Texts With Nolan

This past weekend me, Larry, Susan, and Amy were in Coachella for Amy’s equestrian polo tournament.  We stayed at the Indian Palms Vacation Club, which is exactly as old and weird as it sounds.

When I checked in, there were two octogenarian ladies checking in ahead of me, and they each had only one question: “Where is the nearest Walmart?”

So imagine my surprise when later that evening I began receiving texts about “fun events” at the Vacation Club.

I reproduce the texts in their entirety because we found them hilarious.  It is true that we were all imbibing Jamesons, and two of us were smoking the devil’s lettuce, but here goes.

‪+1 (760) 566-6689:

         Hello Lang,  Join us tomorrow for Towel Art at 10am and our ever-popular Vodka Snow Cones.

Katherine Lang:

         Ummmm who sent this message? What is Towel Art??

‪+1 (760) 566-6689:

         This is the indian palms vacation club's texting service. We send out notifications of the various activities we have throughout the week. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Katherine Lang:

         Thanks for your quick reply, but I still want to know about Towel art

‪

+1 (760) 566-6689:

         One of our housekeepers teaches our guests how to do a hotel towel origami. It's usually a towel folded into a shape of an animal.

Katherine Lang:

         Thanks again for your quick reply!! Does this event draw big crowds??

‪

+1 (760) 566-6689:

         I have heard that it is pretty popular with the guests, but the turnout varies from week to week.

Katherine Lang:

         I can well believe that the elderly patrons I have seen thus far would enjoy a good swan-shaped towel, but do they really turn up for Vodka Snow Cones????

‪

+1 (760) 566-6689:

         The vodka snow cones are far more popular during the summer months, but we do have at least one or two people stop buy to grab one each week.

Katherine Lang:

         So, let me get this straight - if we show up in the activity office at 10 am, we will be taught to make towel animals and given complimentary vodka treats?

‪

+1 (760) 566-6689:

         The Vodka snow-cones will be at 3pm. so it is a separate event from the towel art. A time-chart calendar of events is located at the front desk, we just send these texts out as a reminder or to ask guests to RSVP.

Katherine Lang:

         Thanks SO MUCH for the info!! I will stop by the front desk first thing tomorrow to get a full roster of these fascinating events.

As I checked out, I said to the young man with ginger hair who was manning the desk,

“I’m sorry I missed the vodka snow cones.  Were you the person I was texting about them?”

Blushing to the roots of his hair, he mumbled “No, that was Nolan.”  I just wish I had gotten the chance to meet Nolan in the flesh.

Super Bowl Sunday

I am an American, so I cannot NOT watch the Super Bowl, and I feel like an absolute loser if I don’t watch it with at least one other person who is not a blood relative.

It’s generally the only football game I watch all year.  I don’t even like football.  But I do love football snacks.

My father is from Tennessee and my mother is from Texas, so I think I am genetically predisposed to drive a Cadillac and eat cheese dips.  I am also not bad at the arcade game Big Buck Hunter, although my ball-cap wearing flannel-obsessed 17-year-old daughter will beat me every time.

We got invited to a Super Bowl party this year, and I felt as if the universe was correctly aligned as I sat in someone else’s living room and pretended I cared about football.  Until I got to the party, I didn’t even know what teams were playing, where the game was being played, or who was doing the half-time act.

I can thank the Trump presidency for my general ignorance of the world at large.  I used to be an NPR junkie but now I only listen to audiobook mysteries.  The news just makes me angry and sad.  Larry tells me if there’s some current event I should know about, and he cares about football almost as little as I do.

Normally I might have stayed in the kitchen at the Super Bowl party, gossiping with the other wives, but all the football snacks had been placed in front of the TV.  So I had to pretend I was a Rams fan to be near those delicious cheesy snacks.

We live squarely in the fruits-and-nuts part of California, so normally “snacks” consist of kale chips or hummus or some such quasi-healthy food, but on Super Bowl Sunday people bring out the mini hot dogs, the Doritos, the cheese balls, and oceans of beer.

By all accounts the game was boring to everyone, not just me, but I’d say the snacks were worth it.  And it was fun to hear all the ladies gasp when Adam Levine took off his shirt.

Pretend You Can't Find It

I never wanted a dog, but now I have one.  This is how it happened:  at the same time that my youngest daughter was campaigning for a dog because her sisters were away at college and she was lonely and she NEEDED a dog, a friend found herself in possession of a spare dog.

So we agreed to care for the dog. 

His name is Taggart.  His park name is Tiger.  I gave him the park name because I was tired of trying to explain the genesis of his actual name.  The dog’s previous owner has a favorite book, Atlas Shrugged, and a favorite character, Dagney Taggart.  But this dog is a boy, so she named him Taggart, because Dagney seemed too feminine?

It is impossible to explain this quickly to other dog walkers in the park, so I just introduce him as Tiger.

Before this dog entered our lives, I always wondered why anyone would want a dog.  The mystery has only deepened for me. 

People say to me “It’s so cute how you say you don’t like the dog, but I can tell that you actually love him, because you fill his water dish when it’s empty.”

Hello?  I’m not here to practice animal cruelty.  The dog seems to bring happiness to the rest of the family, and it is a living creature, so yes, I fill the water dish.  But mostly the dog just annoys me.

The one good aspect of the dog is that he forces me to take walks in the neighborhood. 

We live in a small town that has aspirations to be in the country, which means there aren’t many sidewalks.  The muddy paths around my house are pleasant for walking and also enable me to play the game of “Pretend You Can’t Find It”.

This game is played by looking earnestly into the leaf mold as if you can’t locate the poop your dog just deposited.  You must play this game because of all the video cameras hiding everywhere.  You can’t be seen just ignoring the poop, you have to pretend that you really looked for it but just couldn’t locate it.

This way if I’m ever at a cocktail party with Sergey Brin’s ex-wife who lives up the street I won’t have to hang my head in shame over all the turds I’ve left in her shrubbery.  I tried to find them…