Research & Development

We are deep into the research and development phase of our next adventure/scheme/great idea/experiment..whatever.  The research was going to eventually take us on a quick road trip to a nearby city to check out some of their local ‘color’ and to procure a secret ingredient and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is, as then it would not be a secret.

220 miles each way did not have us scared at all.  We are car people and we enjoy a good drive.  We dressed for our day in the city, with me deciding to wear non-farm clothes, white jeans (very un-farm) and my favorite pink top, I looked bright and cheery, which ended up making me stick out like a sore thumb (in a clean middle-aged way), as grunge would be the dress code for this city, or at least the parts of it we went too.  The Teen dressed appropriately in hip, but grungy attire complete with dangle-guitar earrings, which even got her complements from the other ‘hip’ grungy city people.

We car people seem to do just fine traveling long distances, however, it is when we actually get to where we were going that things start to fall apart.  Our sweet GPS system quickly turns into “that dumb ass thing” and seems intent on changing its mind at the last-minute sending our Unhappy City Driver (My Loving Spouse) into all the wrong lanes at the wrong time to get to where we think we want to be, until we actually get there and then we quickly decide we don’t really like it at all and whose idea was it to come here?

We did manage to find the special store and procure two bottles of the secret ingredient (and yes, it is legal).

We then hopped back into the car for more cursing at the GPS as we went to the heart of downtown.  I don’t really know if it was the ‘heart’ but as there was a very nice hotel, a Starbucks, street food vendors, adult-only exotic dancing, mission soup type kitchen, a renown doughnut store and a lot more grungy people.  If it wasn’t the heart of downtown, it was the ‘heart’ of something.  My Loving Spouse was ready to head for the nearest tool store to regain his composure.  We couldn’t leave without The Teen getting a famous doughnut, even if it meant standing in a line for an hour.  The Teen and I people watched…mostly drunk, strange people accosting one another, pierced, tattooed folk dressed in black singing on the corner and keeping My Loving Spouse who went back to the car updated by text on our progress in line.

“We’re almost in, what kind of doughnut do you want?”.

“I don’t care…. I just want to get out of here”.

“We’re just not city people anymore”.

“Yes, well one of the city people just barfed next to our car”.

Luckily, our next stop was to a tool store where we could all regain our equilibrium, and go to the bathroom to say nothing of the welcome opportunity to wash our hands!  We felt better about everything after leaving the tool store.  We’d procured a few nice cheap tools, we had clean hands and we were enjoying a sugar high from our infusion of sweet doughnuts and we were happily heading home!