Pineapple Upsidedown.

I spent today in Linton, ND.

My dad's family lives here and I usually spend at least a weekend here every summer. To put things in perspective, my dad has 6 brothers and sisters, grew up on a farm outside of town, and now my grandparents, having long retired from farm life, are 2 of about 1600 people who live here. I can walk down main street and run into people left and right who look at me and say "You're Randy's kid aren't you?" or "You must be a Horner." or "Are you one of Linus's grandkids?"

It's a nice change from Seattle where no one I have gone to school with for a whole year even knows who I am. xD

I went down to the hardware store to grab a few things with my mom, my two aunts and my cousin, and somehow ended up at the bar around 2 in the afternoon. I always used to have to stay home and babysit all the littler cousins but I am 21 here for once so ALL my relatives delighted in buying me drinks, so it was a LONG DAY. The Mysterious Linton Bar Life wasn't quite as mystical and illusory as it always seemed when I was left at home, but we had a fun day of drinking, dancing, and meeting relatives we didn't even know we had. My aunt Lisa and I put enough money in the jukebox to pick 30 songs and that lasted us a while. It was mostly country songs and stuff from the 80's but I managed to sneak in some Katy Perry and Lily Allen.

My cousin Annie kept doing her "signature move" which was a skip with her arms in the air around the pool table which I named the Boomerang, and I invented my signature move which I can't really describe so I'll do it in a video sometime or something. I also found my signature drink (after much failure and sour faces at things that tasted gross) which is something I have been searching for since I turned 21. It's called a Pineapple Upsidedown and SERIOUSLY FREAKING TASTES LIKE A PINEAPPLE UPSIDEDOWN CAKE. It's beautiful. And amazing. And I made the bartender write down the recipe because I plan to order it everywhere (I make it sound like I drink so much.. ha. I've only been to like 3 bars since I turned 21 xD).

I actually hesitated a bit before I decided to write this blog at all, because my family is crazy and mildly embarrassing and I don't know if I am ready for the internet to know that I am directly descended from a bunch of small town crazy drinking north dakota farm people. But there it is. Secret's out. I'm TAME compared to them.

At least we all know why I secretly love Jo Dee Messina, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift. I CAN'T HELP IT. My uncle's wearing cowboy boots beside me, right now. My cousins caught the deer that was used in the sausage we ate earlier. Oh this shouldn't be funny but the headline on the newspaper next to me says "Dad says he fired gun after sons didn't do chores." Oh here's a good one, another one says, "The difference between flies and hornets."



I like my family a whole lot. I always complain about having to come back to North Dakota in the summer but I really love it here. I'm glad I have an interesting family with a very different history than most people I grew up with. It's fun. And probably explains why I am such a strange person. They made me like this. BLAME THEM.