On this day, I learned that Crayola has introduced more lame “KID CREATED” colors into their box of 64.
Best Friends
Bear Hug
Fashionable

etc. They look like the typical bright colors that kids adore but not me as a crayon artist. When are we going to have crayons for adults?

My Crayola Crayons for Grown Ups would feature different shades of the basic colors and then a couple variations of saturation/intensity. The hue changes will be achieved by mixing the colors, making the art of coloring with crayons more of a scientific process than ‘hmm, I wonder what I can make with bittersweet and cadet blue’.

There’s also another shade of grey.

On this day, I learned that there is a little tendon or muscle or something in that area inside your lower jaw. If you try to hold your head up for three movies within two days without the proper stretches and cool down proceedures, you run the risk of pulling this muscle painfully.

Learn from my mistakes. Don’t hold your head high, you snobs!

On this day, I learned that you can decimate even a pool shark in cutthroat when he’s nervous about having just gotten married.

I also learned that it’s very difficult to find bears in the appalachian wilderness, but the deer are tame as anything.

On this day, I learned that it is 1970-odd miles from Maine to a certain outlet of the Appalachian Trail in the Smokies which borders both Tennessee and North Carolina.

On this day, i learned a million things, some of them purportedly true at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museum here in Gatlinburg. The english jail cell doors were probably the most ‘holy crap’, if only because it was very physically evident how hardcore they were.

On this day, I learned that the stoplights in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, TN are numbered. We got directions that said to turn at the #7 light and I was like ‘wtf, we haven’t been counting’, and then inspection showed they were numbered for us!

Also I am still terrified of driving in torrential “toad strangler” rains. But I managed.

There is a comfortable way to sleep in the backseat by using an ice chest, you do it like this:
Get a pillow and fasten your seatbelt so the highwayman doesn’t come after you.
Lean the pillow against the door, lean against the pillow.
Sink down and put your feet on top of the ice chest.
Manoeuvre (I love when I realize I can spell difficult words because they have a basis in french, man (main, hand) + oeuvre (work, artwork)) so that the seatbelt isn’t jabbing you in the back.
Sleep.

On this day, I learned that it’s nice to take a benadryl when you’re dying of allergies and just sleep the afternoon away. Especially if you’re going to go to bed at 1am when you’re going to get up at 5:30am because your parents think it’s essential to start on your 10 hour roadtrip before dawn. No I’m not bitter!

On this day, I learned the PM of the UK’s name is Gordon Brown.  I knew that Blair had been gone for some years now, but I never bothered to learn the nub’s name.

I also learned that I have way too much stuff to pick up, my boxes from school smell disgusting, holy crap I need to pack, and my mom’s Jewel (pieces of you) cd is MIA. shucks.

On this day, i learned that Dreamsicle the cake doesn’t taste nearly as good as Dreamsicle the snowcone. But it is great anyways.

Also learned a few more tidbits about my parents’ lives before me.

On this day, I learned where the cabin my uncle “Red” has a stake in is. You drive ten minutes on the interstate, twenty five minutes on the Scenic Route Highway, turn onto a smaller highway for another fifteen minutes, change to a smaller highway for about five or ten minutes, then hop onto a small county road for a few minutes, then hop onto a dirt county road and drive on that for another twenty minutes.

You ford creeks four times getting out there, and countless mud puddles. This is in the “dry” season, although our July has been abnormally wet so far. But there was definitely a heavy film of dust on our front windshield from following my uncle in his large creek-fording-capabilities Ford.

I learned that the Onan generator we were coming to pick up was 1) ancient 2) heavy 3) had a carburetor.
It had never really occured to me that generators were just fancy motors, but it makes sense.

We stopped in the creek on the way back and washed all the chiggers off that might’ve been crawling up our legs (no one had mowed grass at the cabin in a while so it was about 6 inches tall) and enjoyed some peaches my dad had picked up for $2 before we left civilization.

On the drive out there, my dad and I talked, and I learned a whole bunch about his life long before I came along. I always love to hear his stories, and this time was no different. When I got home, I talked about it some to my mom and got her thoughts on it; she just said like always “Allison, your dad is one in a million.”