  I wasn’t sure that I would like him in something contemporary.

We did like this one.  It had some cute wedding scenes and some funny little twists.  So we were happy.  We were also surpised to come back to Kentucky and find out that it doesn’t open nation wide until January 13.  We saw it in December!

And then, it was Friday.  We had hours before the musical, so I asked if anyone would be interested in the Science Center.  The Science Center is my favorite place in St. Louis.  It’s where we saw the Titanic exibit.  It’s where I stood on a simulated earthquake to Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move”.  It’s where we tried to build our own Arch.  It has the Gravity Well that lets you drop pennies into a spiral pattern before falling into the bucket.

But wait a minute.  This was St. Louis.  Home of the Arch.  What if Mama wanted to see the real thing? Better put the Science Center on hold. 

Mama decided she didn’t want to see the Arch. She’s not as fearful of heights as I am, but she so does not like high places.  So, off to the Science Center where they were showing BodyWorlds.

After getting our tickets for BodyWorlds, I asked Jennifer to hold a huge cockroach for me so I could take a picture.  She was game, so we all went over to the cockroach case and Susan, the bug lady, handed Jennifer a cockroach.  Jennifer wasn’t freaked out at all.  Nor was Mama who held a roach of her own.  The roaches were from the rain forests of South America and Susan tried to make them fly for us, but none were inclined to do so.

We wandered around the Center for a bit.  We tried the optical illusion portion and I still can’t see the old lady on the crone/maiden one.

We also tried a trick with a table and mirrors that made us look decapitated.  My picture didn’t turn out well, so here is Jennifer’s: 

Before long, it was time for BodyWorlds. (www.bodyworlds.com)  The exibit we saw was of people who had donated their bodies to science.  Each body was “plasticised” and either disected into parts or posed so that muscles, tendons, nerves and organs were exposed.  So, for example, if the posed body was supposed to be throwing something, the shoulder muscles and arm muscles and such would be exposed so that we, the viewers, could see the tension and play of the cords and tendons.

We saw tiny bones of the ear…and boy were they tiny! We saw people without skin.  We saw paintings of early anatomy colleges.  Did you know that the general public once viewed disection as entertainment?  Or at least as a spectator sport?

My favorite though, was the case enclosing the nerves.  It looked like a work of art.  Each nerve had been carefully separated from the surrounding body parts and…well, it’s hard to describe.  It’s just amazing the way we were created.

After BodyWorlds, we were tired and thirsty so we headed to Union Station.  (www.stlouisunionstation.com)  Back in the days of trains, Union Station was an important depot, as St Louis was considered a “Gateway” city to Western expansion.  Now Union Station is part hotel, part mall.  Jennifer wanted Mama to see the hotel lobby, so we headed there after the fudge shop.  We didn’t want to buy any fudge, we just liked to listen to the banter the fudge makers had going with the appreciative customers.  He would say “When I say `all right’, you say `oh yeah'” and we would follow along.  He was making peanut butter fudge, not my favorite, but he sure was entertaining to watch.

When we got to the lobby of the hotel, we found out a wedding was about to take place, so we didn’t get to sit in the lobby.  We just took Mama to the doorway.  It’s a neat constuction.  If you stand a person on one side, then run to the other side, you can whisper into the wall and your friend can hear you.  I don’t know how it works, but it’s cool to show people.

For dinner, we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe.  For some reason, they were showing old (read: from the ’80’s) videos that night, so I was happy.  I like music I know.  I tried to take a picture of our dessert, but it was ice cream and didn’t show up well.  So here is a picture our waiter, Kevin, took of us.

And oh boy, it was show time.  Well, sort of.  We got there an hour early, so we admired the beautiful “Ladies’ Lounge” (If I ever get rich, my bathroom is sooo having a couch.) and Jennifer and I both bought “Defy Gravity” shirts. 

The show itself was great.  Great, great, great.  I started crying at “Defying Gravity” and by curtain call, I had tissue remnants all over my sweater.  I had forgotten how much I actually liked Galinda/Glinda.  I’m still an “Elphie” fan, but Glinda’s humor was great.  I think Mama and Jennifer thought so too.  I was also glad they had a good Fiyero.  I love “As Long as You’re Mine” and if the actors’ voices hadn’t matched, it would have diminished something in the experience.  My favorite song comes at the end.  It is called “For Good.”  We’re going to try and upload the original actors: Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel singing it, but I’ve never done a song on here so bear with me.

On the way back to our hotel, we saw an unexpected guest.  A solitary racoon was running around the side of the Fabulous Fox.  He seemed to know where he was going, but it was an amusing sight.  Maybe he is a Wicked fan too.

I caught a cold on the trip, so apparently, I slept pretty much the whole way home.  I woke up to Mama and Jennifer jamming on old country gospel (they did a duet on “I’ll Fly Away”) and I sang along to the Ray Stevens’ song about the squirrel, but I apparently was out of it most of the way back.  I did wake up for some french fries though.

It was a great trip.  I’m glad I got the chance to go.

I hear they are making a movie.  I can’t wait.  In the mean time, I am so going again the next time they are in town.