The hate in Hoosier Hospitality

I've probably used the phrase "Hoosier Hospitality" more than a thousand times. Tens of thousands? Maybe.

I don't think I'll be using it again. Because for too many Indiana residents, it's a spirit not fully extended to those whose complexions, accents, true selves aren't what nice Hoosier boys and girls learn in white Sunday School.

Yep. I said it. I mean it, too. I grew up in an all-white community where otherwise well-meaning and Christian-like people toss out hateful words as if they were simple adjectives. There's been progress, sure. But not enough.

When State Senator Aaron Freeman stripped the guts out of a bias crimes bill and said, "In the next five weeks, I'm going to pop popcorn, kick my feet up and watch the show in the House and let them deal with it," I was disgusted.

"Let them deal with it," said this guy elected to represent the will of the people of Indiana.

"It" is the discussion over whether judges should have the ability to add addition time to sentences for for people found guilty of harming other people because of their race, religion, age, ethnicity, national origin, disabilities, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Think about that a little bit.

We're talking about people found guilty of harming others because of things those victims cannot control. We're talking about hate-motivated actions against other human beings.

The state Chamber of Commerce says 75 percent of Indiana residents want a bias crime on the books that includes those protected classes, and I hope that's true. Because I want my state to be a state where hospitality extends to everyone. Where there's no room for hate. Where haters are punished appropriately for their hateful actions.

I honestly don't understand why this bill is so controversial. Worried your whiteness or straightness is going to be targeted? You're protected, too. Not that, statistically you should be worried. Surely you're not worried that you'll be facing additional years or months in prison for committing a hate crime?

Would it help you to remember the  Golden Rule? You remember that one: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Matthew 7:12) Matthew apparently thought we would understood that "others" mean everyone.

This discussion exhausts me. Maybe instead of putting his feet up and snacking while others take up the mantle of statesmanship, Sen. Freeman should just give the majority of us what we want: a state where hate crimes are unacceptable.

Hold my beer

One of these things is not like the other...

I went to my first beer share this weekend. If you're unfamiliar with the term, a beer share is like a wine tasting, but with craft beer. All of my beer share knowledge comes via the Captain.

Give him a chance and he'll spin yarns of beer shares among thousands of people in the cold, cold springtime rain of northern Indiana or with a few buddies in the heat of summer in someone's back yard. Or in parking lots between beer lovers who connected online and find a stolen moment when one is driving through the other's state and meet in real life to exchange beers the other can't easily get. 

Jeff has a large group of guys who rotate hosting shares. There are women, too, who take part, but it's mostly a male crew. Beer shares are where friends or strangers from around the globe are united by their deep love of craft beer. They drink from tiny cups with short pours of all sorts of fluids that resemble the beer of your youth much like butterfly wings resemble steel wool. 

Sours, stouts, wheats, saisons, pale ales. Hoppy, acidic, chocolatey, piney, chalky. The adjectives roll off their tongues like rain on a Seattle roof as they sip and swish and swallow. 

I love them all, and they are sincere in their appreciation, but I confess to making light of the conversation when Jeff and his beer buddies get together. They can describe beer so poetically you'd think they were speaking of the loves of their life. And I guess, in a way, they are...

Smart beer sharers arrange their rides home ahead of time because while each sip of the nectar is a small one, within the space of a few hours, you can imbibe from dozens of cans and bottles. See the shot above -- the required "kill shot" that memorializes the samplings of the night. That compilation is in addition to everyone "checking in" the beers they tried on a beer app where people around the world exhalt or bemoan each of the beers they've consumed.

I was in no danger of drunk driving as A.) the beer share was in our basement and B.) some of the beers cracked open last night were beverages I had no interest in. 

I'd opened the wrong bottle of champagne on Valentine's Day and had been nursing that lesser-vintage bottle since Friday. So I brought my own brew to the party and stuck around (mostly) because my friend Sara was also there. She's a more sophisticated beer drinker than I am, though I think it's fair to say her husband loves it more. 

That's right: I went to a beer share and drank (mostly) champagne.  

I usually make myself scarce when Jeff hosts a beer share, and I don't think I've ever gone to one outside my own home. I can't keep up with that crowd for volume or type. I don't have -- and don't really want -- a palate that appreciates beers as dark as Dick Cheney's heart, as thick as a lumberjack's bicep or as sour as a persimmon in May. The range of beer these guys drink is immense. Some of it poured like motor oil. No exaggeration.

I'm a pale ale or juicy Maine Beer Company kind of girl when I drink beer. I would much rather drink champagne. And not Miller High Life, which as everyone know, is the champagne of beers. 

Bubbly wine doesn't have to be from France to make me happy, and it doesn't have to be expensive. We did, however, have a lovely, 2004 Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque for our anniversary that Jeff had found at a bargain price and had been saving for a special occasion. 

In my opinion, the best side effect of his craft beer obsession is that he often comes home with wine for me. If liquor stores ever focus only on beer, I will be bereft. The bottle I'd opened ahead of the pricey PJ was a Veuve du Vernay Brut, which can retail for less than $10 a bottle. So you can imagine Jeff's dismay when I popped the wrong cork... 

Neither Sara nor I lasted the entirety of the beer share. We watched part of Saturday Night Live drink-free before she and her husband left to take care of their dogs. I went to bed and it was another couple of hours or so before the beer sipping stopped. 

Once he'd made it out of bed this morning, Jeff asked Ali if his revelry had kept her up late. Silly dad.  "I had my headphones on," she said. 

This wasn't Ali's first beer share rodeo. Sometimes I wonder if she's going to enjoy college. She's been surrounded with this high-end, complicated beer for so long I'm pretty sure that kegs of Bud Lite aren't going to excite her. 

I'm OK with that side effect, too.

Speaking of the redhead, here's a picture of her Herron High School record-breaking relay team and a fun shot taken at the end-of-the-season get together. She declared the other day that she has only 99 days of high school left, which may or may not have resulted in me having extra bottles of bubbly in the fridge...

Naked Monkey v. Hairy Beast

Last weekend, Ali accompanied me to Massage Envy in Avon to attend a celebration of my friend Bree's 10th year in business there.

Bree used to be my favorite mogul. She's a kick-ass businesswoman and an even better mom and friend. Or she was until she offered me free stuff.

"Think about what you want waxed for free," she said when I told her I was bringing Ali with me to her event.

I'm not one to make an effort to get free stuff. I generally follow the old adage of "you get what you pay for."  (See a future blog about my sister Diane and the Indiana State Fair for a philosophy counter to mine.) But I love -- I mean loved -- Bree, so I wanted to celebrate with her.

So off we went. Bree's Massage Envy is well worth your drive. The people are lovely and there's a lot more than massage available. Skin care, candles, snail poop to keep eye bags away... you name it. It's there.

Ali and I got a little bit of a muscle-relaxing treatment that's a pre-cursor to a massage and it was pretty amazing. Ali was ready to make an appointment right after the little device started pummeling her shoulder.

We had to get to a swim lesson Ali was teaching, so we only had time for one more thing. That one more thing was the waxing station.

I'd never had a professional wax job, but it seemed intriguing. The only time I'd tried wax to rip the hair off my legs, it didn't go well. I might have been in high school. I just remember having trouble heating the wax and finding that, while a bit painful, more hair was left behind than came off on the strip of paper.

In my never-ending quest to not resemble an Afghan Hound, I go the razor route. Even though I'm a seasoned pro, I still have near-tragic shaving accidents when I shave my legs. But I persist.

Let's be clear: I am truly a hairy beast. I shave my legs and other parts every time I shower lest I develop Steve Carrell-like patches here and there.

In recent years, my leg hair has apparently had a chat with my chin hair, and the chin hair has given growth lessons to my upper lip hair.

If I'm not shaving, I'm plucking or jumping a little bit as I feel another hair burst through the skin on my chin or lip. I don't know if I really feel them emerge, but it seems like an endless battle keeping the  damn things at bay.

When you're as weary from the black-hair wars as I am, you're vulnerable to suggestions that you wax your hairs away. Alison, who's witnessed me fighting my follicles, did not volunteer to also get something waxed.

Instead, she readied her phone.

I blacked out shortly after learning my esthetician's name. Much like Bree, she seemed like a lovely person. We started with my chin and she gave me all kinds of great information. She gently cleansed my skin and then applied a warm goo that felt kind of nice to tell you the truth.

Then, she ripped it off and I almost peed myself. Seriously. And I had plucked my chin not the day before! I thought I'd gotten all the big one.

"We got some really thick ones," the formerly nice lady remarked as Alison cackled.

Before I knew it, she'd drizzled more wax to get the other side. I clutched the sheets and prepared my Kegels.

The esthetician asked Ali if she wanted a treatment. Ali didn't have to vocalize her refusal. I was feeling my baby-soft, hairless chin and coming down off the Pain Mountain.

There were two of us, so we qualified for two treatments......"How about your lip?"

I thought about it for a second. I'd gone into this to determine if wax could get the few hairs I thought I'd missed on my chin. I was pretty sure my lip was next to hairless. How bad could it be? And, it was free...

I asked if it would be very much worse than the chin pain, which was already starting to fade. My tormentor apparently decided my query was permission to peel.

"This could be a tear-jerker," she said, dousing me with wax. Before I could breathe, she ripped off the cooled wax.

I did not scream. I may have whimpered. I think a tear did escape.

When I realized I had three more strips of upper lip waxing to endure, I fought back panic. But I was stuck. I couldn't emerge with only one side of my upper lip bald. It would make the remaining hairs look all the more thick and lustrous.

Have you ever plucked a single hair from the middle of your upper lip? It's kind of like poking yourself in the eye with a toothpick. Or a steak knife. It's a quick stab of pain that lingers like when you burn yourself getting cookies out of the oven. And there's no cookie to ease your pain.

You hop around a little bit and curse with words you forgot you knew. You think about shaving your lip rather than plucking, the warning that you'll have a moustache like your father if you do. Caroline from the Real Housewives of New Jersey shaved her whole face all the time and she doesn't have a 5 o'clock shadow. 

And that's when your facing one stinking hair. And you're home alone.

When the whole herd gets ripped out by a perfect stranger, you'll swear you've been scalped.

This facial experience killed my curiosity of what a Brazilian wax would be like. Oh. My. Lord. How are those Naked Monkey shops in business? You'd have to duct tape me and knock me into serious unconsciousness to get me waxed down there. I'll braid my pubic hair before I'll expose it to hot wax.

I've rediscovered a deep and abiding love for my razor. Sure, it might make me bleed, and it might be a daily-use kind of thing. But it's bite is gentle in comparison.

I was informed that if I continued waxing on, say a schedule of every three or four weeks, the process would slim down my thick and sturdy facial hair. Each waxing session would less painful than the one before.

I'm actually considering it. But I'm staying strictly upstairs, if you get my drift. I'm pretty sure I'd pass out if I let the wax drip down under.

Here's a picture of Ali and me with Bree (next to me) and a Massage Envy staffer who is not the esthetician. This is before I went into the waxing room. Back when I loved Bree...

OK, I'll admit it. I still love Bree. An you will too if you ever meet her. If I ever meet Miss Wax Alot again, it will be after I've emptied a flask of something high in alcohol content.