Another day, another dollar…spent…

Ugh. Yet another day of fairgoing. I’m starting to really loathe the smell of fried foods and cotton candy. Yeah, I know. That really sucks.

I just climbed out of the shower, thinking I would feel invigorated and ready to tackle another long day of babysitting a garden building. No dice. I can’t even be fucked to get dressed right now. Yes, you heard me. I’m sitting here naked, with only a towel wrapped around my head. Does that not gross you out? It’s grossing me out just a smidge.

There must be some kind of mind control going on at the fair. Some sort of subliminal message being played over and over, hidden beneath the sounds of carnival rides and children laughing and birds chirping. Something that makes me want to part wildly with my money every time I set foot on the damn fairgrounds.

I pulled out $100 from the ATM on Thursday at the fair. I’m already down to twenty-three dollars. Fuuuuck. And I need to pull out another hundred today because I’m pondering another piercing and the boys and I are recording a song for my mom at one of those recording booths. They do CD’s now. Welcome to the 21st century.

We always get my mom something from the fair for Mother’s Day. It’s been a long-running tradition since before my brothers were born. I remember being eight, standing before the blown glass trailer, peering in at all the amazing creations. I always wanted to get my mom the shiny glass palm tree with the tiny brown glass monkey dangling from it (finally bought it for her in 8th grade). For about ten straight years I got her something from the glass blower. I just thought that anything someone had lovingly made from heated sticks of colored glass was just magnificent and what mother wouldn’t want that?

Mom has loved everything we’ve given her. Over the years it’s gone from the glass menagerie to t-shirts with our photos on it, to license plate frames (“Life is a Cabernet”) to Zoppini charms for her Italian charm bracelet. Last year I’d pushed to get her a piercing, but she chickened out at the last minute. I don’t remember what we got her instead. The year before that was a couple of bobbleheads with our pictures on them. They’re cute in ways yet undefined. I wish I had a set. Instead, I took pictures of them as a sort of proof of the Hicks whimsy.

So this year I told Kevin to keep an eye out for something new and interesting. Something mom wouldn’t expect, but that was totally us. I joked that we should record her a song. Kevin immediately jumped on it, saying that was a great idea. I was a little dumbfounded because I’d only been joking, but after pondering it for a moment, I realized it would be a riot and really really cool. So we made a date for the three of us to meet up there this morning after I’m done opening the building. The parade starts at 10am on main street and for those unfamiliar with the town, it’s damn near impossible to get to the fairgrounds during the parade (main street runs right by the fair, and they shut it down about a mile out of town each way to reroute semi-truck traffic), so the fairgrounds will be practically deserted. Perfect time to record a CD and get the hell out of dodge before people start arriving and get to hear our petulant wailing.

Hell, I don’t even know what song we’ll sing. “Happy Together” seemed like a good idea until I reran the lyrics through my head and decided it was a little Oedipal to be singing such a thing to one’s own mother. So I’m at a total loss right now. How many mom-appropriate songs are there out there? Ones that we know the lyrics too, can fathom singing in public, and would willingly hand over to our own dear sweet mother who puts up with all our crap and would probably put up with this too?

Bah. We’ll probably end up not recording anything after all. In which case I have a backup plan, but we’ll get to more of that later. For now I need to finish getting dressed, get down to the fair, and proceed to spend money and rot away amongst the funnel cakes and deep fried things on sticks. Have a groovy Saturday. I shall report back later if there’s anything worth reporting back on. So that means don’t hold your breath.