Pics from Bonnaroo

Aaron was kind enough to put all of our pictures from Bonnaroo up on his website. Check them out. Thankfully, I have been able to take a shower since then.

http://www.kohlbeck.org/photos/bonnaroo2006/

'Roooooooooooo!!!

Bonnaroo 2006 was an absolutely fantastic experience--great live music combined with a wonderfully mellow vibe and all the hippies a person can handle. Here are some interesting statistics from the trip:

-States traversed to get to Manchester, TN: 4
-Hours slept in Nashville on the way: 3.5
-Times car with license plate "M Grant" passed us: 4
-Weird weather phenomena resembling a tornado on a clear day: 1 sighting
-Mornings Aaron made tasty scrambled eggs with salsa: 3
-People that I spotted being carried out of the 'Roo on stretchers: 2
-Bands seen: 10 (Ben Folds, G Love and Special Sauce, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Cat Power, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, My Morning Jacket, Rusted Root, Damian Marley, Beck, Radiohead).
-Bands heard in the distance while listening to other bands: 2 (Umphrey's McGee and Cypress Hill).
-Rings purchased: 2
-Tea kettle "showers" taken: 1

Can't wait till next year. I even started a list of things I learned this year to help me prepare for next year's festival.

-You don't have to be skinny to wear a bikini.
-Don't pack an air mattress that's far too big for the tent you pack.
-Sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen.
-Don't pack beer--it's too fricking hot to drink it.
-Enjoy the time you have there, because it passes entirely too quickly.

Honky Tonk What?

I don’t understand the song “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk”. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Trace Adkins, but for some reason this song just confuses me.

First off, what is a badonkadonk? Judging from the lyrics in the song, I’m guessing he’s referring to a woman’s backside, but do we really know for sure? When I think of the word badonkadonk, I think of an old beater car rumbling over hills and losing its hub caps.

There’s also a rather disturbing line in the song that says, “And ooo wee, shut my mouth, slap your grandma.” What!?!? Slap my grandma??!?! What a horrible thought! And you expect me to listen to the rest of the song? I adore my grandma, and I’m pretty sure that if I slapped her, she’d chase after me and beat me with her cane.

Then, there’s this line: “Lord have mercy, how’d she even get them britches on?” Ok, I’m assuming that this song is an expression of how sexy a woman looks in tight jeans. It’s anything but sexy when I have to struggle to get my pants on—quite the opposite, actually. If I have to stand in the mirror and wonder to myself how I managed to get my britches on, I’m certainly not wearing them out dancing. Maybe it’s just me...

Still, despite this song’s obvious pitfalls, I find myself dancing in my seat and singing along...I’m sick.

What I learned over the weekend

Instead of writing about everything I did this weekend, I decided to make a list of the things I learned over the weekend. It’s a pretty impressive list.

1. Toddlers are inexplicably drawn to the large red shopping carts at Target and become so interested in them that it’s nearly impossible to get the toddler out of the shopping cart.
2. Cheddar cheese and green peppers are fantastic and very tasty additions to bratwurst.
3. Dave Matthews Band songs do not sound good when they are played to a conga beat. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
4. Reenacting the digestion process complete with sound effects will actually bring a toddler’s temper tantrum to a screaming halt.
5. Gel seats for bikes are quite possibly the best invention since sliced bread.
6. Cudahy, WI is rather hilly.
7. The woman that came up with the Baby Einstein idea and subsequent video series is a genius and should be nominated for sainthood.
8. Twenty five miles is kind of a long way if you’re biking.
9. Baking a strawberry rhubarb crisp in a paper bag is the only way to go. Same goes for apple pie, although that’s just a guess as the apple pie is still at Aaron’s house and I haven’t tasted it yet.
10. There are other places to go grocery shopping besides Pick ‘n’ Save and Walmart.
11. Toddlers like Pat McCurdy.
12. A wedding reception just isn’t a wedding reception unless “YMCA” is played at least once.
13. Cast iron skillets have to be seasoned. Alton Brown says so.
14. Sunday nights are no fun, especially when you have say goodbye to someone who is very important to you.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I must be getting old. Everyday on my way to work, I drive past Menasha High School, and I have the opportunity to observe how teens act and dress in today’s world. Today as I was driving to work, I was alarmed and, quite frankly, a bit disgusted to see what types of clothes teenage girls wear to school. I saw all types of skin-baring outfits, ranging from bare-midriff tops to low-cut tops to tube tops and shorts or skirts that leave nothing to the imagination. I felt like jumping out of my car and throwing a blanket over some of these girls. I’m not sure how any hormone-ridden high school boy can even pay attention in class anymore.

When I was in high school, my parents had pretty strict rules about what I could and couldn’t wear to school—no torn jeans, no beer shirts, and certainly nothing revealing. School was treated as my job when I was a teenager and I was expected to dress appropriately. And, I wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing a tube top or something like that to school. I would have been far too embarrassed. Nor did I feel compelled to dress No girls that I went to school with would have dressed so provocatively. (Incidentally, you will NEVER see me in anything where my stomach will show. Pregnancy does some not-so-pretty things to a woman’s body and it apparently takes a while to recover.)

I blame the Britney Spears’ and the Christina Aguilera’s of today’s world and lazy parenting for the slutty dressing phenomenon that seems to have plagued teenage girls. MTV (and for that matter, TV in general) is jam-packed with gyrating women wearing next to nothing who solicit and get all kinds of attention from very attractive men. And these are the role models for our girls? We’re teaching our girls that if they wear trampy outfits and act like sex kittens, they can get any boy they want.

I’m sounding like I’m ultra-conservative and I think all girls should wear turtlenecks and flannel pants to school. That’s not the case. The thing that gets me is that there seems to be a total lack of self-respect among these girls. Has society bashed girls down to such a level that they feel the only way to attract attention is to show some skin? Does a girl these days base her self-worth on how many boys want to “get with” her? Either way, it seems to me that there should be more of a focus on helping girls gain brain power so she can go to college or enter the workforce and become independent.

A girl shouldn’t have to feel like she has to put her body on display to be beautiful. A girl can be beautiful in a t-shirt and jeans if she has an air of confidence about her. She needs to know that there is so much more to her than how her body looks in a tank top. She has so much more to offer than her body. Those of us that are moms need to teach our daughters to respect themselves and to place a high value on what’s inside versus what can be easily seen.