And so the couch-surfing begins

Want some more Project 365 updates?  Cool. Then read on, you sexy, picture-lovin’ beast, you….



Day 186 (2012-07-04) ~  On the 4th of July, Scope, Wednesday, and I went up on our rooftop to watch the fireworks going on around us in all directions.  It was AWESOME.  It made me feel like a chimney sweep in Mary Poppins!  Unfortunately, my tripod was falling apart, so most of my pictures have a shaky look to them.  But regardless of the camera shake, I really, REALLY love this shot!  (Oh, and that rickety tripod?  My lovely hubby got me a brand new replacement one for my birthday, so next year’s 4th of July pictures will be even better.  Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!)





Day 187 (2012-07-05) ~  Eh.  I had too much on my mind this day to put a lot of effort into my Project 365, so I just shot a quickie of a flower in the community garden at a local elementary school on my way to meet Scope at the train after work.





Day 188 (2012-07-06) ~  It was right around the time I took this picture that I had to start feverishly packing my bags for a five week trip out to Seattle.  Five lonnnnnngggggggg weeks.  It was not a trip that any of us wanted to take, it was one of those complicated court-ordered thingies that we really didn’t have much of a say in, which really sucked.  Scope could only be out in Seattle for ten days out of those five weeks, so most of the summer, the poor fella was stuck home alone in Chicago;  Wednesday had to spend half of that five weeks being somewhere she really didn’t want to be, against her will, and without me and Scope;  and, in a nutshell, the Court-y powers that be sentenced me to spend five weeks sleeping on my mom’s couch, 2000 miles away from home, waiting around to rescue Wednesday if things did not go well for her where she was (more on that later).  But anyway…. the days leading up to Wednesday’s and my departure to Seattle, the three of us were definitely feeling blue, so adding a blue tint to this rainy day flower photo definitely seemed appropriate.  *sniffle*





Day 189 (2012-07-07) ~  This was my very happy baby girl after we signed the paperwork to start her Invisalign Orthodontic treatment.  Straight teeth, here we come!





Day 190 (2012-07-08) ~  Another snapshot of real life.  Remember that five week trip I told you about?  It was looming over us and about to begin in two day's time the day I took this picture, thus there was LOTS of hugging in our house as the three of us tried to give each other pep talks.  "It will go by fast.... It will go by fast.... It had damn well BETTER".





Day 191 (2012-07-09) ~  Workout shorts bokeh.... or utter laziness?  You decide.  (Hey, they can’t ALL be great pictures, okay?!)





Day 192 (2012-07-10) ~  This was the view out our airplane window as Wednesday and I started our flight from Chicago to Seattle on July 10th.  Poor Wednesday spent half the flight begging me, “please, PLEASE, don’t make me go!”  But there was nothing I could do to stop it.  :-(





Day 193 (2012-07-11) ~   This was the start of my five weeks in Seattle.  Wednesday was off staying with other people she didn’t want to be with; Scope was home alone and lonely in Chicago; and I was bumming around on my mom’s couch, feeling exorbitantly resentful towards the whole situation and Seattle in general.  Even all these months later, I still can’t quite get it how the Court-y powers that be could feel justified in forcing an intelligent and perfectly well behaved nearly-sixteen year old straight-A honor student to drop all her summer plans and go spend huge chunks of her vacation living with people she doesn’t feel comfortable being around after she had made it perfectly clear that she did not want to go.  Yeah, yeah, I get it that we are trying to repair a series of extremely broken family ties here, but I just don’t think that FORCING the poor girl into their homes and causing her to have panic attacks, stress, and other misery helps the situation in any way whatsoever.  In fact, I think it brews up even more negative feelings on top of the ones that already exist and drives the wedge even deeper. 


*frustrated sigh*


But what the hell do I know, right?  Who the heck am I?  I’m just the one who is ordered to ignore her feelings, disregard her pleading, and callously shove the kid off into these situations against her will (and mine!), and then abandon my whole life in Chicago to sit around in Seattle for five weeks, on-call, waiting for the moment that the situation, inevitably, goes sour so I can pick up all the pieces and rebuild my shattered kid.


(What?  Bitter?  Does it show?)


It just seemed like an awful lot to demand of Wednesday, Scope, and me, wouldn’t you agree?  I tried not to be resentful, but it wasn’t easy.  I tried to cheer myself up by taking lots of nature walks with my camera.  It was during one of my walks that I realized that Seattle is covered in ferns.  So many, many, many ferns.  Funny, I guess I never really noticed that before.  I don't think I've seen a single solitary fern since moving to Chicago, so naturally it seemed fitting to make a fern one of my Project 365 pictures.





Day 194 (2012-07-12) ~  Okay, yes, there were some perks to being in Seattle—it wasn’t all crappy.  Like getting to spend some good quality time with my nieces and nephew!  See the boy who's second closest to the camera there?  The tall, handsome, blond eight year old dude with the bow and arrow?  That's my awesome nephew.  He invited me to his Cub Scout Camp to watch him practice archery on July 12th.  Right after this picture was taken, he shot a bulls-eye with that arrow.  And I am still beaming with pride!  :-)





Day 195 (2012-07-13) ~  On a bug hunt in the backyard with my nieces and nephew, we found an inchworm. Sooooooooo much fun!





Day 196 (2012-07-14) ~  And this is what happens when you let a two year old paint her own toenails!





Day 197 (2012-07-15) ~  Water droplets caught in a spider web.  How cool is that?  If you look closely, the droplets each kind of resemble the earth.  My niece found this in the garden and ran up to me, saying, "Cora! You should take its picture! It's your picture of the day!!!!"  I love how the kids are so excited about this picture of the day business. :-)





Day 198 (2012-07-16) ~  Just a quickie of a pansy in the garden.  (And—*sigh*—I actually took this on the 15th, not the 16th, but whatever, right?)





Day 199 (2012-07-17) ~  The weather seemed to be mirroring my mood on July 17th.  Rainy, gray, and gloomy….





I was knee-deep in stressful court crap that day and I was getting heartbreaking texts from poor Wednesday every thirty seconds or so begging me to come and get her because things had gone very wrong where she was staying.  She completely filled up my phone with her unhappy texts.  TWICE.  Of course, I didn’t have the right to just go get her, I had to wait for the permission to do so, and in the meantime, she was so upset to the point of vomiting (!!!!) over what was going on in the home she was staying in.


*eye twitch*


I probably would have puked from stress too if I had been in her position, staying in a house she didn’t want to be in in the first place, where one of the adults in charge there ended up reading our various court documents out loud to the children like perverse bedtime stories (seriously! WHAT THE F*CK?!), and where someone thought it would be a nifty idea to get all scream-y up in poor Wednesday’s face, and told her she should be ashamed for speaking up for herself in our court case and that now none of her half-siblings will ever get to go to college and it’s ALL.  WEDNESDAY’S.  FAULT.  Oh—AND their dog chewed up half of Wednesday’s possessions and no-one cared or was willing to help her replace any of it.


(Yeah.  Let that all sink in for a minute….)


(Ready to go on?  Okay….)


Needless to say, Wednesday was granted the right to come back to me early…. and—Bonus Picture of the Day—this is what her purse looked like when she was returned.





Yep, those are two grapefruit-sized holes in her purse with her chewed-to-pieces possessions falling right out of it.  (Really?!?!  Is it just me or is that just incredibly thoughtless?  If MY dog had destroyed the stuff of a guest in MY house, I would have replaced the stuff, NOT SEND THE KID HOME WITH A SHREDDED PURSE FULL OF DESTROYED CRAP AND THE DESIRE TO NEVER EVER RETURN!!!!  Wouldn’t you?!  Gah!)  Obviously, the mean words did more destruction than the dog, and the damage to the purse was nothing compared to the damage to the family ties that were supposed to be mended during the visit. 


*sad sigh*


But anyway…. because I want to end this on a happy note….


Day 200 (2012-07-18) ~  The backyard of one of the houses Wednesday and I stayed in during our time in Seattle had this robust fella living in it.  Yeah, a bunny! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!





More pictures and updates are on the way soon….







© Coracabana