Pieces of Eight

Eight.


It was eight years ago yesterday that I beat the odds and kicked Death in the tender man bits.  It’s a long story involving my spinal cord, a blood clot, and a team of perplexed doctors in the ER who now call me ‘miracle’ because it wasn’t supposed to be possible to survive it without major paralysis (think Christopher Reeve) and yet I somehow magically did and walked out of the hospital.  (If you want those kind of gory details, click HERE.) 


Needless to say, November 18th is always one of my favorite days of the year.


Now, some people don’t want me to talk about that day here anymore or say “yay, I’m happy to be alive” and things like that. Some people think I should pretend it never even happened in case I “frighten” my 16 year old by “reminding” her of it…. although how on earth I am expected to erase it from existence when I still have nerve damage and numbness on almost 50% of my body and we live with it every damn day of our lives is beyond me!  (Some people have no lives and need to butt out of other people’s personal health issues.  Clearly.)  However, I’m not going to bow like that to some people anymore.


No.


I celebrated my eighth “re-birth day” yesterday by going back through all the hundreds of posts I deleted back in March because of some people and re-published all my November 18th posts from the past because, well, it’s MY reality, it’s MY story to tell, it’s MY right to tell it, it’s MY blog, and—fuck it—I’m NOT taking dictation here. 


(Oh, and the other hundreds of deleted posts?  They’ll be coming back too…. just not quite yet because it will take some time to go through them all, and I’ve got something more important to do this week:  LIKE GOING ON VACATION!!!!)


(Woo-hoo!)


So, anyway…. the moral of the story is:  Surviving a health crisis is good.  And people who try to hijack your blog and use your health against you in a court case are assholes.  There.  But anyway….


I’m not sure if I’ll be skipping through Blogaritaville much this week before we take off on our vacay, so, if not, have a Happy Thanksgiving, you guys!  I hope it’s tryptophan-tastic! 


JJ, we will be seeing you soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon!  :-)






© Coracabana

It’s beginning to look a lot like…. well, you know.

So, my calendar keeps telling me that Christmas is this weekend. Yeah. THIS. WEEKEND. Really? There’s NO WAY that can be right! Right?

R-r-right?

*dazed and crazy-eyed stare*

I simply don’t see how Christmas can be here already. I swear it was just Halloween. I mean, I still have the callous on my finger from sewing our costumes in October, so it can’t be December already. It CAN’T. It just doesn’t add up. I refuse to believe it.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

And yet….

There are trees with twinkly lights in our dining room (yes, TREES—plural—just roll with it), a bulging pile of presents on our floor, stockings hung by our fireplace, and Christmas cards lurking in our mailbox every time I dare to peek inside. Christmas cards like this one….




Isn’t that AWESOME???? It was sent to us from the spectacular Vegetable Assassin and we all busted out in giggles when we saw it. Wednesday is already plotting evil plans to steal it for her sprawling Tim Burton collection, of course.

BUT NOT IF I STEAL IT FIRST!!!!

(Thank you, Veggie!)

Wednesday, Scope and I have been enjoying Christmas in Chicago, even though it is just a thousand shades of wrong that Christmas is here already. A couple of weekends ago, we went downtown to lap up all the in-your-face holiday-osity lurking there. We went to Macy’s….





….where we bought what we thought was chocolate fudge….




….and we were blissful. Until we opened it and realized it was mint.

Dammit.

Mint is Wednesday’s culinary nemesis. It even outranks the unbridled terror which is tomatoes on her list of Foods So Nasty They Prove God Does Not Exist, but only because mint can be a tricky little shape-shifting bugger. Sometimes you don’t even know mint is there until it’s too late! Diabolical is what it is. Wednesday loathes mint in all its many forms and disguises, of course—but especially deceptively delicious-looking chocolate-fudgy ones, which are just SOOOOOO unfair and wrong. So, curse you, Macy’s, for your inadequate fudge labels!

Mint: 1 Wednesday: 0

After Macy’s, we went to the Disney Store where we watched their unintentionally hilarious opening ceremony (I’ll let my hubba hubba hubby tell you that tale of stupidity HERE) and where I felt tall (for once!) inside the princess castle.




Yes, quite tall indeed.

Next, we crossed the street to the Christkindlmarket, which is like a little old fashioned Christmasy German village in the shadows of the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza, where they were advertising free photos with Santa.

FREE?!

My inner penny-pinching cheapskate did cartwheels! So, we got in line to see Santa.




The line looks long in that picture, but it moved quickly and it was about a third as long as the line to see Santa inside Macy’s. We played 20 Questions while we waited. And we laughed at the butt-ugly tree the city put up on display.




(Really, Chicago? Really? That’s the best tree you could find?! Pitiful.)

The Santa setup was really cute and the picture turned out great….




….but, unfortunately, the resolution is really low. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to print a decent 4x6 of it whenever I get around to updating my old school non-digital photo albums.

*sniffle*

So, maybe sometimes a free price tag isn’t the best deal after all. Bummer. Then again….

After Santa we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo (which was also free!) and took care of phase one of a school biology project Wednesday had been assigned.




She had to find five animals which live outside in the zoo during the winter. We found sea lions….






….and a Siberian Tiger….






….and European White Storks….




….and an African Wild Dog….




….and an Amur Leopard….




….and a few others. Then the sun went down and and all the animals went to bed. Shhhhhhh….




And while the zoo inhabitants snoozed, we got to run amok and enjoy the Zoo Lights in the dark, which was a pretty impressive display….







But, best of all, at Zoo Lights Wednesday got a brownie which was NOT mint flavored and then—POOF!—all was right with the world again….




Mint: 1 Wednesday: 64 billion

© Coracabana

Butterfly Flutter By

See that little count down widget right over there? --------> Hmm? Do ya? Right now as I’m typing this, it’s showing that there’s only nine hours to go until Scope and I are married. NINE. HOURS. And that’s crazy, people. Crazy like spaghetti and light bulbs.

Wow.

Shouldn’t I be nervous or something? ‘Cuz I’m not. No, really. Shut up. I slept just fine last night, woke up feeling completely calm and nonfreakoutish, and now I’m sitting here eating a 3 Musketeers and blogging quietly so I don’t accidently wake my daughter up before I hit my treadmill with a three mile walk while I watch Quantum Leap, just like I do every morning…. the only difference is that I keep wondering why I’m not nervous. Where are those annoying butterflies which always haunt my stomach in situations like this?! Hmm? What, are they on freaking strike? Are they sleeping in? Maybe they’re just lying in wait outside my front door, giggling menacingly amongst themselves and plotting to ambush me later as I load up my car with all the glass bowls, glass flutes, wedding clothes, seating charts, table numbers, and yada yada yada that I’ll be needing in nine hours?

Eeep.

That settles it. I’m leaving out the backdoor, dammit! So there!

*sticking out tongue at butterflies while I notice that now there's only EIGHT hours to go*

(Nope. Still not nervous. Bizarre. Who am I and what have I done with myself????)

© Coracabana