Por que Arkansas, you might ask? Porque there's a museum there that we wanted to see. Also, Jaime is in the stage of immigration when it's cool to collect new states. This is, after all, the guy who once exclaimed, "I LOVE Southwest Kansas!"
Whatever, dude.
But it's this kind of enthusiasm for the unremarkable that made me fall in love with him, so when he said, "Yeah! Book a cheap hotel with a pool!," I did it.
The first thing I did after we checked in was ignore my partner completely while I checked my messages, but the second thing was put the gallon of milk I'd brought from home in the mini fridge.
The milk, to my chagrin, was the only thing Jaime requested when I asked him what snacks he wanted me to pack.
He made fun of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I'd thought to bring but ate two before we'd left the city along with some nectarines and dozens of grapes along the way. But did he take a single sip of milk? No, of freaking course not.
I figured he'd drink it in the morning.
I squished my body into my bathing suit and padded barefoot over to Jaime who was lying on the hotel comforter because ain't no party like a Perales Green party cause a Perales Green party is gross.
Thirty minutes later, we were standing poolside, and thirty and a half minutes later, we had deemed it too cold. The look of extreme anxiety that overtook the one guy in the hot tub's face as we approached him was too much. We ignored it and claimed the quadrant furthest from his children.
The strange guy got out quickly, but that meant that Jaime had to half-heartedly toss back the stranger children's beach ball whenever it landed in our over chlorinated pee water like a bored uncle. We quickly ceded the hot tub to a family of ladies who were even more unamused by us and settled into sweet, sweet air-conditioned sleep right after my husband deemed us vegetarians.
"Is fish okay?" I asked. "Fuck no!" he answered. "Okay then," I agreed knowing exactly how this was going to go.
In the morning, I cleaned up the milk that had hilariously leaked all over the fridge, and we went to enjoy a free breakfast with about a million other people. Jaime was eye balling the bacon, and I reminded him that he wasn't allowed per his vegetarian deemnation. He got sad.
Before we went inside the museum, we took advantage of the cool morning to do some hiking, as the grounds are surrounded by trails and a lovely forest. It was boring (I'm kidding!), so we bounded down the stairs letting our extremities go limp until we heard someone coming. Then we did it again. And some more times.
The museum was nice. We learned things, and we gave up at exactly the same time.
Jaime commanded the GPS to take us "home," and as we drove through the green hills of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri thankful for all the rain we got this summer, he asked if I wanted to stop and get catfish sandwiches.
Guys, I married Keanu.
