This past Saturday we trucked out to the Wizard of Oz festival in Chesterton, IN. The event is a big local hoo-rah, featuring a large parade of costumed characters, vendors of notoriously artery-clogging foods, and sellers of Crap You Don’t Need.

We arrived after judiciously parking on someone’s lawn upon seeing that everyone else was doing it, and headed out to the parade.

Historically I am not a parade person. I see no reason to stand by the side of the road and ooh and ahh at fire trucks and papier-mâchéd, be-streamered pickups while someone occasionally tosses out a stale Life Saver.

It’s just not my thing.

The Wizard of Oz fest parade is pretty good, though. (Not to be confused with the Ozz Fest parade, in which people bite the heads off of bats, the trucks are loaded with pyrotechnics, and kids throw blood on the crowd.)

There are adorable little babies dressed up as Dorothy and her crew, which raises choruses of oohs and aahs. There are original Munchkins from the original cast riding around in golf carts, which is not at all weird.

Right.

There was a woman of at least seventy-five dressed as Dorothy, riding a bicycle. I wish I had pictures, because it was a sight to see.

There was a nine-foot-tall Tin Man on stilts. There were several vehicles bearing witch corpses.

There were cheerleading squads and dance teams and a band and all that, but I’d have to say the hit of the parade was some psychotic woman dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West, riding around in large loopy circles on her bike, cackling at top volume, “GIVE ME THOSE SLIPPERS!!” over and over. She was… special.

When the parade was over, we were on to the food. Since I am dieting, I ate only a fruit smoothie (which broke my grease-loving heart), but I saw quite the spread of triglyceride-bombing goodies. Huge fried turkey legs. Corn dripping with butter. Fried vegetables (so healthy!), just shining with grease. Waffle fries. (Oh My God I wanted fucking waffle fries.) Chili dogs. Corn dogs. Chicago-style monster footlongs. Pizza.

Yeah, it was a stellar place to be on a diet. While I watched my family suck down grease, we perused the Crap No One Needs. Of the things I saw, the most interesting were (with pricing): Knitted water bottle cozies ($20.00), a beaded bracelet that was literally some ugly plastic beads on an elastic string, and you know I know my damned beads ($10.00), those beanbag games, but in tiny form ($60.00, and I almost died), Wizard of Oz costumes for American Girl dolls ($50.00 WTF).

I am going to start my own business selling handmade crap. I make crap! I make crap all the time! I’m currently making a crappy afghan that probably would have sold there for a hundred bucks! I make jewelry when my eyes are halfway decent that is most definitely Not Crap, that I could probably sell at one of those places for a decent buck!

I am so getting a table at the next craft fair. Maybe I’ll even get a perm and a flowered sweatshirt and be That Woman. Or I could start wearing patchouli and lots of hemp and be That Woman. These seem to be the two types of women that populate craft fair tables.

Halfway through the Wizard of Oz fest, it began to pour. We took refuge under the trees for a while, and then went to a large antique store for shelter.

I have never seen the likes of this place. It was enormous. It was divided up into tiny little rooms, of which there must have been at least a hundred. Each tiny room had a theme. Cooking, Star Wars, Christmas, military, you name it. The J-Man found a newspaper covering the Kennedy assassination and started to read that. I was pretty into some old vintage handbags and of course, books. My mom and stepdad were looking at furniture. We must have spent two hours in the place, and I don’t think I made it through a third of it.

It was a pretty good day, though. Everyone got along, everything was pretty chill. No fighting, no glaring, no bitching.

Nice.

Today, not much is going on. I have holes in my cornea again due to dry eye + contact lens overuse, but I’m on four, count them, FOUR different damn medications for it, so hopefully it will clear up very shortly. The doctor is optimistic. It’s making me as blurry as hell, though, so I am typing this in VERY LARGE FONT.

So, in essence, I’ve been screaming at you this whole time.

And how are you?

Happy Thursday.

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