Thank God, I'm a City Girl

There's a reason we don't live in the country. We're not country people. This past weekend is proof. We had a nice weekend planned. Saturday in Canton, shopping at First Monday trade days, and then hanging out a resort/ranch for some R&R.

Everything went fine in Canton--it's still urban enough that we were in our element, plus it's shopping. What an experience. Part carnival/part flea market times 1000--everything is bigger in Texas. We mostly looked, but found some good bargains.

Getting to the ranch was another story. We got hopelessly lost, spending nearly 90 minutes on what should have been a 15 minute drive. It wasn't totally our fault. Blame Google maps; blame the lady at the ranch; and blame the fact that the county apparently renamed all the little backroads that we needed to take to get to the ranch.

The county renamed all of the roads, ostensibly to make it easier for emergency personnel to find their way around (wonder how that's working). Of course, that screwed up Google maps, but that doesn't fully explain why Google maps was so off. When we googled the name of the ranch, sure nuff, Google brought up an address, with driving directions to get there. Unfortunately, the address was wrong, and the instructions landed us in some back woods some 20 miles from where we needed to be.

Determined to get there, we finally called the ranch to get directions. She gave us directions alright. They would have been perfectly correct if we'd been coming from the opposite direction! Although we told her we were coming from Canton, she gave us directions as though we were coming from Dallas. When she told us to turn right, we should have turned left. She gave us the same [wrong] directions a second time when we called back, still lost.

Finally, BoilerHusband sought directions from some shirtless old guy (he should have kept his shirt on; it wasn't pretty). I was a little worried when BoilerHusband disappeared into Scratchy's garage for a time, since Scratchy (my name for him) could have been typecast in a movie on lynching. But BoilerHusband indeed returned, armed with directions that turned out to be correct.

Voila! Scratchy to the rescue! We found the ranch.

We should have left well enough alone thereafter. Swimming in the pool was fun, but we can swim at home. We wanted to go fishing in one of the many ponds at the ranch. All was well until BoilerBaby2 found a perfect specimen of a praying mantis. The younger BoilerBabies were intrigued, and so was I, until I felt the little stings that signalled that I was standing in a fire ant pile. Aaagh!! I was covered. "Put your feet into the pond," I was advised. Unfortunately, I understood that to mean, put your shoes into the pond. In went one shoe, where it proceeded to float away from the edge, beyond my reach. Now what? No one could reach my shoe easily and I wanted my shoe back. So, into the muddy pond I went, with a big stick, to retrieve my shoe. Success, but I expected to go fishing for fish, not shoes. And my shoe was the only thing we caught.

I'm not even going to recount the golf cart incident. Suffice it to say that it involved a decline, a big bump, and two members of the Boiler Family who were on the golf cart, ending up on the ground.

The whole trip started to feel a little surreal--like we were in some weird show where Candid Camera meets reality tv.

We had a fun trip when it was all said and done, but it's good to be home.