Last year Skylar and I went to Santa Barbara for a quick vacation so he could have a break from medical school. We ended up driving a bit out of the area to a town called Solvang, which is this German(?) town that is exactly the most adorable place anyone has ever been to. Seriously. You should look this thing up.

Well we spent the day wine tasting NOT THAT WE KNOW WHAT THAT IS and that ended up being a very dangerous thing because Solvang has some art shops with paintings that cost exactly elevently million dollars cubed times fifty carry the one multiple by the integer. By the end of the day, Skylar, who has to get a liver transplant just from walking past a vineyard, was so drunk none of us get to go to heaven ever again.

Tangent: I'm not kidding about this. Skylar weighs 14 pounds. And he rarely drinks. But he really loves wine--or, at least he loves the thought of wine. But every time he actually has a sip of anything he spends the next five months waking up every morning saying "I'm so hungover." And I'm like "SKYLAR YOU HAD COUGH SYRUP IN FEBRUARY YOU ARE NOT STILL HUNGOVER IT'S JUNE." And then he gets mad at me for speaking without punctuation, because that's what wine snobs do.

Anyway, on this particular Solvang day, Skylar was legitimately the most drunk I have ever seen him, and that includes this one time when we had just first started dating and we met in NYC and went to a party and ended up at a McDonald's at 3:00 AM eating a pile of very-not-good hamburgers and he reached over and grabbed my hand, looked me straight in the eye with this very sweet look like he was about to say something sentimental, and whispered "I want you to know, I hate this. I don't like staying up late. I don't know what we're doing here. I wanted to go to bed at 9:00. I hope you don't expect more of this from me."

And that was the last time Skylar and I did anything fun.

The point is, he was extremely drunk in Solvang after tasting like four wines over the course of 9 hours and the next thing I knew we had stumbled into an art gallery, looked at a painting that cost so much that no one can ever go to college again, shouted "WE'LL TAKE IT" and now that painting is hanging on our living room wall.

We still love it, and don't regret it at all. Not even after some of you complained about having to get summer jobs to pay for the dorms and books.

Well, I say all of this because we just reached out and purchased more art from the same artist (Chris Pavlov) because we love it so much and now not only can none of you go to college but none of you can ever eat again and we're sorry about that but not sorry enough to change.

Here are some pictures of where they are in the house.

They are beautiful. I'm sorry I spent money on these and not on you.

Also, please enjoy a new Strangerville:

This time in Strangerville, Meg is firmly anti-democracy, Daniel Tiger is the Oprah for toddlers, and Eli takes a breath in 2020.

Story

An Unsettling Chance To Breathe, by Eli McCann (music by Our Friendly Beasts)

Production by Eli McCann & Meg Walter

~It Just Gets Stranger