What I’ve been up to

Here’s all the stuff I’ve been doing instead of blogging lately:

1. Babysitting. My friend Linda is recovering from surgery, so last weekend, I borrowed her kids and spent the day doing kid stuff: We fed turtles and petted starfish at the Oklahoma Aquarium, had cheeseburgers for lunch in Jenks, headed out to Catoosa for an afternoon photo op at the Blue Whale, and capped our adventures with a trip to the playground at Tracy Park.

The kids enjoyed signing my car … which leads us to my next adventure:

2. Inadvertently joining an artcar parade. Really. We pulled out of the hardware store parking lot Saturday afternoon and found ourselves smack in the middle of the Tulsa ArtCar Weekend, which we didn’t even realize was going on until someone stuck a note to my car while I was at dinner Friday night. Since we were already in the middle of the parade anyway, we just cruised along with the other artcars to Blue Rose, where the participants welcomed the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcar as a late, unofficial addition to the show. I didn’t have my camera with me, but Ron had his, so he got some shots of the festivities. Here are a few highlights:

This is the Rockin' Holy Roller. It belongs to C.M. and Grace Kelly Laster, a pair of Southern folk artists whose work reminds me of what you'd get if you crossed Howard Finster with Wes Freed. They were very cool and gave me an awesome "God Hates Hate" bumper sticker for the Dreamcar.

This is the Stink-Bug, a rolling statement about the evils of cigarette smoking. It is completely covered in mosaics made from old cigarette butts that have been treated with sign sealer to make them weatherproof.

And here we have the classic Splittie-turned-artcar. This great old VW Type 2 is a tribute to the owner's poodles. It is outfitted with 3-D poodles that wag their tails and a cutout city skyline illuminated by LEDs.

That was just the beginning of my Memorial Day weekend. The adventures continued on Sunday afternoon, with:

3. Feeding animals. We spent yesterday afternoon at Safari’s Sanctuary. I take back all the snarky stuff I’ve said about Broken Arrow being nothing more than a breeding ground for boring yuppies. In point of fact, it is a breeding ground for boring yuppies and kangaroos.

For the record, kangaroos totally dig Cheetos, which you can buy in the gift shop.

You can also buy frozen chicken legs to feed the big cats. This beautiful tiger really enjoyed a cold treat on a hot afternoon. I wanted to pet her, but apparently there are federal laws forbidding that sort of thing. Poop. 😦

Luckily, the feds don't have a problem with it if you want to let a California king snake climb up your shoulder.

I want a snake, but Ron won’t let me have one. He did, however, let me buy a sparkly rubber dragon to wear around my wrist at our last stop for the weekend:

3. Going to the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival in Muskogee. A couple of my students work down there on weekends, and they kept telling me how much fun it was, so we went down to see them this afternoon.

This is Gabbie. Isn't her costume cute?

Tara was selling jewelry at one of the outdoor booths.

The children's area looked like what would happen if Dave Dardis partied with the late Hugh Davis.

Want.

Hope you’ve had lots of adventures, too.

Emily