Speed Racer I heard on the radio this morning that they're making a Speed Racer movie. For those of us from the DC metro area who were addicted to Speed as well as Ultra Man on Channel 26 in the afternoons, this is an important question. Vince Vaughn? or Johnny Depp? Place your votes now...

Not Much News I apologize for not writing more but really I haven't felt very funny and I figured no one would be interested if it wasn't a howl a minute. I'll try harder in July! Anyway, the news is that my sister now looks like she's about 12 months along - still smoking end over end and then getting HIGHLY pissed off at me for pointing it out. We had a screaming match on the phone last night. The night before she called to inform me she was in the ER with Trev who had cellulitis. The ER gave her a script for an antibiotic and told her to get his little butt to the doctor the next morning. Well, after she yelled at them for trying to X-Ray his foot ("He don't have nothin' in it, he don't even WALK!"), I made the observation that they probably were thinking she was some hick from a trailer in West Virginia...and then I said, "Ooops, you ARE!" Extremely mean but she giggled. Anyway, she took him home instead of filling the script ("Nothin' was OPEN!" and what WAS open was too far for her to drive she said.) And when I talked to her last night she didn't even take him to the doctor. "Why not?" "I don't LIKE them." "I bet you'd get your fat ass there if you had a yeast infection even if you didn't like them." "Leave me alone!" What a stupid and whiney bitch. Anyway, I freaked for the better part of our conversation and told that *I* loved Trever even if she couldn't find it in her heart to. I think she was trying to shut me up when she told me she'd take him. Whatever. I'd lay money that she won't get him there. The other news is that she's picked names and so far, neither involves my mother. For a boy...Andrew (which sucks in a small way only because that was supposed to be MY name had I been blessed with a Y chromosome), and For a girl...Ivy. What the HELL is up with THAT name???? "Ivy, drink your milk." "Ivy, get your little ass in this house this minute!" "Ivy, what the hell are you doing?" I suppose in the limited context of a trailer in West Virginia, oddly, it works on some level.

Redneck Country with my White Trash Family! My dad got the family tickets for the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race in Concord, North Carolina. This included my sister and her husband, my dad and the Sponge, and me and my husband. My dad wanted to share a room at a nearby hotel but thank G-d I opted out of THAT and chose, instead, to take my mother-in-law up on her Comfort Inn Family discount. We ended up 90 minutes away in Hickory. THIS was a good thing! We drove down Saturday and the 7 1/2 hour trip that Mapquest indicated turned into a 10 hour extravaganza. We were DOG tired when we arrived and went out to dinner at the local Olive Garden. It was great but even at 9:00 at night there was still a 45 minute wait. After THAT, we ate and were out of there in less than 25 minutes! The next morning was race day and we left Hickory at 10:00 a.m. bound for Concord. We passed through Charlotte noticing the absence of traffic even when we arrived at Concord - our exit being Speedway Boulevard. And despite the bumper-to-bumper status of the exit, it was moving so we figured we'd see the Holiday Inn Express and be able to get to it. Au contraire mon frer! Nope, the state police had the entire place completely shut down except to go straight which, presumably, was the Speedway. Not one to be confined by the silliness of a $300 traffic ticket, we did a u-ey in the dirt, narrowly missed getting creamed by oncoming and outgoing traffic sharing the two lane highway and motored back to the hotel. Once there, we scored a sweet handicapped spot and parked...life was good!! We went upstairs to the room to find my dad in a chair, my bigger-than-life pregnant sister chain-smoking in the bed and the Sponge in the bathroom making herself look alive after what, my brother in law reported, was a hard night at the bar for her. It was about 11:30 a.m. and WAY too soon to leave for the track considering the race was at 5:30 p.m. so we opted to hang around, breathe in our fair share of second hand smoke and try not to get into it with the Sponge before we all left. Quickly it became apparant that the tide had turned between my dad and my sister. Suddenly he was all babying her and catering to her, as she lit one cig off the other and patted her enormously 22 week pregnant stomach while enjoying the fact that everyone just waited on her hand and foot. To be quite honest, I don't think I have EVER seen anyone as pregnant as she is. And come on, it's only the first of June! She's not even freaking DUE until October. Remember the Blueberry Girl in Willy Wonka? She is all that AND a bag of newborn pampers! Well, things tooled along...we sat and chatted until Dad and The Sponge left so she could imbibe some more before the race. Then we all went downstairs to the lobby for a pre-race party. It was worth it since I scored a life-size Michael Waltrip stand up figure. Now I have something else to be scared to death by when I come downstairs along with the lifesize Jeff Gordon that lives with us. I have banished him to the basement and it looks like Mikey will face a similar fate. And even though I KNOW they'll be down there, I assure you, I WILL scream at least once! After the party, we decided it was time to leave. My sister and my brother in law had disappeared during the prize awards, so we wandered back upstairs and found the four of them in the room. My brother in law, Anth and I decided to walk to the speedway, believing that a mile long walk (more on THAT later) was preferable to sitting in traffic for an hour to get to a parking lot that was 1/2 a mile away from the entrance. My dad determined that my sister couldn't possibly waddle that far...so they decided to drive. We got our cooler and set off. TWO miles (we found out the next day it was double what my BIL had originally estimated) and 45 minutes later, drenched with sweat in the near 100% humidity, we arrived. We stopped twice since Anth doesn't do humidity on a GOOD day but when we arrived, despite feeling pretty much like we were about to channel Linda Blair doing the Exorcist routine, we weren' too bad. We tried to find scanners to rent...no dice...so we went to our seats (another 1/2 mile walk AROUND the race track) and got ready for the race to start. I won't bore you with the details...it was a race after all. The cars were loud and went around the track. That was pretty much it. My dad, the Sponge and my waste-of-skin sister showed up just as it started and my sister didn't waste any time lighting up. And while I got all "you're killing me" with her, she really didn't care and just blew more smoke on me. I told her I can't wait for the baby to come so I can give it it's first cigarette. She got all offended by that comment but I reasoned with her...after a long labor, that baby will be dying for a nicotene fix! She had to reluctantly agree...and then lit her next cig off the last one. I just sat there. Around lap 180/400, Anth and I ventured out of the stands and walked around for a while. We were both still pretty barfalicious from the smoke and the fumes so we got two-$3 cups of sweet tea and tried to look interested. Who could have known we'd run into the Sponge and my Dad...he sucking down a yellow margarita...she probably done sucking two or three down. The next thing I know, she's handing him a mouthful of pills which he washes down with the margarita...and then promptly falling asleep as soon as we get back into the grand stands into our seats. Twenty minutes later, he almost falls down the stairs out of the stands and they decide it's time to go. That was 9:00 p.m. The race ended around 10:30 and we made the two-mile trek back by 11:15. Still no sign of them. Finally, around midnight, we call. They've misplaced their van and have been wandering around since 9:00 p.m. through the vast parking wasteland trying to find their ride. When they finally found it, the state police had barricaded the entrance to the hotel and made them drive WAY too far out of their way to get back. We left at midnight and got back to Hickory at 1:00. Actually, it was a pretty harrowing ride since we hadn't eaten all day and couldn't bear the thought of not having anything until the next morning. So at 12:55 a.m. we slid off US 40 and drove through a Wendy's as they turned the lights off behind us. A single with cheese never tasted so good!! The next day they called to tell us they had finally gotten back to the hotel at 2:00 a.m. What they were doing out there in Deliverance County until that hour is ANYONE'S guess.