Sweater Vest.

Last night I wore a sweater vest to a biker bar.

I mean, okay, it wasn't exactly a sweater and it wasn't exactly a vest, but in combination and for the purpose of naming it, it was more of a sweater vest than it was any other type of clothing. Normally I'd like to think it's more of a trendy pink thing I wear over other shirts, and outside of the biker bar I definitely looked like a fashionable girl in a trendy pink thing, but IN the biker bar - I was a girl in a sweater vest.

Because when you're comparing yourself to blonde girls in tube tops and big burly men in bandanas and leather - anything even remotely sweatery or vesty is a sweater vest.

But I sat at that bar, I showed my ID when I got carded, I laughed at the gross middle aged woman who still thought it was the 80's and wouldn't remember dancing like a hooch on stage in the morning, I drank my pineapple and malibu, and I did it all in my sweater vest.


A bald guy came over, clearly drunk, showed me his painted toenails and then insisted I danced with him. I declined. He didn't even skip a beat - he then turned and asked my mom. She declined as well. Then he finally, finally left us alone and five minutes later toenail guy was dancing with hooch girl and it was honestly a match made in heaven.


This was how I spent my 4th of July. Okay, that's how I spent about an hour of my 4th of July. My mom and I spent it together in Mandan, and I'm aware that I am making my family sound like a bunch of alcoholics by how much time we spent in bars on this trip. But I guess it feels alright to me - my parents were small town people, and that's all there was to do. My dad had a motorcycle, and his friends had motorcycles, so they wore leather and after work they drove around and they had fun out on the road and by the river during the day and in various bars and taverns during the night. My parents were bikers. xD

So my mom showed me a few of their old haunts, and then we sat in lawn chairs and watched a particularly impressive display of fireworks (the North Dakotans go all out) and then we hung out a bit more before we finally called it a night. It was fun just spending time with my mom. We don't get to do that much anymore since I moved out.

These blog entries are kind of sappy and nostalgic but I am going to point out now that I have completely switched from keeping a paper journal (which I have done since I was in 2nd grade) to keeping an online blog, so this is just as much for me as it is for people who read it. In fact it's more for me. So sometimes it's going to be long entries that include me blabbing about my family. This is my life - every part of it.