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

On the road again…. (part 6)

Okay. So, this is my last Ohio post. (I know. I know. I’m excited too.) And since it only took me a mere month and a freakin’ half (!!!!) to describe an eight day vacation, I am clearly in my bloggy prime here lately.


Clearly.


(High five!…. Anyone?…. Anyone?….. No?…. Oh.)


Well, anyway….


I was in Seattle on an involuntary vacation for the past five weeks and it was exhaustingly busy and eye-opening at moments, to say the least. But, hey, just for sh*ts and giggles, I think we should properly kill off the Ohio tale first, right? Sure, why not? So, umm…. Ready? Set? Go!



DAY 7:


We spent our last full day in Ohio at Cedar Point Amusement Park. We had a view of Cedar Point from our rental home and had been enviously watching it glowing and glittering just a ways across the lake from us night after night the whole week we had been there. So, it was nice to finally venture over to grab our own little piece of the experience before heading back to Chicago.


Here’s what it all looked like….




Cedar Point had been invaded by dinosaurs when we were there and happily advertised that fact everywhere we looked. Here’s Scope, Wednesday, and Scope’s parents with a shifty-looking beast we ran into in the parking lot.




Just inside the gate, we crossed paths with Charlie Brown, Sally, and Linus. Naturally, I went running, squealing, and vaulting over little children to get Wednesday’s picture with them.




Scope’s parents ditched us at approximately that exact moment, perhaps fearing I would force them to stand and smile next to Snoopy or Peppermint Patty if we chanced running into them. And I SOOOOOOOOO would have. So, good call on their part!


After our run-in with Charlie Brown, Scope and I took Wednesday on a few of the more tame rides, like the ferris wheel….




….and a viking boat thingy that went rocking backwards and forwards up into the sky.




And Wednesday liked those rides well enough, of course, but the girl has a whole heaping helping of me in her and, thus, she hungered for something wilder. So, we headed over to the Iron Dragon rollercoaster.




The Iron Dragon boasted a 4 out of 5 rating on the clench-your-butt-cheeks-and-hold-the-f*ck-on scale by which the theme park powers that be grade all rollercoasters. Naturally, that means my Neurologist would probably snap and give me a wedgie if I went on it. But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?…. Yeeeaaahhhhh…. *crafty look* So, I joined the line, all giggly and excited and awaited our turn to rocket through the air.




It.


Was.


AWESOME!!!!


Duh.


We ended up going on it three times. Uh-huh. Three. And I videotaped one of them. Wanna see?! ‘Kay.



(And just for the record, my back after all that rollercoaster-ing? Totally fine! So, yay!)


What else did we do? Well…. Wednesday tried to wrestle a chocolate chip cookie away from a Snoopy statue.




Scope and I got thrown in the stocks.




And we got our Tom Hanks “Big” on and had our fortune told by a Zoltar machine.




Our fortune? Something about finding good men under shabby hats. Okay, then. Moving on….


Eventually we wandered into the Dinosaurs Alive exhibit.




There we hobnobbed with these dudes, and dozens more….



















The dinosaurs in the exhibit were incredible. They were life-size animatronic goodies galore! They moved! They roared! They snarled! They shrieked! They leered at us with their evil dino eyes and sneered with their evil dino grins! And, best of all, they provided shade! Lots and lots of blessed shade, which was soooooooooooooooo welcome on that sweltering, nearly-100 degree day, which I swear was hotter than the devil’s freaking armpit!


*happy shudder*


After that, we went shopping for souvenirs in the Snoopy Boutique….




….where Scope and Wednesday bought matching Charlie Brown shirts. (Awwww.) Then, as thunder clouds started to gather threateningly above, we said “smell ya later!” to Cedar Point and went back to our rental house to pack up for the drive back home the next morning.






DAY 8:


Our last day in Ohio we had to be out of our rental house by 9 am—*gulp!*—so, there was not much to do but play a quick last game of ping pong….




….and say goodbye to the house….




….and say goodbye to the lake.




Wednesday had really enjoyed her time in Ohio and was crushed and sad to leave.




But our time was up and we had to go. So, with Scope and Wednesday in their matching Charlie Brown shirts, we hit the road back home to Chicago.




And then we had to IMMEDIATELY start packing for our five week stay in Seattle. Oy!






© Coracabana

On the road again…. (part 5)

Scope, Wednesday, and I took a big family vacation with my in-laws to Ohio a bunch of weeks ago, which I have been sloooowwwwwwwly telling you all about. (For part 1 of this story click HERE, for part 2 click HERE, for part 3 click HERE, and for part 4 click HERE. *whew!*) Here’s what happened next….



DAY 6:


The sixth day of our stay in Ohio was pretty low key. First we went to Milan to take a tour of the house where Thomas Edison was born.







While waiting for our tour to begin, they actually allowed us to hold Thomas Edison’s Grammy. Pretty cool, huh?




Our tour guide was amazing. I hate to admit I’ve already forgotten his name though. It might have been Larry…. Or Lawrence…. Or Leonard…. I’m just not sure, but he was spectacular. He truly delighted in telling us quirky little tales about “that odd Edison boy” who burned his family’s barn down at the age of six and who was thought to be a complete idiot by his teachers and, well, pretty much everyone else he crossed paths with, except his mother.




Our tour guide (let’s call him TG) had the most intoxicating voice, like all the little stories and tidbits he was whispering were deliciously juicy secrets he had been saving up for years and years solely to share with us. He often started sentences with, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but….” and we would lean in closer and closer as he’d let fly gossipy nuggets of information on Edison, like how his daughters were bright but his sons were dim…. so dim that Edison eventually got disgusted enough to actually ask Thomas Edison Jr. to give up the Edison name.


Ouch.


I swear, TG could take over the world if he wanted to. He was practically hypnotic. We were hooked on his every word. He took us all through the Edison home and showed us all kinds of things Edison-related, like some of his inventions, and even the actual bed Thomas Edison was born in.




Eww, huh? I know. But anyway….


After Edison’s house, we stopped for lunch at Invention Restaurant which looked really cute and inviting on the outside, but was a complete disorganized dive on the inside.




Oh well.


Before leaving Milan, we poked around in a couple of antique stores, where Wednesday was utterly baffled by the old rotary phones piled up in there.




”But…. but…. but how the heck do you dial it?!?!” she sputtered.


*crickets chirping*


Wow.


I grew up with a rotary phone. Did you? It wasn’t that long ago, was it? It was, like, the 80’s, right? It never occurred to me that someone—and a brainiac straight A high school honor student no less!—wouldn’t know how to work a rotary phone. How can that be a dead knowledge when Katrina and the Waves still gets radio play?!?! Holy sh*t!


*deep calming breath*


So, I taught Wednesday how to dial the “ancient freaky phone”.




After the “weird” phone-dialing lesson, we left Milan and went back to our rental house with the rest of Scope’s family to change into matchy matchy outfits for a big family portrait session with Maybelle Photography.


We met our photographer at an arboretum and, after doing a slew of shots there, we migrated back to our rental home for part 2 of our session. It was almost 100 degrees and windy as all hell that day, so I didn’t have high hopes that our pictures would be anything but comical, sweaty, windblown messes. But I was wrong. They’re actually really good! Here are two of my favorites that she cleared for sharing online.








Photoshopping the sweat off of everyone’s shirts must have literally taken DAYS. Dang. That’s service. Way to go, Photo Girl!


But anyway….


That night we attempted to go out for a game of outdoor Goofy Golf, but the golf place had already closed down for the evening when we got there. This was definitely one of those blessing in disguise thingies though, because a vicious, cutthroat lightning storm hit out of nowhere about five minutes after our goofy golfing dreams were crushed to a fine paste. Here’s a big ol’ yay on that! So, instead we went back to the house to charge our camera batteries and otherwise get our act together for the next morning when we would be invading (….drumroll please….) Cedar Point Amusement Park.



[….to be continued….]






© Coracabana