Canned Meat Museum Adventure Day

Day 336

Today was spent adventuring with my parents.

1st Adventure: my father's driving. Mother, "Umm, you are a nutty driver." Father: "No, I am an insane driver."

2nd Adventure: My father insisted that we stop for a treat on the way to the canned meat museum. We pulled into an A & W. My mother and I ordered ice cream cones and he ordered a float. When the girl who was working handed off two good-sized cones my dad declared that they were small. "Look at that skinny little girl making the ice cream cones. They should always have big fat girls making the ice cream cones and then you'd get more."

3rd Adventure: The canned meat museum. Turns out that there is a lot to know about the meat packing industry. I learned that there was a singing chorus of women that paraded around the country to promote pork products. I learned that there was tons of canned meat consumed during the wars (duh). I learned that Margaret Thatcher ate canned meat, occasionally. I learned that giant plaster figures posed looking at each other could have a soundtrack played over them and it doesn't really look like two people actually talking no matter how hard you imagine. Most of all I learned that suckers like me can't live without a variety of souvenirs that are basically marketing tools. I don't know what I will do with a canned meat magnet but I sure as hell needed one. If that wasn't bad enough I thought my friends absolutely needed canned ham magnets, they just don't know it yet.

4th Adventure: After the museum trip we stopped at a nearby restaurant and ordered the museum special which consisted of canned ham burgers. They were wonderful until 20 minutes after you consumed them and rode down a bumpy highway. For dessert I ordered the mysterious "graham cracker pie." Turns out the mystery is that the pie has a graham cracker crust, vanilla pudding and is topped off with meringue. Then I learned the most fascinating thing I learned all day: if meringue is just right you can put it in your mouth and squeeze it out your teeth and it is the most fun you could possibly have sober.

4th Adventure: My brother's car broke down and he wanted me to drive one of my parents two (driveable) cars to him, over an hour away. This started an onslaught of what I will call, What it Means to Be in a Family. Simply put, I was reminded that fights could tear a family apart and cause gang ups and HUGE guilt trips. Most of the time these fights dissolved without apologies. And sometimes, rarely, they end with one person hugging the other and saying, "I am not mad at you. I love you." And the hugged thinking, 'You are probably lying but I don't care.'

I have taken to writing postcards. Okay, let's be honest, I don't have tons of money to spend on buying souvenirs for my pals and I have some free time. Anyway, over my holiday break (translation: Canadian for vacation) I have spent quite a bit of time filling out postcards with curse words and TMI stories and sending them out to my friends. This is all fine and nice but I am wondering if the time I am spending watching TV and eating too much canned meat product (the time I am not writing postcards) should be spent dreaming up ways to validate the postcard writing fetish by putting it to use for my thesis.

My parents have driven me to exercise. No, it's not because they have rock hard abs or can run marathons--the only marathons they can do involve TV episodes. It is due to them driving me nuts. As my car died last year and I am borrowing one of theirs during my visit and today we all got into a fight (see above) and the use of their car was hung over my head I decided to strike out on my own. I made it up the hill they live on and tromped around listening to Skid Row in my new earbuds for twenty minutes--as long as it took for me to discover that my hair was wet due to my sweating and got kinda grossed out and then realized that I was tired. I am like the kid who bumps himself and only starts crying because he sees blood. Well, that and the fact that there were people coming up ahead and I didn't want to talk to them. Anyway, now I am wondering if I hung around my parents all of the time if I would be thin due to the fact that they drive me to exercise. It's either that or hard drugs but then again hard drugs make you thin. Hmm...

What I just said to my mother: "One day I want to make enough money so that I don't have to buy my underwear in a six pack."

Tip of the Day: Ate too many sodium nitrate-laced foods? Eat a bag of frozen vegetables.

-Canadian Castaway