Making the old new again

Yesterday was a bit of an adventure.

It started out innocently enough. After a quick breakfast and a trip out to the strawberry planter to sample the first red berry of the season, we piled into the car and headed to my folks' for church and the girls' very first sleepover at Gramma and Pampah's.  I had such a nice time seeing the faces of those who loved me through my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, and I loved that Elaina and Ellie got to sit with my parents in the same pew where I often sat with my grandparents as a child. Josh and I agreed that for all the opportunities available at a church the size of the one we now attend, there is perhaps a bit of heart missing when loud guitars and drums and praise music replace quiet hymns and pianos and prayer requests said for those we know by name.

After church, we visited Mom's friend, Josie, who lives in a nearby nursing home, and then headed home for lunch. We relaxed for a bit, but when Elaina kept not-so-subtly asking when Josh and I were going to beat it so the sleepover fun could begin, we decided it was time to kiss them and head out.

Clearly, this decision devastated them:

When we first started talking to Mom and Dad about a sleepover, Ellie was a bit younger, so Josh and I decided we'd stay in Macomb "just in case" we needed to do a middle of the night rescue. Despite being home to a state university, Macomb is nearly as boring as Colchester (hard to imagine), where Feldos, an ice cream shack that made the best lemon ice cream and was the only thing Colchester had going for it, finally sold after being on the market for no fewer than 15 years.

Undeterred, we decided to make the best of our staycation and explore local attractions. Our first stop was Lake Argyle, which Josh knows best from the massive flea market sale that is held there every Labor Day. It is only a few miles from my parents' house, but we'd only actually driven around it once, the first autumn we were dating. I had decided the best way to blow a couple hours would be to rent a paddle boat or canoe, so after we drove the winding roads around the park, we headed back to the bait shop to get our gear and relax on the lake.

We walked into the bait shop at 2:02. We were back in the car at 2:05. Why? Because on a holiday weekend, on a beautiful Sunday where the breeze was just enough to cut the humidity of an otherwise gorgeous day, the bait shop closes at 3:00. And you can only rent equipment for an hour. And getting there two minute past "cut off time" is apparently not close enough. This information would have been nice to know before we spent 20 minutes driving around the park. And I'm pretty sure the young man who told us we couldn't go out on the lake was probably born when I was in high school.

So we did what any other self-respecting American couple would do. We took a selfie and left.

And thus began an afternoon of second choices and second chances.

I had a vague memory that Macomb had a lake, too, so we headed into town, to where I thought the lake was. Spoiler: it wasn't. There were, however, several ponds that Josh enjoyed bringing to my attention, in case, you know, those ponds were actually the lake we were seeking. We drove around for awhile in an ill-fated attempt to quell motion sickness and to validate the memory lurking in my brain, until finally we gave up and consulted God's gift to the modern lost, the cell phone.

Directions in hand, we decided to give this adventure one more go. Josh was probably ready to cash it and find something else to do (he had suggested a coffee and used book store--which would have been fine if Macomb had a coffee shop or used book store that were actually open on Sunday afternoon), but I was determined to make this happen. We were about a half mile from the entrance to the lake park when this happened:

Josh laughed. I think I almost cried. But I am nothing if not stubborn, so I insisted that surely there must be a detour, or a way around that would get us to the lake without much delay.

Silly, stubborn girl.

45 minutes later, through winding hills where the green rushed by at a nauseating clip, we finally found the entrance to the park. By this point, we both needed to clear our heads and stretch our legs, so we parked the car and took a walk. There were no canoes or paddle boats to be had, but the weather was so nice and we had had such fun getting lost that we made the best of it and daydreamed about what magnificent vacations await us in the coming years, perhaps even in the coming months.

After leaving the lake, we decided to really up the vacation ante and head to...wait for it...Farm King. Josh wanted to look for more drip irrigation equipment, because, after all, you can take the man out of his garden, but you can't take the garden out of the man. (I should note that we did this before checking into our hotel because Farm King closes at 5:00 on Sundays, and it was already almost 4:00). Josh was, of course, quite excited:

Me, not so much...

The trip was a success. Josh bought the stuff he needed to ensure that our garden will have plenty to drink all summer long, and he found some rainbow carrot seeds that I'm excited to plant this fall.

At this point, it was time to check into our hotel.

It was clean. It was quiet (mostly because I think we were one of two rooms actually occupied). And it was, for lack of a better word, a bit skeevy. This is a lesson for the future. When the price difference between two mid-grade hotels is about $20 a night, spend the extra $20.

By then, it was time to eat, so we headed to El Rancherito for dinner. I hadn't eaten there since high school, and it was yummier than I remembered, and certainly yummier than the last Mexican food we'd eaten which made 3 of the 4 of us ill. Josh got carne asada and I had carne verde.

My only regrets? Filling up on chips and salsa before the main dish came out, and not specifying corn tortillas.

After dinner, we continued our Tour of All the Summer Things Macomb Has to Offer and went to Ball Fore for some mini-golf. Josh will probably tell you that he won, but that, of course, would be wrong. Sure, he had fewer strokes at the end of the game, but I should have been awarded something for style points, not to mention totally destroying him on a hole where he gave up after 7 strokes and I successfully completed in the same. I'm in to creative scoring when it's to my benefit, but I suppose we'll just have to rematch to ensure the rightful winner (me) does, in fact, win.

When our mini-golfing outing was complete, we went to the one remaining locale where many of my Friday high school nights were spent with my friends because, after all, what else was there to do? That's right: Josh and I went to Wal-Mart. It turned out to be one of our most successful ventures of the entire day, because I got exactly what we came for (body wash, because 1) who wants to smell like hotel soap, 2) especially when said hotel is skeevy, and 3) I'd forgotten my soap at home), and also walked away with a new loofah, a big pack of Twizzlers (thank you, impulse section), and a box of Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit mix, because who knew those were being mass-marketed, and what if Kroger doesn't carry them?

With goodies in hand, we headed back to our hotel, where we spent a relaxing evening reading, catching up on social media, and watching My 600-lb Life on TLC. This morning, we slept in 'til 8:15 (glorious) and had the "complementary breakfast", the highlight of which for me was a mostly tasteless banana and a bite of Josh's frozen-but-not-frozen waffles. You get what you pay for, folks. Then it was time to pick up the girls and enjoy the rest of our Memorial Day.

Really, I had a great time. I get to "explore" where Josh grew up every day--we go to his childhood home 5 days a week, and our church is held in his old high school. Yesterday, he got to explore the quiet little town I called home, and the town a few miles away that was vastly more entertaining when I was growing up. As we headed out of Colchester this morning, I repeated something I've often thought about my hometown: It's a nice place to grow up, and it's a nice place to grow old, but it doesn't hold much if you're in between. This weekend, though, because I got to share it with him, the in-between was actually quite a bit of fun. And maybe it's not so bad, after all.