Kiss My Grits

Yah that's right.  I'm a waitress.  Prior to getting this job, I thought we called them 'servers', but apparently in International Falls Minnesota, the term Waitress is alive and well. 

So here's how it went down:  Keri, Kelly and I took advantage of Karley having her permit and made her drive us out to the lake so we could stick our feet in the lake and have a drink.  Then we hopped to the next lodge and had another.  I asked if they needed any help, kind of on a whim.  She wasn't sure, but she let me fill out an application.  Keri was convinced that I acted such a fool that I would never be hired.  Two hours later, I got a voicemail asking me to come out on Thursday at 5pm. 

Not for an interview, it seemed.  To work.  I got there at the appointed time, and ended up shadowing a seasoned waitress.  I feel uncomfortable calling her that.  Let's go with server.  Anyway I ended up shadowing this seasoned server, with 20 years' experience.  I worked for five hours.  The newest member of the staff!  I reported for duty on Sunday as well.  I didn't feel comfortable taking any tables yet, but it didn't matter.  We only had a table of nine and a table of two. 

I wasn't scheduled to work again until the following Saturday, but something came up on Monday night and they needed me to work the shift.  BY MYSELF.  OH. MY. GOD.  I mean, I'm no idiot, but there's such a ton of stuff to do when you're a server.  You have to show up two hours before anybody even gets there to set up and prep and chop and refill and wipe and clean and whatever.  So I did.  And thank goodness there was a list of things that needed to be done.  Well by the time anybody even showed up my armpits REEKED.  BAD.  Like pepper.  Terrified that somebody might smell it as I reached over them to clear a plate, and terrified the cook might see me do it, I secretly snuck a wet soapy paper towel and washed out my pits in the back storage room.  Triumphant, I emerged.  The mirror is right above the garbage I used to throw away the paper towel.  What I saw made me want to die.  The wet paper towel caused a huge wet spot in my armpits, which now looked exactly like a prison inmate's jumpsuit after a full day of cleaning the ditch in the hot sun. 

So now I had to tell the cook what happened, lest he think I was Sweaty McSweaterson.  And I had to NOT raise my arm in front of any of my customers, while serving them food and clearing their stuff off the tables.  ARGH.  In the end I had two tables of five, and three tables of two.  16 customers, all very nice and patient with me.  I decided I'm going to tell every table for the rest of the summer that it's my first time serving.

The night ended just as embarrassingly.  Somebody from Nashville was playing his guitar in the bar area, and I joined in for a fantastic fun amazing sing-along.  I was given a free gin and tonic by the bartender to celebrate my first night of solo serving in my whole life.  And before I knew it, the gin/tonic was refilled a second time.  Also, I had forgotten in my hasty stressful solo evening to order anything to eat.  And so there was no way I could drive home.  Guess who had to drive me?  The cook.  What a trashy trashy fool.  Now I'm Trashy McSweaterson, of French Addition.  Today I brought my nephew back out to the lodge in the "Drive of Shame" to pick up my car.  p.s. it was 5pm, and I was still wearing my pajamas.

Another Version of the Horrible Bus Ride Story from Vietnam

Click here to read from Summer's blog about the Bus Ride from Hell

She has much better photos and remembered details I had forgotten.

Currying Favor. Not Flavor.

How do you get your dad to love you the most?  Maybe you dress in your Sunday best to go on a walk with him, while he ignores you and tells X person on the phone about his "petey" issues? (Kelly)

Maybe you mow special messages into the lawn, too big for a proper photo, but stating "I 'heart' MY DAD", only to get in major trouble later for wrecking the lawn? (me)

Or maybe you jump on the riding lawn mower to help get the lawn done quickly?  Which makes the lawn look like crap and it turns out that it has never in 20 years been mowed with anything but a 20" push mower in alternating directions.  (Keri)

Notice Kelly, watching the scene of the lawnmowing unfold. What a lazy.

We can't win.

Sushi in Duluth

Sushi is kind of a new obsession for my family.  When my dad had to be in the hospital in Duluth, the in-hotel room magazine featured an article about a new sushi joint opened by some dudes from Minneapolis.  It's called Hanabi, and it's fabulous.  The ambiance is great, the food is delish and the drinks are...well, drinky.  I give it a couple thumbs up.  But, keep in mind we're kind of sushi-new.  We actually googled sashimi and unagi and sushi at our table because we were trying to get all the terms straight.   

We're high class folk:

Sha Sha Resort

The kind of place where a girl could feed a chipmunk, if she weren't afraid of wild animals...

Stick her feet in the lake if she weren't afraid of sharks...

And perfectly time a foot splash photo, if her shark fear were to be hastily eliminated once all eight feet were in the water:

Hal-isms Vol 4: How Much are You Worth?

"There ain't a one of you worth forty dollars, but maybe I'd pay that for all of you combined."

My dad's sister Julie once said:
"If I traded you in for a bottle of ketchup I'd still have to pay 57 cents."

My Dad has a Uterus?

So when I spent the night in the hospital room with my dad, he had me up at midnight, and then 2AM, and then permanently up for the day at 5AM.  As I was helping him out of bed for the bathroom, I asked, "so dad, where's your favorite daughter now?"  Now...Kelly has a cold, and that's why she claimed she couldn't spend the night with him.

My dad replied, "Oh she's probably at the hotel, snoring away, getting a new bug that can come up through my UTERUS and into my lungs and darn near kill me."

(I think he meant URETHRA?  Later I told Kelly and she wasn't worried.  She said he never denied that she was the favorite.)

Progress...??

"You ain't my favorite, but that Kelly can stick it in her ear."

Crowing

After his prostate surgery, my dad and I were sitting in the kitchen, kind of talking to each other, but not really.  I overheard him thinking out loud.  He said to no one in particular:

"I should shoot a crow.  But what if I gut-shoot him and he has pain like I had? Go in peace brother, we've fought too long. Eat grasshoppers. Crap on my lawn. Wake me up early in the morning."

This man and crows have a stormy relationship let me tell you.  He once interrupted a story I was telling (while standing in the doorway after driving five hours to visit him) to grab a gun and shoot a crow out of the front door -- that sits in city limits.

One time he was visiting me in my high-rise downtown Minneapolis apartment the year we had a HUGE crow infestation (seriously, The Birds-esque).  He saw them off my balcony and went running down the hallway to 'go get his gun' and I had to explain that kind of thing was not acceptable illegal.  You can't just go shooting guns off balconies, even if the crows had it coming.



Come to think of it, when I was a kid, he always told me that I was "pooped by a crow, and hatched by the sun".  In other words, I think he may have killed my real parents.

Hal-isms Vol. 3

"My bowels.  My poop tank."

"Oh Ellen, get up and give everybody a hug.  Get a bad back."

"Is that Lady Gaga?"

"I don't give a horse's hind end.  I just don't want him pulling on my tubes."

"You think there's one part of Minnesota that my foot hasn't touched?"

Favorite Daughter?

My parents have 5 daughters.  Of course we have a never-ending debate over who is the favorite one.  Of course ol' mom and dad get a kick out of it and do their best to exasperate us wherever possible.  Apparently, sometimes, I am the favorite.  Other times, I've never been the favorite.  It depends on who is asking, I suppose, but Kelly is always thinking she IS the favorite.

Now I am quite sure she is right.  For the last three days, I have been spending precious time in the hospital with my dad, quite willingly, actually.  I am so happy that I don't have a job and can be here for my mom and him.  Six months ago I would have been calling from my desk at work, wondering "how he is", probably while eating lunch and typing an email.  Now, I'm here.  I'm throwing my back out assisting him in and out of bed, rubbing his shoulders every five minutes, fetching water and cell phones and learning to change embarrassing hospital equipment attached to his body, seeing his naked hospital butt and having the image seared into my brain forEVER.  Naturally, the first night, when it was time for my mom and me to go to the hotel, I offered to stay in the room with him.  He said no.  I offered again, told him I didn't mind sleeping on that visitor couch because I am used to four months now sleeping just wherever.  He said no again.  So I went with my mom to the hotel.  The next night, same story.  On the third day, I heard him on the phone with Kelly.  She was on her way here from Ohio.  After he hung up with her, he said, "she'll spend the night with me here."

FYI: I'm typing this from the couch in my dad's hospital room.  Kelly's back at the hotel. 

Some Hal-isms Come With a Story

He spent all night last night hallucinating.  About betting at horse races.  And then he told me that he started seeing people who weren't there, and it ended up being like the corner of his pillow. 

"What about this guy?"  I asked, pointing to his robe, which was hanging at the foot of his hospital bed.

"Oh, he's OK, since he's right in front of me.  But I got peripheral assassins at all hours."

Hal-isms Vol. 2

"I thought it was colon cancer so I just let it go."

"I feel fine when I'm sleeping."

"Jimminy Christmas.  An hour ago it was five minutes."

"Everything I look at I gotta memorize.  My birthdate, my name..."

"The rest of my life is going to be spent emptying pee bags.  Sitting at the cabin.  Farting."

As Hilarious as Prostate Cancer Can Be...

Maybe some people are wondering what the heck is going on around here.  So I'll get serious for one blog post (forgive me) and tell you what I know about my dad's surgery.

My dad has been having pee problems for about ten years but didn't really think anything of it.  He would have to go all the time, is all.  Plus when he went to the bathroom the pain went away.  It turns out that his prostate was enlarged and just like on those "going problems?" commercials, it was putting pressure on his bladder.  When he would go to the bathroom the pain would go away.  Obviously.  So anyways, my mom works at United Health Care in International Falls, and they were offering free health screenings and somehow she convinced my dad to go.  They gave him a PSA test, which is a routine prostate cancer screening test.  Well his levels were high enough to cause concern and after having a real doctor's visit he found out that he in fact did have prostate cancer.  And now here we are. 

His doctor anticipated the prostate itself was about the size of a golf ball.  Not until they were mid-surgery did they realize it was actually the size of a tennis ball and had fuzed itself to dad's insides.  Like his bladder and Uranus.  How the heck wouldn't they know?  You ask.  Well.  My dad is a tiny man.  With a tiny pelvis.  If you look at him from the back.  But, he has kind of a big belly.  My mom always said that he has always worn the same jeans size since she met him, he just sort of wears them under the belly now.  So they just didn't see the correct size of his prostate, and then when they got way down in there in his tiny pelvis with their instruments to remove it, there wasn't a ton of room to move around. 

Here's the really cool part.  The surgery was performed by a robotic machine.  Seriously.  Called the Da Vinci.  The doctor does all his stuff from a remote control, and the machine sticks five needles into the patient's torso, in a half-moon frowny face shape.  Then somehow miraculously the prostate comes out in a zillion pieces.  They don't normally do it laproscopically when it's so big because it takes too long and because they dont want to cut it up and release cancer into the body.  But of course they didn't know it was so big and they were already in there so they just went for it.  So the normally 3 hour procedure took 9 and a half hours.

Click here to read about awesome Da Vinci Prostatectomy

Would anybody like to see the handsome and brilliant SUPERman who played a Prostate-removing video game for 9 1/2 hours and rendered my dad pretty much cancer free?

Dr. Eric Lauer

So now my dad is in the hospital for a few extra days, his recovery is expected to last 3 months now instead of 3 weeks, and today I accidentally saw his butt.

Overheard in my Dad's Hospital Room

"Hal has an obese stomach."

"They could have at least drawn some underwear on him."

"Rectum? It almost killed him."

Someone Has Made a Terrible Mistake

When my dad asked me to move some tubes that were tangled around his feet, imagine my horror when I realized they had replaced his big toenail with the big toenail of some gross dude.  I'm going to have words with the staff, let me tell you.

p.s. don't tell him I posted this, or any other thing about him.  Ever.

Hal-isms

Yay! Never fear, Summer-isms fans!  This popular feature of my blog will now be replaced by 'Hal-isms'.  Here are a few gems to get us started:

"The next time I see a Japanese man I'm going to kick him right square in the *ss."

"You talk about your crap kissin' your underwear, I had my small intestine rubbin on 'em."

"Well I don't want a burnt pork chop."

Just one of my Obsessive Compulsions

I can't pass a clover patch without zombie-zoning out of whatever conversation I happen to be in, veering off the walking path, and staring at it until I find a four-leaf clover.  Ever since I was growing up at South Falls Apartments, or the 'ghetto', I have been obsessed.  When I was little I used to find five-, six- and seven-leafed clovers quite frequently.  I haven't seen one of those for a long time.  But I find four-leafed clovers pretty much every time I look.  Which is part of the compulsion.  I HAVE to find one.  And if I don't, I keep looking until I do.  It's fun!  Join in.  There is one in the above photo.  Can you find it?  Click on the photo to enlarge it if you need to.

So on Sunday I took a few inadvertent walks around Minneapolis (my car is at my mom and dad's place up north) and I marveled at just how many clover patches there are here in Minnesota.  They were nearly impossible to find in SE Asia, but trust, I did find them.  But here they are EVERYWHERE.  Anyways, BAM!  I found TWO right away.  Bam Bam!  Then at the third patch I had to search a while.  Right alongside Busy Lyndale Avenue.  When I finally found one, I held it up in triumph to the man walking by me on the sidewalk.  But he wouldn't look at me.  Then I held it up in triumph again to the couple that were parking their car.  But THEY wouldn't look at me.  And so I threw the thing to the ground, pretending I wasn't actually trying to get anyone's attention by waving a four-leaf clover and looking at them with huge eyes and wide smile and kept on-a-walking.

Which leads me to this confusing find:

We have a pretty cool mayor in Minneapolis.  I don't know anything about his politics AT ALL, but he sure seems to be motivated to push public transportation and tries to keep Minneapolis a bike-friendly city.  (We were voted number 1 in the US!)  He even participated in a triathlon that I did a couple summers ago.  So this whole bike share program got me very excited, until I checked out how it actually works.

You have to swipe your card, which secures a $250 deposit.  Then you are straight up charged $5 for a 24 rental.  Which might be OK if you get to keep the bike for 24 hours and then return it.  No, you have to keep it at their docking stations.  They are located everywhere, but everytime you remove and return it, you have to pay EXTRA based on how long you had it out.  0-30 minutues is free.  31-90 minutes is $3 extra and so on.

So tell me, "Who is going to use this service?!"

Click here to read the article about the program.

People who already use public transportation.  They're trying to help folks who already take the bus.  ARGH.  In Denmark, you pop in a dollar coin, get the bike out, and when you return it, you get your dollar back.  Same as in Australia.  You just make the bike ugly enough that nobody would want to steal it.  At least that's what it looked like they were doing.  I'm disappointed in this program, because while it should encourage people to go from CARS to BIKES, it's not doing that at all.  And probaby the most expensive part of the program went to installing the HUGE money taking and card swiping machines that operate the elaborate bike stands.  Also, no bike lock is provided, so if somebody steals your rental, you're on the hook for $250.

WOW.  I can't believe I actually stated an actual opinion on my blog.  About something I hardly care that much about.  Must be back in America!  The point of the story is, I was going to have to pay $8 to borrow a bike to get me from my hair appointment back to where I was staying, and so I opted instead to ride the bus for $1.75.

Pete Hexum, Super Tough

The one on the bottom is my brother Pete.  He's super tough. 

For example, today, Pete was relaying the story of the doctors' explanation of the outcome of my dad's 9 1/2 HOUR PROSTATE REMOVAL SURGERY (which by the way took three times longer than most prostate removal surgeries...since my dad's prostate was the size of a TENNIS BALL and decided to fuze itself to the embarrassing innard part that rhymes with Uranus).  He said, "and you know, I got emotional, but I didn't cry, obviously.  Because I'm super tough."

And then the doctor said that Pete was next.  For prostate cancer.

Get well soon dad!

(Dead squirrel meat. Apparently not effective in the prevention of prostate cancer.)

I miss Cooking

I'm staying with my friends Matt and Laurissa for the week that I'm in Minneapolis and was way too excited for the use of their kitchen the other morning.  Laurissa emptied the fridge of it's contents and we made a yummy breakfast...mom's veggie egg thing, bacon, croissants and potatoes.  Something new I haven't tried before:  potatoes don't have to take an hour for breakfast.  Boil cubed for ten minutes-ish, then sautee with olive oil and butter and tons of herbs/garlic until crispy.  You probably already all know this trick.  Sometimes I'm the last one to figure things out. 

I really missed being in the kitchen, and am probably happiest in my life when I'm chopping vegetables.  I'm hoping that by making fantabulous meals Matt and Laurissa will ignore the scene in their guest room:

While eating, we got a nice show.  Apparently the neighbors don't know we can see straight into the shower, and that's why Matt and Laurissa got shades on their window.  I think if you click on this photo to enlarge you can see boob...by the shampoo bottles: