Take cover!

Normally I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Honestly it wasn’t a big holiday in my family growing up. The exciting event of the day was always catching a movie in the afternoon. Well this year was different. I flew down to Kansas City to meet Marathon Man’s parents. Major I know. They asked me if I had any dietary restrictions or allergies for the big Thanksgiving meal. Well I jokingly said that I wanted mac & cheese. My mom is not the greatest cook (who do you think taught me how to set bacon on fire) so the meal usually consisted of dry turkey, canned ham and corn, tasteless mashed potatoes, etc. Naturally you can see why we always looked forward to boxed mac & cheese because it was guaranteed to be good. Well M-Man’s parents are borderline gourmet cooks so I didn’t think they would actually make it. I guess they got the idea that I would ONLY eat mac & cheese, because his mom picked up a 12 pack from Costco. I admit, it was a nice gesture, but I was teased relentlessly.

The next day, we leisurely went shopping to pick up some deals. The sad thing is that JcPenny was the classiest place around. We met his mom there because M-Man needed jeans. She made him try on at least twenty pairs. I hung out in the dressing room because it took all of five minutes to browse the elegant selection of the Jc Penny misses collection. His mom shouted out “honey I found a nice pair of black jeans, do you want to try them on too” and I whispered to him “say no otherwise I’m dumping you”. They should have never invented black jeans. It gives guys a false sense of “dressy yet comfortable”. Barf!

That night we took his mom out to dinner for her birthday. Well as the waiter was passing my burger to me, he slipped and dropped a bucket of ketcup all over M-Man. It was total ketcup carnage. The server then gave us a handful of paper napkins and a 5% discount on our meal. Really, just 5%, when you an entire bottle of ketcup covered my boyfriend! His dad straightened it out with the manager who probably told him the massive hair gel was making his hands slick. Later they came out with a birthday dessert which turned out to be a twinkie with a sparkler stuck in it. Yeah, the C in KC stands for classy.

On our way back, we passed the most gaudy lawn decoration holiday display…EVER! I don’t know if it was the Nascar driving snowmen, the drunken reindeer, camofouge Santa, or the Statue of Liberdy hanging with penguins. I made M-Man stop the car so I could snap some pictures.







If that wasn’t amusing enough, right next door to the lawn abomination was a goat farm. Yes, in the great metropolis of Kansas City they sell goats! Ah ha ha ha!



Now you know you are in Kansas when the airport has tornado shelters. Ha!


We passed the time by trolling through downtown Independence Missouri, home of Harry S. Truman. We toured his presidential library and took photo opts at the giant phallic Mormon temple. We walked into the most depressing Church’s Chicken ever. All the customers were screaming at the workers for their “extra biscuits, this meal comes with free biscuits son”! The workers were all teenage derelicts who probably pee in the batter.

One day, I made M-Man drive me to Manhattan Kansas so I could see my old college town. I haven’t been back since graduation, so there were some things I wanted to get reacquainted with. Namely, Rock-a-belly sandwiches. Mmmnnn quite possibly the most delicious sandwiches ever!



We also walked the campus and saw some of my old classrooms and favorite campus places. Last year, a tornado hit campus and causes serious damage to the engineering complex. Luckily, the college of engineering has some serious bankroll in the alumni and was able to repair practically everything. The wind erosion lab is still kaput though. I went over to the senior sidewalk to show him my brick (it has my name, college, and graduation year). Well after all the hype, we found out that my brick was GONE! When they first installed it just before graduation, I noticed that they misspelled my name. I mean grossly misspelled it like “lynzey”. I told them to replace it since obviously I did not misspell my own name and didn’t want generations to come to refer to me as lynzey. I guess they took out the brick and forgot to put in a new one. Two strikes…now you wonder why I don’t donate to their foundation.


On Sunday, a huge snowstorm hit the Midwest and New England areas. M-man’s flight was delayed five hours. Mine was cancelled! I called the airline and was told the soonest they could fly me back to Chicago was Tuesday night. Unacceptable! I cut loose and finally got the manager who put me on a Monday morning flight. That still meant I had to spend the rest of the day and night with his parents…alone. Awkward huh. I had possibly the most uncomfortable “what is your intentions with my son” conversation with his dad in the car. After fifteen minutes of awkward silence he asked if I would like to listen to the radio to which I replied “YES”.