so, yes, the trip was good. texas highways are somehow a portal to major cities all over the world. 5 miles to atlanta, 26 miles to boston, 17 miles to naples. oklahoma and arkansas are home to strangely named streets and towns. grubb steak road, suits us drive, stringtown, “y” city, de queen. every bend in the road brought new surreal hilarity.

we spent friday night with my friend melissa, who lives in timpson, texas, population 1029. her husband tim says that the standard pickup line in timpson, texas is “hey bitch, nice tooth.” the town itself is not so lovely, but melissa and tim live in a nice three-bedroom house with a toddler, a newborn, and a dog named stupid.

melissa’s life now is a far cry from the days when we would go to numbers on all-ages friday nights or to pink floyd laser light shows, but i had more fun at her house this weekend than we usually did on those strange evenings of yore. it’s not often i get to race matchbox cars on the kitchen floor with a two-year-old, and then fish seven stray cars out from under the dryer with a coathanger. later we sat on the porch with the sleeping baby, drank kahlua and milk, and watched as ancient pickup trucks broke down outside the house and their semi-toothless inhabitants trudged home.

the fayetteville portion of the trip wasn’t as much fun, almost exclusively because severe lack of alone time was beginning to take its toll on me. i can’t go very long without that (note: i am pathetic). anyway, holley’s wedding was really pretty. it was fairly traditional, but lacked the stiff formality that most traditional weddings tend to have, and so was impressive in that sense.

see, i think that ideally weddings should be the very antithesis of stiff formality, but i’ve been to so many that seemed like the few hours during which the wedding took place were more important than the idea of there being years after those few hours. stressing over details and rehearsing over and over until the flower girl tosses the petals with military precision and the ring bearer salutes the minister, rather than just enjoying what the wedding should represent, seems a little creepy.

anyway, this one wasn’t like that. it was really sweet, actually, and i’m not one to use the word “sweet” often in that context. but it was. instead of “i do,” holley said, “OH yeah,” which i thought was quite amusing.

there was no dancing at the reception, and apparently there’s some sort of embargo on corn-fed arkansas boys, so the dancing with them didn’t happen. there was also not as much reaction to my conservative-punk hair on the part of the arkansas folk as i had anticipated, so that was a bit of a letdown. eh, well. what do you call people from arkansas anyway? amanda and i took to calling them arkan-SASSY! but i doubt that’s accurate

after seeing a movie so horrible that i am embarrassed to reveal its title, we drove the nine hours back to houston in a hot, tired stupor. bleh.

weddings. i have a fifty-dollar bet with my mother that i won’t get married before i’m 35, because for some reason i think it will take me a while to get married, if ever. but, providing that ever occurs, my wedding will be funky-fresh. i’ll have it in the menil next to all the magritte paintings, and i’ll wear a green dress. “but not a real green dress, that’s cruel.”

it’s hard to type, my hands are shaking horribly. why is this?