Adventures in Arkansas

Well, we are back from the land of slow drawls, big hair, and 100-degree heat. :)

It was a beautiful wedding and reception, and it was nice to get to see all of Darby's family.

I realized while we were there what an "Illinoisan" I'm becoming. I used to not notice Southern accents, but now it's all I can think about whenever I hear them. (People tell Darby and me all the time that we do not sound like Texans; I'm not sure how we managed to escape the telltale accent.)

I also realized that I definitely fit in more appearance-wise with midwesterners. Women up here prefer a more, shall we say, "natural" look. When I walked into the wedding reception, I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had been in the presence of so much make-up, hairspray, and fake tan all in one room. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb (a very pale thumb). If and when we do move back to Texas, that will be hard to get used to. Here, I usually feel like I look pretty good. There, I feel like a 12-year-old girl stuck in a room full of Miss America finalists.

We had a little adventure getting to Arkansas on Friday. We were driving down the Interstate, about to cross the border from Illinois into Missouri, and everything was going smoothly. Darby noticed the gas light come on. We had just passed a BP station, but we didn't want to have to turn around, so we decided we'd just stop at the next station we saw. Well, I think you can see where this is headed. We didn't see another gas station for about 30 miles, so we ran out of gas. Darby pulled off on the shoulder, got out, and flagged someone down. Thankfully, a man stopped right away and offered to drive Darby to the next gas station (about 7 miles down the road). He only had room in his car for one person, so I stayed with our car. I realized about 5 minutes too late that I probably should have written down the guy's license plate number. If Darby never came back, I'd have virtually no information to give to the police. Fortunately, he made it back about 30 minutes later.

The guy who picked him up had an interesting story. He had been in and out of jail already that day (for driving with a suspended license). Glad he didn't get pulled over again! But, it just goes to show that not everyone in jail is a bad person. This guy stopped for us when lots of other cars passed on by. (Kind of a modern-day Good Samaritan story). It's funny...I usually find an excuse not to stop when I see someone on the side of the road (even when Darby is with me), but when you're in that situation, you are just praying that someone will come along who is nicer than you and will stop. I'm going to try to be better about that from now on.

Here I am entertaining myself and trying not to think of all of the terrible things that could happen to Darby.

All in all, we only lost about an hour and then we were on our way. The funniest part is on the way back, we saw a gas station about 5 miles down the road from the BP station. Don't know how we missed it!!