The Great Mysteries of Wisconsin

Yes, well, I'm sorry to keep teasing you three, but the truth is that I have succumbed to the ick. It was all I could do today to go eat pizza with T and then go dig through the Jansport factory store's t-shirts to locate the Kentucky Wildcats shirt I am currently wearing during the KY/WV game. I'm putting the wicked cool field trips off again.

But as we were driving up the highway, I saw the Big Yellow Mystery Trashcans on the side of the highway, and I asked my husband for what probably is the 97th time: "Hey, what's in those Big Yellow Mystery Trashcans?"

He doesn't know. He's never known, and yet he always tells me it's a great question.

I would have taken a picture, but at 65 miles per hour I can't really get it out of my bag fast enough.

But I see them a lot of places -- a bunch (10-12) of BYMT under an overpass, or near an exit sign. Black tops, yellow bodies. I have no idea what's in there.

It seems like everywhere I live, there are Great Mysteries. Normally they're nothing on the level of Nancy Drew -- for instance, when I lived in New York the Great Mysteries were: (1) where does our boss, Joanne, go everyday for 1.5-2 hours? and (2) Where is Mr. P, Joanne's boss, from? (Mr. P., by the way, was very cool. He wore seersucker suits and was frightfully tan and had the coolest accent, which none of us could place. Turns out he was from Argentina.) On my last day there, (I remember it like it was yesterday) someone asked Joanne if she was headed out that day, and she said, "No, I don't think I'm going to work out today." It was like the lights burned brighter. I looked across my desk at my pal George, who was looking at me across his desk, and at the same time we both mouthed, "SHE GOES TO WORK OUT!"

So I have identified the great mysteries of Wisconsin, as determined by T. and I on the way home:

1. What's in the BYMT? What are they FOR?
2. What is a supper club? They're everywhere.
3. Where does the snow go? (This is not a question a four-year-old would ask. In our first apartment, they would plow the parking lot, put all the snow in a dump truck, and drive it away. I would like to know where it goes. Nobody can tell me.)

Leon's And The Fame Monster

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men, or in this case women, have gone awry. I’ve planned two field trips over the past week to give me something new to write about, and neither panned out – during the first, it rained. During the second, the place was closed. Repeats planned.

Until I have new stuff, I will continue with the old.

Until then, I give you the best place for frozen custard I’ve ever encountered. So good, that the devil George Bush drove completely out of his way to eat this custard once when he was in Wisconsin.

They also know exactly what they want from their employees:

Curds and Weigh

Today we were going to talk about sausages, but I got a little sidetracked. I was tagged on Facebook by a friend of mine with one of those quiz doodads, which reminds me, I need to post that later today. This internet outage has really done a number on my internet-social life. Anyway, one of the questions had to do with my favorite fast-food restaurant. Since I stopped eating dead things, that pretty much put the kibosh on fast food with the exception of one. We eat there because I can’t give up on frozen custard (more on frozen custard later) and crinkle fries that are rarely icky and cold. Since it seems to be a Midwestern mecca, I felt this was a good place to mention it – Culver’s. (Culver's if you're watching, I have three followers. You may now send me a check for tens of pennies for all the business I've thrown your way.)

Culver’s has some pretty awesome fast-food. It’s hard to call it “fast” since you order it, they give you a number, they cook it, and then they bring it to you (one of their big advertising slogans has to do with the “never under the lights” deal) and I have to admit that it’s pretty good. You can order whatever you want on your sandwich (extra pickles on your chicken sandwich? NBD) and they serve the aforementioned crinkle fries and frozen custard [chocolate, vanilla, and a flavor of the day (Heath bar crunch! Snickers Surprise! Oreo Cookie Explosion!)] with a bunch of toppings. They also serve fried cheese curds.

Now, I separate cheese curds into two varieties: cooked and uncooked. Both of these were described to me by the same coworker, whom I took aside one day and asked, “D__, what are cheese curds?”

I like this woman for many reasons. Chief among them is that she doesn’t care if you ask a question like that. Once, I asked a guy operating as cart in New York what a “knish” was, and he looked at me like I was crazy or stupid or both. And then he answered in one word: “Potato.”

So I ordered one. And I received something that in no way resembled a potato. Until I ate it, and then I understood what he was talking about, and I did not deserve the "crazy-or-stupid" look. It didn't look like "potato."

Pardon the digression. Back to le fromage. So, according to D., cheese curds can be eaten uncooked, but are best “very fresh,” so they squeak against your teeth.

So cool. I love foods that come with activity. Unfortunately, every time I go to the store to purchase them, they look like brains in a bag. I can’t get over the visual. I’m sure they’re delicious, but I can’t get over the brain-cheese.

And fried cheese curds? Well, those are curds that have been battered and deep-fried.

Honey, I’m sold. I’ve been to the North Carolina State Fair, where someone dared me to eat an ostrich burger. They will deep-fry you an Oreo cookie, a Snickers bar, or a Twinkie (or hell, if you want to go into insulin shock, all three) at that fair, and if that’s not fatty enough for you, they will probably put some butter on them. Fried cheese curds, I find, you can get at the Wisconsin State Fair or at Culver’s. I buy mine at Culver’s (I’m not waiting around for the next state fair) and they really are everything she promised.

So I go back to D. and tell her that we are going to be millionaires. If we sold these little bits of fried cheese goodness in the South, I tell her, with some real Wisconsin brats (sausages, not small obnoxious children), we would make a killing.

She looks doubtfully at me.

“D. listen," I say. "The South? Home of onion rings and barbecue? Deep fried everything? The only place the Monte Cristo sandwich is ever ordered, with a side of fries? We’re talking about deep-fried cheese and sausages.

We’re going to be wealthier than Bill Gates.

Of course, we’re going to be responsible for a hell of a lot of heart disease, because of all the weight we’re going to be responsible for.”

I should know. It took a while to lose the curd-weight for my wedding.

First Day of Spring!

No, I didn't forget you.
The internet has been out here in the apartment complex, and so I have been using my computer for what it was really intended: Minesweeper.

I’ve played 133 games, and won 3.

In short, oh internet, how I have missed you.

But back to our Purpose (yes, let me be a little overinflated.) This past week, temperatures rose . . . and it was sunny . . . and beautiful.

This weekend we went outside, to a park by a lake. I don’t mind telling you that it was windy (not anywhere in the vicinity of breezy) and at 53 degrees not exactly warm. But when it has been dreary and snowy for so long, any excuse to get out will do. So we went to a local park, where we saw many joggers, and walkers, and people walking their babies in shorts (!!! Shorts?!?!? Jesus, lady, I'm in a coat and freezing!)

The lake itself is partly thawed, which you can kind of see in the crappy photo I took with my phone. Not that it froze all the way, this year -- T. and I have often wondered why you would ride your snowmobile over the lake (seems dangerous, but it is the thing to do in the winter here, along with killing a deer and digging a hole in the frozen lake and fishing, also dangerous activities, and also undertaken with a case of beer.) I'll give you my analysis of the three activities: I like beer.* Anyways, since snowmobiling over the lake is the thing to do here, quite a few people fell in. Here's my advice to anyone considering a snowmobile trip at dusk after a few cold ones: bad call. In fact, don't snowmobile at all.

But here, the sun has been shining lately, and shining well past six o'clock (in the dead of winter, it goes down around four here) and T. surprised me with some lovely daffodils last week. Now, this state has kicked me in the teeth quite a bit with its winter, which gets its claws in you and doesn't want to let go, but I think it's spring. I've gone ahead and cleaned my winter boots for storage.

*I have never shot a deer. Also, though not for lack of trying in my youth, I have never caught a fish. I now regard both activities as bad business. Turns out you can drink a beer without a gun or a fishing pole. Or a snowmobile.

Learning to speak Wisconsin

The first thing you learn when you move to a new place is that while you may think that most people in the United States all speak the same English, you are dead wrong. I was born and raised in the American south by a northern mother. I was educated, for the most part, in North Carolina, where I learned that people can be suspicious of those not from the south. I adapted by adopting a bit of an accent and learned to say things like "bless your heart." But most of the time I understood what people were saying to me.

That is, until I moved to Wisconsin, where for a while I assumed that some people used a bit of pidgin German.

"Do you want this in a bayg?"
"Excuse me?"
Person holds up a bag.
"Oh, you mean a BAG."

Person looks at me like I'm stupid. I explain I'm from the south. What I don't say is that in the south, some people may add an extra syllable to "pen," but we don't add a "y" to bag so it now rhymes with "vague." Also, we understand that you don't know what we're talking about half the time, but we like to use props. That's why we hold up the pen.

I just read that part back and realized it sounded snarky. I didn't mean for it to sound snarky. Really, once I stopped being confused I found it kind of charming. I used to work in a store, and I pronounced "bag" somewhere in between "bag" and "bague," so as not to confuse people. I thought of it kind of like learning to speak Wisconsin. Once.

That's another bit of Wisconsin lingo. You do something once, even if you're going to do it more that once. "Let's go look at the brown shoes once." I don't know why. It's just kind of . . . musical.

But after walking around for a little while feeling like an outsider, I embraced it. Part of it had to do with the Sausage Guy (and no, it's not dirty, and yes, it's another post) and another part of it had to do with enjoying the little bit of Americana I was really getting to see. I was never going to be a native Wisconsiner (Wisconsonite? Wisco?) but I could always just enjoy being transplanted.

For now.