Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Moos!

Last weekend was our first anniversary, and being the emotional saps we are, we decided to celebrate it exactly the same way we spent our wedding day: sloppy drunk. We drove up to Santa Ynez to do some wine-tasting, get a massage, the whole romance weekend. I booked us a room at The Storybook Inn in Solvang, a place almost too precious to be real (all the rooms are named after Hans Christian Andersen stories) but lovely clean and quiet, and ideally situated for exploring the vineyards in the area. The weather cooperated nicely, and we had a lovely time.

After coffee and baked goods in the sun-filled breakfast room at the inn and a short morning jog to sweat off our trip to the casino the night before, we headed up to the Los Olivos Grocery just up highway 154 from Solvang. We spent way too much money and bought way too many goodies, but it was worth it. We headed into Los Olivos and stopped at the first tasting room we saw. After tossing back 10 oz each of wine, we headed up the road to the Zaca Mesa trail and took a beautiful drive up a tree- and vineyard- lined road to the Zaca Mesa Winery , where we sampled an extraordinary wine called Roussanne. We were so struck with it that we bought a bottle to enjoy with our picnic lunch. The woman who poured our tastings, April, joined us with her lunch and the next thing we knew, we were having a lively political discussion about 9/11.



Once April headed back inside, we figured it would be best to flee before we accidentally continued the conversation with a conservative and headed back down the road to Fess Parker's, where the wine and picnicking continued on the gorgeous, lush grassy grounds.



At some point, I'd had a little too much "picnic" and had to lie down for a bit. Fortunately, we'd brought a blanket, so I plunked myself down and let the sound of the birds and the wind in the trees lull me right off. Matt positioned his head on my rib cage and must have followed suit, because next thing I know, he's groaning.

"Oh no!" he said. "I fell asleep holding a half-glass of wine and twitched in my sleep, and dumped wine all OVER my shirt!"

"Oh no," I mumbled. I genuinely wanted to be concerned, but I was just so sleepy.

Next thing I know, he's got his shirt off and laid back down.

"What are you doing? Put your shirt back on!" I said.

"But its alll wet and stickkkkkkkkky," he moaned. "Oh no you don't...put that shirt back on. We are NOT going to be those people. You know what I mean... THOSE people."

So he grudgingly obliged, and not long after that we decided it was time to head back to the Inn to get ready for dinner. Once in the car, the offending shirt came back off.

Along the way, we passed fields on either side of the highway, full of cows. I mean, the place was just LOUSY with cows...cows under the trees, cows walking single-file to the water trough, baby cows, cows cows. I pointed at them and said "Moos! Look honey, MOOS!"

He squealed with delight to match my own. "MOOSSSSSSS! Oh look at them moos!"

On a whim, I pulled over so he could get out of the car. "Go see the moos!" I encouraged. He ran up to the fence, but the cows (no doubt not used to actual roadside visitors) got spooked and ran away anytime he got close. Disappointed, he ran across to the other side of the road to see if he'd have better luck.

Just then, I saw another car coming up on the road behind us. In a split second, I suddenly had a flash of the scene as it would look to them. My car parked on the side of the road; my shirtless, sunburned and slightly intoxicated husband running at the fence yelling "MOOOS! HEE HEE LOOK AT THE MOOS!"

There was no question at that point. We had become those people.

And you should have seen us when we came across goats.

2 comments:

nickoletta100 said...

Fantastic visual of "those" people! Glad you had a good time and are back to the land of sanity and shirts!

MKM said...

You city hicks.

And it's not moos. It's moooooo cows. Right? Right?