Three-Whiskey Hotel

I do a lot of traveling.  I love traveling.  I have stayed in a lot of lodging.  I don't always love the lodging.  Good lodging is like home away from home.  Bad lodging is like an attack on all of your senses and a desire that your skin not make contact with anything.

The things I love include tight white sheets and shades that block out sunlight in the morning, then spring open to reveal abundant natural light when I am ready to get up.  I don't give a rat's ass about room service, but a continental breakfast that includes fruit is high on my list.  I just want one food-thing that is not over five years away from its life source.  A hard boiled egg counts...  unless it is over five years away from its life source.

Cheerleader Me

The Angry Baker, Columbus, OH, is on the corner of Oak and 18th, just East of Downtown in "Olde Towne."

It is a question I have been asked repeatedly in my adult life.  It is a question for which I am never quite prepared.  It is a harmless question.  To anyone else, it is meaningless:  "Were you a cheerleader?"

Often it is not even posed as a question.  Often it is half accusation/ half "I-know-your-type":  "You were a cheerleader, weren't you?

It's been 20 years since high school.  I am a grown woman.  And I am frightfully flattered by the question.  What is it they see in me?  Am I little and peppy?  Am I popular?  Am I cheery!?!

In 1988 as I prepared for the Bishop Hartley Cheeleading Try-Outs, I believed in my heart and soul:  I am a cheerleader.   I  knew all the words to all the cheers, I had the right hair, (well, I had big hair, but that was acceptable), my big sister Katie was already a BHHS cheerleader and coached me mercilessly in the weeks prior to the try-outs ("straighten your wrist, straighten your leg, more to the side, more to the front, higher.... higher.... higher!!!!  Well, you asked me to help; don't get mad.")  I can still remember the first 16 counts of choreography we learned to a New Order instrumental.