Tag Archives: laughing

Fun Fair = A Loose Interpretation Of Both Fun And Fair

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I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a fair or not. Here in the Midwest, fairs are kind of a big deal. It’s all the farmers and corn and cows and stuff.

Thus, I have very specific expectations in mind when a “fair” is involved. There needs to be a hint of funnel cakes mixed with farm animals in the air. Questionable Carnies lurking in the shadows. A poorly assembled, rusted out Ferris Wheel. So you can imagine my disappointment when I helped my friend Jo out with a local fun fair for her workplace.

When you add “fun” in front of “fair” it apparently takes all of the awesome things out of a fair and substitutes it with cute, sticky, and greedy children who are attempting to eat their body weight in snowcones – which we were supplying along with cotton candy.

Anyway, we rose early on Saturday morning and loaded up the box truck to head out to the fun fair.

P.S. Nothing makes you feel quite more like a pedophile than driving around in a big box truck with a snowcone and cotton candy machine in the back.


I don’t know when she’s gonna finally realize that I’ll never stop taking pictures of her.

As we were circling for about and hour trying to find the place, I may or may not have noticed a Big Kmart with a Little Caesars blow up man out front. This information came in handy when we reached our destination and realized we had an hour to kill. Don’t even think we didn’t polish off a large hot n’ ready at 10:30am, while sitting next to the men’s underwear section.

Not to say that we couldn’t finish the rest, but we did start feeling like pigs a little bit. The confused looks from the cashier weren’t helping.

Back at the Fun Fair, we became cotton candy and snowcone making afficianados.

We may or may not have eaten all of our mistakes.

Seriously, she just needs to stop trying to hide.

That is an expert at work, my friends.

I don’t know if you’ve ever made cotton candy. I don’ t know why you would have, unless you ARE a Carnie (in which case I apologize for previous statements) but it’s probably the grossest, stickiest, cobwebbyest job ever.

Then someone came by with free ice cream sandwiches. I was taught never to turn down free treats from strangers.  The universe just didn’t want us to win that day.

By the end of the day, my cotton candy was so fluffy and perfect that the kids didn’t even want to go near any other forms of air-blown sugar.

Wondering where I went? I have returned to blogging over at my whole foods blog Celery and the City, where we live so clean it’s like your insides took a bath.

Blunt Bites: The Girl Who Taught Me More Than High School

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[ DISCLAIMER: Blunt Bites break away from my normal, detailed laugh-out-loud (right?) posts. They are like snapshots of a significant part of my life. Sometimes, they’re serious. Sometimes, they’re funny. But they’re always gonna be delicious. Yum. ]

It was my very first day of work, and you offered me some of your lunch even though you barely had enough to eat. Although it was a struggle to understand you through your thick accent, your laugh was desperately contagious. Your husband also worked at the same company. You would get so excited every time he walked by. I later discovered that you moved your family here from Poland to make a better life. You taught yourself English, graduated with honors, and moved to a tiny house down the street with your three kids and five relatives.

You always carried hot pink lipstick from the Dollar Store in your apron, and the only thing cheesier than your constant smile was the Harlequin romance novels you read every day on your break.

Five years later, I recognized your voice instantly when you called into the bank. I confirmed your name, but didn’t reveal who I was. I could sense that you had been crying. Your account was overdrawn because you had been trying to support your three kids on minimum wage ever since your husband and sisters had left for the grocery store and never returned. Two years had passed since then. You mentioned that you had just celebrated your 40th birthday by making a cake out of flour and water, then you started laughing just like you always did. As I was fighting back tears, I don’t know what alarmed me more: the tragedy of your circumstances or your positive attitude toward them. You responded, “As long as I still have a choice, I’d rather laugh than cry.”

Her name was Renee. I wish there were more of her in this world. She epitomized love. And she taught me more than high school.