Rest Stop: Somewhere up in NY State

Lovey Loverpants and I had nearly mastered the road trip when Baby Girl hopped on the bus. We pack like champs (tip: why bring a bag when you can put everything in a laundry basket and keep it folded!), prepare our playlists/audio books, plan to eat many sugary treats and have many, many laughs. We have made the trip from Boston to Detroit/Cleveland oh so very many times, more times than Michael Jordan drove the ball to the hole, practically. We have every rest stop along the way pretty well memorized, like, No, Lovey, the TCBY is at the next stop, duh. Ah, rest stops. They're such a nice little slice of Americana, no? Fillin' the tank while you're looking to buy all manner of greasy food which so won't sit well in your stomach, forcing you to stop at the next rest stop to, heh, take care of bidness, know what I mean?

We cruised into one rest stop in upstate NY and immediately Lovey said, "Oh HO! Look at that mullet! We gotta get a picture of that." We beheld mullet man and promptly rifled through our laundry basket for the camera.

We introduced ourselves to Mullet Man and the Statey. Explained we were on a road trip for the first time with our daughter and couldn't we take a picture with these gents?

Mullet Man said, "Oh, wanna get her up in the truck? Get on up there. Be a truck driver."

So we did.

How Kendra Got Her Groove Back

Can we talk about bikini waxes for a second? Because I just had my first post-partum wax and, all deforestation jokes aside, I think my Lady Land is standing up and singing her own national anthem right now, such is her pride. You could say she's waxing poetic BADAMP-CHING about the goodness and light that falls upon her now. The aesthetician was a mom herself who had also endured a c-section and one might think that was not a friendly topic to distract me with whilst stripping the southern hemisphere but we were just blab-blab-blabbing away about anesthesia and bad lighting and mom flaps (see also: Abs Missing, Reward = Big Bowl of Popcorn) and suddenly she asks me, "How does it look?" and I can barely believe it's all over. It didn't even hurt that bad. Of course the pain is all juxtaposed with the last waxing I had which was in my first trimester and everyone who's ever been pregnant must have Momnesia because they failed to mention that getting waxed whilst pregnant is about as much fun as a taking a nap on a fly trap with some hobbit feet in your face. Not NICE. I suppose the grooming is somewhat symbolic of how I'm starting to feel like a person again and not just a milk maid zombie. Just a week ago, we started putting the baby bundle down to sleep at a respectable hour and it has made such a difference. Lovey Loverpants and I have, like, dinner! And we have conversations! And we have other things....

Heyyyyy, how 'bout those Celtics!

***

Baby Girl says, Let's get together and feel all right.

ESL Lessons Go Both Ways

One of the benefits of attending a church in which there is always a fresh crop of Koreans each year is that it nets me some ESL teaching gigs. I LOVE to teach English, especially to grateful learners. Just the way that different words sound on the ears, the different implications words carry -- it makes you realize what a creative God we have, inventing so many different languages and dialects within language. It is truly an awesome world chock full of false cognates :). One Korean friend often surveys me about new English words. She recently told me about her new photography website which she wanted to call HerApples.com. She said her male colleagues were extremely supportive of this domain name.

My latest student is very hungry to learn English. She came to this country from Korea just over a year ago and is very charming. She visits us a couple of days a week and I think it is as good for me as it is for her. I keep realizing all of the cultural assumptions I make in planning our lessons. Do you know the saying, "There are three kinds of people in this world, there are men, women, and American women"? Oh mercy, is that ever true. I am such an American woman when it comes to presuming where I can go, whom I can talk to, what I can buy and so forth.

Last week I gave my student prompts to encourage her to speak with confidence about certain topics. She was holding up a picture of a Cadillac and so I asked her to pretend that I was her husband and that I had just told her that she wasn't allowed to buy the Cadillac.

So of course I expect her to be all, "YOU CAN'T SAY THAT IT'S MY MONEY I'LL BUY WHAT I WANT I DESERVE THIS CAR."

Instead she says, "If my husband say that, I say, 'Okay.'"

Someone please buy this woman a Cadi. She'd like it in white.