good clean fun (in the form of a really long post)

i'm horrible for coming up with jokes on the fly, but for some reason this one stupid joke sticks out in my memory from when i was a kid. it goes like this:

Q: wanna hear a clean story?
A: a man took a bath.
Q: wanna hear an even cleaner story?
A: the man took a bath with bubbles.
Q: wanna hear a dirty story?
A: bubbles was the woman next door.

or something dumb like that. anywho, that was an entirely unplanned digression that somehow flitted into my brain after i wrote the title on this post, which was supPOSEd to be about my wholesome family fun-filled wknd in dallas. so i'll leave the lame jokes behind and get on with it already...

to give you an idea of the wholesomeness of my wknd, here are some of the activities i participated in:

1. playing kids' cranium with my little cousin over and over and over although it's really a very lame game
2. tossing bread into the neighborhood pond to see which animals would get it first, the fishies or the duckies
3. eating wholesome all-american family food like roasted chicken and garlic bread and steamed veggies
4. setting up a contest to see who could hurdle over my leg the best
5. giving piggyback rides in which my steps were timed to the pink panther theme song
6. dying easter eggs, helping them write their letters to the easter bunny, watching them hunt easter eggs with mad frenzy, teaching them how to prick holes and blow the yoke out of raw eggs so you can paint them and keep them forever since there is no yolk inside
7. snuggling with little kids of all sizes at all hours of the day, picking them up when they wanted to be picked up, scaring them, tickling them, chasing them, and yelling that no, it's really not a good idea to jump into the nasty algae-filled pond
8. saying good-night to them as they filed out to go camping in a huge tent in the backyard, complete with tissues, plenty of bottled water, and a portable DVD player (camping: it's not what it used to be)

the list goes on and on. i had a great time in dallas with the cousins and their respective broods (two families, five kids in total, with an age range of 5-11). it was nice not to think about myself for once, if that makes sense. as a single 20-something whose only real responsibilities are showing up at work and paying my rent on time (the kinds of things where if i fail to do them, the only person it really affects is me), it becomes incredibly easy to develop tunnel vision and think only of yourself and waste endless hours navel-gazing and pondering important questions like "what should i be when i grow up?" and "i wonder if i spend too much of my income at whole foods?"

but when it's wholesome family fun wknd, it's hard to think about yourself and your silly little life when you have seven year olds jumping on your bed at 7 in the morning because being patient and letting lazy aunt jennifer sleep in as their kind parents instructed them to is just TOO HARD when they want you to get up so you can play! woo hoo! let's have a pillow fight!

i also learned that i have mad skeelz when it comes to wielding a tube of icing and can make a mean bunny cake when given only two regular round cakes and some imagination (uncooked pasta for whiskers, shredded coconut for "bunny fur," etc.). am hoping i can find a way to milk said talent for financial gain.

but for some of you who don't know that softie-family side of me, i will end this post with a list of non-family-themed observations and rants about the wknd:

1. having grown up driving on 495 and 95, i consider myself well-schooled in the basic rules and etiquette of driving. drive aggressively when need be, but always drive safely. always use your headlights when it's raining. don't tailgate, but if you see someone tailgating you, either get out of the left lane or tap your brakes to tell them to fuck off. so why don't texans get this? on my drive to and from dallas, i cannot tell you the number of 18-FUCKING-WHEELERS and CEMENT MIXERS i saw driving 55 mph in the left lane of a 70 mph highway and how strongly i wanted them to drop them in the middle of, like, the NJ turnpike or smthg to see how they'd do.
2. i drove through waco and pondered what it would be like to live in / be from a town that only has national prominence for something horrible. like being from columbine or smthg.
3. then again, waco is also home to the only official texas ranger museum, so maybe it's only the east coast snob in me that somehow overlooked this important fact. it sounded like a fine shrine to these brave souls, these intrepid warriors into nature.
4. dallas has highways called 35E and 35W that run north and south. so you have to find "35E/N" or "35W/S." let your puzzled confusion begin. i've already moved past puzzled confusion to angry disdain.
5. drivers of the dulles toll road, rejoice. in my 20 miles on the north texas tollway (my cousins live in a suburb north of dallas), i had to pay THREE SEPARATE TOLLS of 75 cents each. when i thought about the number of breakfast tacos i could have bought with that money, i had to wipe away a tear.
6. i stopped for gas in italy, texas, "the biggest little town in texas!"

and OMG!! i almost forgot!! i got to ride in a racecar for the very first time in my life. my cousin has this crazy hobby of maintaining and racing cars, and he took me out for a bunch of laps around the track (not an oval track situation but a real course with crazy turns and such). and by racing i don't mean "hey let's put the rice rocket on a big empty road and tharrr she blowwwws!" but racing like make sure you put on your full-body flame-retardant suit, helmet, harness me in completely, etc. at one point the car in front of us (that we were exTREMEly close to) spun out of control and off of the track and kicked up this huge cloud of dust which obscured it completely from our view. my cousin somehow managed to stay in full speed and skid around it, but i swear i nearly peed in my pants.

i'll post pics of me in the suit as soon as i get them from my cousin. it was some hot shit dude. i nearly puked, got a fierce headache from all the fumes, my ears from the piercing squeal of skidding tires, and i felt kinda shaky for a while but it was insanely fun. oh, and the best part? i drove all the kids out there in the minivan and they watched DVDs the entire time (it was a bit of a schlep) while i chatted with my cousin's wife in the front. the minivan can now return to its rightful home at enterprise rent-a-car feeling like it has fulfilled its mission.