Wunderbar

This weekend was titled "Stop being so goddamn glum, I am just pissing myself off now. Just stop it!"

And I did! I did stop it.

Here is my recipe for glum-stoppage.

On Friday night, I eschewed (gesundheit!) all social gatherings, grabbed a take-out burrito (dirty!), and spent the evening on my couch with Nordic Boy watching Tivo'ed episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from the entire week. And my phone rang, and I just DIDN'T ANSWER IT. I have friends who I call? And they literally never answer their phone. Ever. They get back to me later, via text or email or in person, sure. But their phones are basically just voicemail devices. Still, it never occurs to me to not answer my phone unless I am truly indisposed (meaning, I am at work, or chatting with someone else in person, or I'm in the bathroom or something). If I am just hanging out at home, I always answer my phone. Until Friday. I just didn't answer! Revolutionary.

On Saturday, we woke up, and the sky looked like this.

The sky has looked like this for pretty much the entire month of June, which is to be expected in Seattle, but the thing that was getting to me was that the forecast kept CALLING for sunshine, and then it would just. not. happen. The weatherpeople (sort of like the Village People, with less fun outfits) kept dicking me over this week, which was just not cool. So when we woke up, and I looked out the window of what was supposedly a cloudy-that-would-turn-sunny day, I was all YOU WILL NOT FOOL ME AGAIN AL ROKER and I looked at Nordic Boy and said

"Let's get in the car and drive over the mountains."
Him: Why?
Me: Because if we do? There will be sun.

I also made a joke about "There Will Be Sun" being the more cheerful version of a Daniel Day-Lewis movie, but I can't remember the joke now, so just fill that one in for yourselves.

So we got in the car and drove. No plan, no idea where we would end up. We just went. The drive started out like this:

And then became like this!

And then, by the time we started to get hungry for lunch, we just so happened to be right next to Leavenworth, Washington. Leavenworth, for those of you who don't know, is a town that is nestled right in the middle of a bunch of mountains, with breathtaking views, and also, by the way, it is totally set up to look like Bavaria. Buildings, food, music that is piped into the streets, everything. All the signs even have a Bavarian font.

I don't know what it is with me and fake German towns. When I go home to Michigan, I end up in Frankenmuth, for reasons I can never quite explain to myself. And now this. Achtung!

We had lunch and then hiked around some trails there and just soaked up the sun and looked at the mountains all around us. And maybe we did Colonel Klink imitations too. Maybe.  Aside from the fact that within the city limits of Leavenworth, there was a beer garden somewhere that had outdoor karaoke so that no matter where you walked you could hear a drunken, yodel-infused version of "Sunny Came Home," it was downright pleasant.

When we tired ourselves out, we got back in the car and headed home. And thus, gloomy be gone! Faux Germany can really be wunderbar.

(I kind of want to find a video of Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson singing Wunderbar from Kiss Me Kate, but I'm too lazy to find it right now. Just hum it to yourself and think of that awesome yellow dressing robe she's wearing. Also very ungloomy).