Going Native: Free Furniture and Tailgating with Brats

It’s about time you guys got a cheerful post from me, so here goes! First though, I’m trying out yet another idea for a new blog name, above: the “Stay Amazed” I saw as graffiti in Utah, and I like it paired with a photo I could have taken anywhere, not associated with travel. I’ll probably change my mind again in a week, but that doesn’t bother me any. So much is up in the air; I might as well have fun with something I’m in full control over, right? Right.

We’re still in the trailer and still looking at houses for sale. (I took that photo from the campsite … the corn puts off so much liquid into the air—corn sweat—that at sunrise it’s like steam is rising from the fields.) What we do know is that we can’t stay in the trailer much longer, so we’ll need an apartment come fall. We’ve been looking at them and thinking about what that will mean.

Furniture

One of the stories Tracy like to tell is how the students of UW Madison leave their furniture out on the sidewalk at the change of semesters, and man was he right. We went near campus to pick up this sofa from someone moving out (we did have to fork over cash, but not much), and look how handy our truck slide out turned out to be!

We also picked up free furniture on the street, two truck-loads full, in a big hurry grabbing it and unloading it in our storage unit, then going back to grab more. I swear we may have too much furniture now. And it’s definitely too much Badger Red (the school color). Tracy said wryly that I’m finally getting my “salsa” Airstream decor I always wanted.

At first I joked that I would set up a living room in the storage unit and go sit in it, but there’s not enough space there now! So I screenshotted rooms from the 3D tour that an apartment complex we might move to provides and added our new (totally used) furniture in as stickers. This was way more fun than it should have been. Here Trump is siding with Putin and I’m playing with stickers.

The possible living room, in salsa! Our camping table can serve as a coffee table, and maybe we’ll buy a cheap TV.

The possible kitchen with stools we grabbed off of Facebook marketplace for almost nothing. With this kitchen we don’t need to buy a table, yahoo.

And the bedroom I’m so looking forward to, with a window, a closet, and a door! No bed yet but we scored those free dressers. Look at how styling we’ll be with 1970’s-mod white chairs, too.

I keep picking up knickknacks at estate sales because I can own knickknacks now. Scandinavian influences are everywhere here, plus more 70’s stuff like these bar glasses with signs of the zodiac on them. I am going to be so groovy.

Baseball

As I’ve been playing with stickers, Tracy picked us up tickets to see the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, which my smart friend Mary Margaret told me is actually shooting up this season, and she sent me articles on key players to watch and everything. Sometimes you need your good friend in France to tell you what to look for in Milwaukee.

I had no idea tailgating was such a big deal for Brewers games. Tracy bought this tiny disposable grill with charcoal inside, and he set it up at the back of the truck, with our beers and onions and buns and chips, and it felt very much like being in the lot of a Grateful Dead show, just more organized and with a very different smell in the air.

We haven’t done anything like this in five years, seriously. There were 40,000 people there. With the crowds, and the heat, and the strangeness of being in the crowds and the heat, I almost had to give myself a break for a bit. But come on, the game was so exciting.

And there’s a brewery inside the stadium, I’m guessing busy brewing the $17 beers. You heard that right. We each had one because: special occasion and all.

Mary Margaret tipped me off to watch for this player, Anthony Seigler, who had just come up from the minors on July 1, and he’s from a baseball family, that’s also Navajo, that also told the local paper what it meant to the family on the reservation that Anthony was playing in the major leagues. How can you not root for this guy? He got himself on base right away and maybe hit a run in (I’m inexperienced at following this but I did cheer), and when he slid into third he got injured and was taken out of the game. Watch for this guy though!

My good griefous it took us three hours in rush-hour traffic to drive back to the campground; we are just not used to interstate driving or traffic or being gone long days at all, and this day was after the big furniture haul day, so we’re are beat with activities so new to us.

Another day, we did take a walk in a local state park (Tracy birding, me looking at all things). There are lakes everywhere here, and the summer is quite ripe. I am staying amazed.