I haven’t written here for a while. I was gone for a few days. Headed north to Amish land in Pennsylvania.

TPKen has been having huge problems with his blood pressure. I had to nag him to go to a doctor where he found out that it was 230/135….heart attack and stroke area. He was put on blood pressure meds and told to relax. So, I thought, “What could be more relaxing than driving north to gawk at people who don’t wear buttons or use electricity?” Seemed like a good antidote to hectic life of keeping up with technology in our every day life.  I could here the clip-clop of horse hooves on pavement as I packed my suitcase.

This was not our first sojourn to visit the Amish. We had gone several years ago when TPSkipper and TPMidge were younger. I remembered having a very relaxing and educational time. However, I forgot that your memory can be kind to you and not necessarily an accurate source of info.

For instance, I had forgotten that it was an eight hour drive. Eight hours of TPKen’s crazy-ass driving.TPK has an annoying (and somewhat dangerous) habit of constant use of cruise control. If one is in the car with TPK, they will find themselves in the exciting situation of going 80 mph in a 35 mph zone. Or, the extremely annoying situation of going 35 mph in a 80 mph zone. Not only is this annoying, it is seat-clutching scary. There we were on the interstate with cars passing us or…..not passing and riding our rear bumper just mere inches away from creaming us from behind.

And, if his reverse speed habit isn’t enough to make you white knuckled and green-faced, then I’m sure that his habit of U-turning would do the trick. Sure, we all U-turn at some time. But, how many of you U-turn in the middle of 5 lanes of traffic. Horns blowing all around. 18 wheeler drivers having to either slam on their breaks or pull a Nascar maneuver to keep from squashing you like a bug. NOT FUN!

At first, I figured that I had better keep my eyes wide open and on the constant look-out for cops, exits, landmarks, etc. It didn’t take too long before I found that this was raising my blood pressure.Not only to stroke/heart attack level but to SCREAMLOUD level. So, I figured that I’d be better off just not looking at anything around us at all. If we were going to be smashed, I wanted it to be a surprise. No last few seconds of my life playing before me.

I had brought two books to read. I started (and finished) one…the latest Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood novel. I really do love watching True Blood and had enjoyed the earlier Charlaine Harris’ Sookie tales. But, this one was really out there. Totally unbelievable. Fairies. Yeah, it’s mostly about Sookie/the Vamps/the 2-natured and how the dealt with the threat of fairies. When I told TPSkipper that this one was not believable, she said, “So, you believed the ones about vamps and weres?” I said that I didn’t excatly believe in them but they were not too far fetched to be real. Kind of like Stephen King’s books. I read everything that he wrote up until a few years ago when his stories became totally unbelievable. See…although, I know that all of this stuff (Sookie and The Stand) is fiction, I could imagine it actually happening in real life. But, I do have a limit to my willingness to accept “the crazy” and both King and Harris had supersceded my bullshit limit.

I had, also, brought along one of my fav snacks…Red Vine licorice. Yum yum good. I sure do love that stuff even if it does get stuck in my teeth and I walk around the better part of the day looking like my gums are bleeding. And, why in the hell aren’t most people kind enough to tell you that you have red gummy crap stuck between your front teeth? I would. You bet’cha! I would tell somebody if they had crap between their front teeth. Especially if it looked like they had bleeding gums. Listen, I don’t hestitate to tell a women that her skirt is stuck in the back of her panty hose (which I have done)  or she has toilet paper stuck to her shoe. Once, I told a man that he still had the 38/32 long clear sticker thingy on his Levi’s. He was not very gracious when I told him. He just jerked it off and walked away. Short, dumpy man acted like he was offended or something. Now, I would be happy if someone told me that I still had a sticker with my jeans size still stuck on my pants. Which reminds me that I did actually tell a women in WalMart that she still had her Faded Glory Sz 16Short tag still stuck on her behind. I’m pretty sure that the sticker started out on the front leg. Don’t know how it moved around to her hiney but there it was! Now, SHE was grateful….embarassed but grateful. Guys don’t get it. Women do NOT want to wear their size tag around to prove that they have new britches. Some guys do, though.

Sookie kept me pre-occupied for several hours. As I was reading about her fool-proof method of killing fairies by squiritng them with water guns loaded with lemon juice plus her late grandmother’s trusty iron garden trowel, I suddenly heard a familiar noise. The roar of motorcycles….Harley’s to be exact. And, lots of them. I looked up from the page where Sookie was getting all hot for Vampire Eric and saw that we were in Gettysburg. There were Harleys everywhere! I do know the sound of a Harley since there is a 1985 chromed-up, spit-shined black Harley softtail setting in my very garage. You might remember that in the past, I wrote a few posts about riding with a genuine motorcyle gang. Yes, I am dog-dead serious. Yep, had the “ol lady” patch, in a police raid, etc. You can read about some of it if you click on this link…. My so-called wild biker mama days  . (for Stan who is going to question it…he’s just jealous of my exciting life).

It turned out to be bike week in Gettysburg. That brought back some memories. I went to bike week in Sturgis S.D. once. That was a wild gathering. In our campground, the bikers would stand at the entrance with signs saying, “SHOW ME YOUR TITS!”. Ya know, I tried to comply but just could not get TPKen to take off his shirt at all! That was, also, my first time to ever see a streaker in real life. Every night at precisely 8:00pm, a guy would run up and down the campground in nothing but his birthday suit. Gosh…..I miss that walk on the wild side of life.

Leaving Gettysburg and the bikers in the rear view mirror, I went back to reading about Sookie and her great-grandpa, the fairy. Not THE FAIRY as in THE GAY. The fairy as in the mystical, magical creature. I finished the book  just as we rode into Lancaster. Downtown Lancaster….we were lost. Why do men not ever admit that they are lost? They will waste perfectly good time and expensive gas driving around acting like they know where they are. I don’t get it. Must be a blow to the manly self-esteem that has been handed down from generations all the way back to when the cave man wandered around til he was eaten by a dinosaur. He could have prevented that if he had just stopped long enough to read the “”signs” on the cave walls. Women are much smarter. We have sense enough to pick up our cellphones and call the motel/hotel and ask for directions (which is exactly what I did).

The Amish country was a big disappointment. It may have been because I distinctly remember if differently. What happened to the bus tours where the sweet, young Amish girls hopped onto the bus and sold their handmade goods? TPKEn says that never happened but I’m sure that it did (unless I’m getting mixed up with a Lifetime movie…which I admit is entirely possible).  And, that darn retired public school teacher who was our guide in Ye Old Amish Farmhouse and Gift Shoppe hurt my feelings and embarssed me when she yelled at me for trying on some of the bonnets and aprons that were on display. Well, it’s possible that I had pissed her off earlier asking questions that she obviously considered beneath her status as Official Guide of Ye Old Amish Farmhouse and Gift Shoppe. She did say that we could ask any questionsthat we had and I wanted to know if Amish women shave their legs and read trashy novels (like Sookie). And, then, she did catch me fiddling around with the Amish coffin that was on display. I swear it looked like a vamp could sleep in it.

Next, we went to The Bird In Hand bakery which was touted by our tour guide as having the best baked goods in all of Amish Land. I was none too happy to see a tour bus filled with elderly people disembark from it. I don’t take pride in telling ya that I had to elbow a couple of white haired grannys out of the way to get to the sweet rolls. Those sweet rolls were really delicous…warm and gooey. Yum!

After one whole day and two nites of Amish fun, I was ready to go home. The morning that we left, I saw MORGAN FREEDMAN in the free continental breakfast line. HOKE, himself. waiting on the waffle iron (ya had to make your own). Alright, it really wasn’t MF aka Hoke but he sure did look like him. I was disappointed and down in the dumps because he was not the real Morgan. So, to lighten my mood, I asked TPKen to let me ride in the back of the car and have him address me as “Miss Daisy”. He refused. Kill-joy!

.On the way back, I took out my second book to read…..”Do Ants Have Assholes?”

Yes, they do. I found that info interesting but not really something that I could apply to everyday life. Who knows? One day, I might be on Jeopardy and have a “Things That Have Assholes” category.

The book tackled such perplexing questions as…

If you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant, what do you do?  The answer was to kill them both. A long explanation was provided of which I did not understand most of it.

What does titfink mean? The titfink is a brightly colored Scandinavian bird.

So, dear readers, there you have it….my complete white trash vacation in a nutshell:

Crazy driving for 8 hours

Eating red licorice (having it stuck in my teeth).

Reading 2 books with really no substance of value

Seeing a Morgan Freedman lookalike

Hearing all the Harleys at Gettysburg bike week

and….well, that’s all.

And, it would have been worth it except TPKen had a doc appt this morning. His blood pressure had not gone any lower. The doc doubled his meds. I hope it wasn’t the “Miss Daisy” thing that caused it.

PS…Thank you, Stan. I needed to get this out of my system! Am I still a gobby camel?