NASCAR

Seven months ago, my brother called to say he was going to hit NASCAR in Dallas in early November.

That was right after I found out I was pregnant and we still weren't telling people, so I was all like, "Yeah, I'll totally go!"

And then all the sudden, seven months were gone, I was three weeks away from having a baby, and I was waddling my way to the Motor Speedway.

Here's what it looked like:

 

Just some observations about NASCAR:

 

1.  I was looking forward to some super awesome white trash people.  Like, I had my camera primed.  The unfortunate thing is that these people are not like tractor pull or monster truck rally participants.  They are a higher class of white trash.  Most of them looked totally normal.  And by that, I mean that they looked just like me.  And that's normal, right?

 

2.  Apparently terrorists don't attend NASCAR.  They did a cursory bag search, but people were allowed to bring pretty much anything they wanted.  This included giant coolers full of beer.

 

3.  Even though the funnel cake there tasted like grease with powdered sugar on top, I totally ate the entire thing.

 

4.  NASCAR is LOUD.  Like LOOOOOUUUUUUD.  Husband and I both had ear plugs and Carolyn wore those ear muffs, and MAN.  It was still bone rattling.

 

5.  The very best part of the race was the starting of the engines.  And the first 20 or so laps.  Because I could totally keep track of who was in first and who was in last.  Then, they started lapping each other, and even with constant glances at the leader board, I still had no idea what was going on.

 

6.  I learned that I can't watch the cars go all the way by.  I was watch them come or watch them go, but watching them pass made me ill.  Like really, really ill.

 

7.  Taking a 3-year-old to an even that lasts 4 hours three hours early (on the weekend where there's a time change) is a bad idea.  Maybe the worst idea I've ever had.

 

8.  We ended up leaving about 1/4 of the way through the race.  We had to drive home.  And I'd been holding a sleeping kid for an hour and I thought I was going to die. 

 

This is what Carolyn thought about the whole thing at lap 42 (out of 400 laps):

 

 

Seeing my brother was fantastic - I hadn't seen any memeber of my family in over a year.  And ttha's the worst thing about living in Texas.