Saturday morning. I love weekends. The day ahead is planned with multiple favorites. A trip to the best coffee shop around for a perfect bittersweet mocha with nutmeg on top, a stroll around the farmers market on, a visit to a new thirft store that is rumored to have namebrand stuff for pennies, and perhaps a trip to the annual Grape Festival in none other than Tontitown, Arkansas.

Tontitown is a neighboring Italian community. How Italians ended up in Arkansas is a mystery to me. There are several long established Italian restaurants on the main drag of T-town. I've never understood how it can be popular to sell fried chicken and spaghetti on the same plate, but it is an everyday occurance in this place. These are not the type of Italian resturants for litte black dresses or anniversary celebrations or candlelit dinners. On the contrary. This is the kind of place where oversized men wear overalls without a shirt underneath and feel free to belch loudly mid-meal. (I hate that word, but "burp" just doesn't do justice.)

But back to the Grape Festival. I love fair food. Corndogs, funnel cake, real lemonade, snow cones. Mmm, mmm. This festival also features grape ice cream. It tastes and smells like grape Bubble Yum gum. I have not decided if I like it. I do not ride the rides at fairs like the Grape Festival. Something about the fact that the rides were assembled the day before out of a semi trailor is unsettling to me. Plus, if the people running the rides are the ones who assembled them...yikes and no thank you. I don't usually play the games either. None of the stuffed animals are cute, although I think it would be fun if my man won something for me. (It is an unmet dream from high school.) Occasionally I will play the quarter game. It's the one where you drop quarters or tokens onto a platform while a bar pushes the pile of treasure incredibly close to the edge. If anything falls over the edge, it's yours. I've played this game multiple times, and nothing has ever fallen over the edge. Blasted rigged contraption.

If one looks for it, she will always find an older couple with a little kitchen/trailer combo at these fairs. They sell gyros, fried twinkies, turkey legs, cotton candy... I wonder if those couples are living our their dreams in that little trailer. Part of me thinks it would be fun to travel from town to town, selling junk to people happy to pay $4 for a corndog. Sometimes I husband and I dream about traveling the country in a motor home. A little one that I could drive. Maybe we'd have a motorcycle on a trailer behind it... a Honda Goldwing perhaps.

Well, I'm off to start this day.