Where Have All The Carnies Gone?

I'll tell you where they are (or were). They were at the Fall Festival at Cupie's school on Friday & Saturday.

We had a lot to do on Saturday - School Festival, Hot Air Balloon Race, Island Luau. Since the festival started early in the morning, we started our day there. That way we'd have time to cram all the other events in later.

We pre-purchased tickets for the games & rides and were able to bypass the ticket booth. We had blue tickets for the rides and purple tickets for all the other stuff.

Whew! We didn't have to wait behind the one other person buying their tickets that morning.

The first thing the girls saw upon arriving at the festival was the petting zoo consisting of goats, chickens, roosters, ducks, sheep & alpacas. They went bonkers over the idea of the farm animals. I don't get this - we live by a farm. They see these types of animals all the time. One cool thing was they got to feed the animals (one purple ticket).

Once we were done with the animals and a thirty second pony ride (four purple tickets), we headed over to the carnival rides - the ones with the carnies.

They had the required carousel, tea cups/barrel ride, something scrambler-ish, a bounce house, swings, and that ride that goes around with seats that alternate going up and down (if that doesn't make sense, there is a picture in a bit).

Both girls saw the swings and made a bee-line for them. The ride was running so there was a wee bit of a wait. Good grief, you would have thought the world was going to end.

When the Carney came over to get the tickets, we were able to read his shirt. Mind you, he woke up that morning, knowing he was going to be working an elementary school festival.



The writing on his shirt, while not readable from this picture, said:

I Get Sh*t-Faced Drunk
How Do You Handle Stress?

How's that for class?

I wonder what's really in that Pepsi bottle.

You will also note the yellow swing seat at the left side of the picture. This was indicative of the condition of all the rides. Rusty and frickin' OLD.

Stinkles howled when the Carney told her she wasn't tall enough to ride the swings - she was only two inches short. Now the world really was going to end!

At least the carousel was height appropriate. It wasn't a fancy carousel. That would have been out of character for the operation posing as a carnival company. There were no horses that went up and down. Nothing went up and down. There weren't even horses. It was fire trucks and motorcycles.

I think she was the only kid on the entire ride. Doesn't surprise me. After about five rotations she was telling us, "I'm ready to get off now." Even a three-year-old was bored with it!

The next ride Cupie chose also had a height requirement taller than Stinkles. There was no howling because Daddy was putting her a different ride already. I gave Cupie a ticket and sent her by herself to Hustler.



So far we have a stressed out, sh*t-faced Carney and a ride called "Hustler". Nice, huh?

When I turned away from Hustler and looked at the ride Stinkles was on, I almost had a heart attack.

One of our friends commented that it looked like it had been around since the Roosevelt era. Hubby said, "Yah, the first one."

It was rusty everywhere. The hydraulics no longer worked so the cars didn't go up and down like they were supposed to. Most of seats didn't have cushions, only a wooden seat. The ones that had cushions were torn and you could see foam peeking out.

Oh, and the lanky Carney (who had three day old stubble and greasy hair) had to push the ride to get it going. Visualize the guys getting the propellers going on old prop planes.



Stinkles didn't understand that the ride would force her body to the outer side of the car and insisted on sitting on the inner side. She was holding on for dear life. At one point I shouted at her, "Just slide to the other side." Hubby then pointed out that sliding across that wooden seat might give her a splinter in her butt.

We're up to a stressed out, sh*t-faced Carney, Hustler ride, and a splintery Roosevelt-era, half functioning ride. Doing good, right?

Our final ride of the day was the bucking bronco ride. Eight purple tickets! Each! Both girls and Hubby wanted to ride it.

On level one, it doesn't move very fast. Cupie was actually a little bored, but watching Stinkles hold on was pretty humorous.




Like that crooked horn?

It was made out of duct tape. The real horns had broken off some time ago.

At one point it fell out and some kid just picked it up and stuck it back in the hole on the side of the bull's head. We didn't realize it was the horn at first. My first thought was that the bull had a realistic pooping feature. Thank goodness, I was wrong.

Hubby got on the bull too.



Ride Indie, ride! He started out at level one - pretty boring. He asked the guy to bump it up to the next level.

It must be a Richter scale type thing. That bull went twice as fast and jerked around violently.

Hubby was down in about 3 seconds.

All this excitement (stress out, sh*t-faced Carney, Hustler in the house, Roosevelt-era prop plane turned carnival ride, and horns optional bucking bronco) in only 2 1/2 hours. Whew, and we were hardly starting our busy day.

Silver lining:

1. The kids had a good time.


2. The kids are alive after the perilous rides they were on.


3. I didn't read about any accidents at the festival so the rides must have held up


4. The rest of the day, while busy, didn't seem to put the kids in any danger - aside from the burning propane less than five feet from them and the rolling hot air balloon baskets nearly squishing them at the balloon race.

The Training Paid Off

(FYI - This is a guest post from The Hubby)

Last night, Wifey and I completed our pilgrimage trip to Chicago to go see Jimmy Buffett in concert. This was our third time seeing him, or the second-and-a-half time seeing him for me. You see, we showed up about 3½ hours early for the show last time, and we proceeded to party (i.e., drink non-child-approved beverages) heavily for that entire time.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided once we got inside that we STILL hadn’t had enough, and bought us each another monster-sized margarita. That was apparently just enough to put me over the top, and I don’t remember much of the concert after that. On top of that, I managed to lose a $250 pair of Maui Jim sunglasses somewhere in the amphitheatre lawn.

So, having squandered that opportunity to see him, I vowed shortly afterwards that I had to make every effort to see him again. That concert was the first time he’d come to our town in 8 years, and he wasn’t coming there this year. Who knows if or when he’ll come back to our town again (after all, Jimmy Buffett isn’t getting any younger), so I figured I needed to look at surrounding cities.

Chicago’s a few hours away, but it’s doable. We’d gone to see Bill Cosby there a few years ago, so selling Wifey on the idea of going to Chicago for a concert shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. The bigger challenge was selling Wifey on the idea of me buying concert tickets at all – she just wasn’t real keen on the expense this year. She knew this was important to me, though, so I think her response was, “Whatever you decide, dear” (which of course meant I was going to buy the tickets).

I knew after the concert last year that I’d get my butt kicked if I ever got that inebriated at a Buffett concert again, so I’ve been in “training” ever since. Seriously, it seems that just about every kind of social gathering in Pleasantville involves alcohol. At the time of the concert last year, we’d only been living in Pleasantville a few months, but this was now almost a full year and a half later. Some of you might recall the time I tried to bend glass – this was part of the strict training regimen I was committed to follow. (In case you missed that story, click here to read more about it).

The night of the big event had finally arrived. We didn’t get as much time to party beforehand this time – traffic in Chicago was INSANE (even on a Saturday – there’s no way I could live with that all the time). That managed to cut a full hour off of our planned partying time. So, since we didn’t have as much time, I decided that I needed to get caught up in a hurry.

Granted, I didn’t drink as much in quantity this time, but what I lacked in quantity I made up for in speed. In under an hour, I’d managed to put down a little more than half of a gigantic bottle of Cuervo golden margarita. Unfortunately, Wifey was making me share it with her, so that’s when I ran out of liquor.

This was enough liquor for her, though, that she managed to get the brainiac idea of going to try and find one of my co-workers based on the time he arrived. You see, it turned out that he was also going to be attending the same show, and we were supposed to hook up together beforehand. However, I’m not sure if he turned off his phone or if he let the battery die, but I couldn’t get hold of him when we got there. I’d found out earlier in the day about when he was planning to get there, so her plan was to walk around to different areas and find out what time the people in that area arrived.

Now, get a mental picture of this – I’m sure you’ve all been to a big concert or sporting event at some point in your life. Imagine one big parking lot for everyone in attendance – we’re easily talking about several thousand cars. On top of that, there were apparently multiple entrances to the parking lot, so finding an area that parked about the time he was supposed to get there didn’t necessarily mean it was the right area.

We never did find him, but we did manage to see some interesting sights. Wifey did manage to get a number of interesting pictures that I’m sure you’ll get to see in the coming weeks on either this blog or her Picture This blog. I also managed to score a mighty tasty shish-kabob from a fellow parrothead (for those of you who don’t know, that’s the name for fans of Jimmy Buffett).

So enough of my digression into Wifey’s brilliant idea – let’s get back to my story. As the title said, the training paid off. By the time our little expedition was over, it was about time to go in. We got inside successfully, and we even managed to successfully “sneak” a camera in, when it turned out that cameras weren’t even banned in the first place. (I’m sure she’ll tell you more about that story at some point). We both managed to make it through all of the concert, and saw a heck of a good show.

So, in the tradition of this blog, here’s the silver lining:

1. I didn’t get my butt kicked by Wifey for drinking my way through another Buffett concert.


2. Our tenth anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks, so our trip to Chicago was kind of an early celebration of that, and we had a fantastic time (except for the traffic – we’re both SO glad we don’t live there).

Lake or Pool?

What is a lake?

There are a lot of definitions, but here’s the general gist:

• It is deep enough that you can not cross without a boat. You can make that argument about some ponds as well, but wait, there’s more.


• Because of the lack of sunlight reaching the bottom of the body of water, a lake can not support rooted plants except near the shoreline.


• It’s not an ocean because it is a standing body of water. Not that anyone is going to mistake the Pleasantville lakes for an ocean anytime soon, this was purely informational.

Anywho, Pleasantville has a kick-a** pool club (leisure, kiddie, lap & lazy river), and it opened this weekend! However, there has been a lot of rain lately so the general consensus was that the water would be like ice.

So why did I see so many ding-bat teenagers swimming in the lakes? According to my definitions above, that water should have been colder than the pool! No way I was going to check it out, because our lakes really ought to have the following signage:

Beware the Piranha!

Well, if piranha could survive a Missouri winter, you would have cause for alarm. Fortunately, we only have bass and bluegill in the lakes.

You would think the bass would be scary because they are bigger than bluegill, but it’s the little ones that get you! The bluegills have a preference for certain exposed areas of the human body and they just have to have a taste. Men, let’s just say it may be to your advantage to wear a shirt in the water.

I know this because last summer, a neighbor of mine (who is black – not that it would make a difference otherwise, but it’s important to the story) and a few family members decided to take a dip in the lake, swim out to the raft & enjoy a summer’s day. They jumped in the water, and that’s when the bluegill appeared. It was like a swarm of mosquitoes.

There was some splashing and screaming and one of the guys kept getting bit on the nipple. His nipple was pierced so I’m sure that’s what first attracted them to him. You know fish are like children. Jiggle something shiny in their path and it will draw them in like moths to a flame. Once the bluegill were there, and realized their favorite treat (people skin) was available, they wouldn’t leave pierced nipple guy alone.

Anyway, they high-tailed it out to the raft, heaved themselves up the side and sat breathless in disbelief. As they looked out in to the water, more and more fish were appearing. Had they put their toes in the water, it would have been like piglets to the teats, but much more painful. Knowing they couldn’t stay out there forever, but fearful of the bluegill, they had to come up with a plan.

Pierced nipple guy was the knight in shining armor (which would have actually come in handy here, but armor makes it really hard to swim). He would make a diversion so the ladies could swim back to the dock. In an act of supreme selflessness, he did a cannon ball into the water and the ladies made it to shore safely.

As they were walking up the dock, a woman was watching her sons play in the water.

My neighbor warned her, “There are biting fish in the water. Your boys better watch out.”

The woman said, “Oh, really? They haven’t had any trouble with that.”

My neighbor huffed a bit. “I guess they only like dark meat.”


Silver lining:

1. There may have been a grand plan in place here. It’s a very family oriented community and perhaps the developers were trying to prevent people from skinny dipping in the lakes. I’m grateful for that and considering the age range of people living here, there are plenty of people I don’t want to see skinny dipping. Oh, and I don’t want my girls, when they’re teenagers, going skinny dipping either. Skinny dipping in seclusion = good. Skinny dipping in community lake = bad.

2. I say again, we have a community pool that is super cool. No bluegill allowed.