My God, A Day Off

I've been locked in the soap room for a solid six weeks now. Except for the days I'm locked in the wrapping room. So I was really thrilled to take an actual entire day off.

Jesse and I are still exploring the area, so we decided on a drive. Bad dog-parents that we are, we took Bander to doggie day care for a bath and some baby sitting. Then we took off to take a look at one of the resort areas, Perdido Key.

Perdido Key looks mighty fine from the air, and not so shabby from the ground. It was a little surprising that the beaches were dead empty - even on a Wednesday in February, in California you'd never get an empty beach.

We were driving east (toward the top of the pic) along the water, noticing how we seemed to have the place all to ourselves. We'd gone out with some notion of getting lunch or something, but a lot of the restaurants were still closed, so we kept heading east until we crossed over into Alabama. (This includes driving through, I am not making this up, Floribama.) We finally paused in Orange Beach, Alabama, for coffee and beginets.

Beginets are one of my favorite things about living in this area so far. It's like a donut lived a saintly life and then came back as something better. And then that something better got deep fried and sprinkled with several pounds of powdered sugar. Jesse had never eaten a beginet, and kept arguing that we could get mayonnaise at home. I swear he goes deaf sometimes just to spite me.

So, I knew that beginets were delicious. What I didn't know is that it's not advisable to eat them in a moving car, and certainly not while wearing dark clothes. Because the minute that you hit a bump, this hot fresh delicious confection turns into Satan's Fritter of Doom and bounces out of your hand and leaves powdered sugar donut prints down the front incline of your clothes, so that if you go out in public for the rest of the day everyone will be able to look at your shirt and secretly condemn you for being a sloppy eater while simultaneously being jealous of the beginet that you obviously had earlier. Plus you attract ants.

We tried to get past the problem by eating faster. Bigger bites, simultaneously. Jesse found that his sugary bite glued itself to the roof of his mouth, rendering him unable to speak and warn me not to take a big bite. Which is too bad, because I took a giant bite and then inhaled or something and accidentally sent about six pounds of sugar rocketing up into my sinuses from the inside. If I had only had a blowhole I would have looked like Old Faithful.

We pulled the car over and got out, hoping to stop wheezing and finish our breakfast but the wind whipped the box top out of Jesse's hands and then plastered me with a drift of sugar from head to foot. We threw the damn things away.

We were stopped at a perfectly lovely state park but I was pretty bitchy about being lightly glazed so we didn't stay for too long. Approximately a nanosecond. But Jesse did take a photo to prove that we were there.

Anyway, we drove home, had a late lunch at a decent (but not wonderful) Mexican restaurant, and picked up the dog. He had been bathed and perfumed and smells like a big green apple with horrible breath. Plus we smelled like donuts but didn't bring him any so there's a sort of cloud of resentment and Jolly Rancher dog farts in the house now.

I think it's time to go back to work.