Day: September 13, 2009

Wedding in Chicago

/ chollaball / 3 Comments

my cousin got married, I stayed about a block from where we stayed during the marathon. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPricey. But its a sweet location. How is it that I repeatedly hit the hotel gym, the pool, walk for about 8 hrs in 2 days, and still come home a fat sack of crap?   I was in the damn gym this morning when I’m pretty sure I was still legally drunk!!!   The Embassy Suites breakfast buffet is quite good, the wedding food was better. I’m so full I didn’t even eat the snack pack on SouthWest Airlines, but i gave it a good home in my backpack.   I’m very tired, and thinking about ordering pizza, and need a beer to cure my hangover.

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I met a cool tri-girl at the lake who watched my stuff while I swam, and told me about the lake path that’s like 20 miles in either direction.   If Chicago gets the 2016 marathon, I will definitely go there to work and bring my road bike.   The lake front area totally kicks ass, a year’s worth of activities crammed into a few months of good weather.     There was simultaneously:   a Mexico festival, an Irish festival, a wine tasting, free entry to the Art Institute of Chicago, and a health care protest.   I could not figure out which side it was for – people need their slogans to not contain cryptic buzzwords if they want passersby to be influenced, and with as dumbed-down as Fox News makes it, I’m very surprised it wasn’t a hegemonic   army of   zombies.   But I thought zombies were what they were allegedly going to be turned into by Obama, so maybe they were actually fighting off their deterioration into the ranks of the undead, and I should have supported them??   *shrug* I went to the Art Museum.

The wedding was very well done and some beautiful places, and the reception was on the top floor of the shwanky lakefront “W” hotel that had a 360 view.   The ceremony was mercifully short.   My younger cousin has grown up right.   She’s a doctor now.   It was kinda weird seeing some of my family that I’ve only seen at weddings and funerals over the last 20 years, it was nice but awkward.   You gotta start somewhere.   my sister’s kids remember me and have turned out pretty good too.

Annoying travel note 1:   The Chicago Transit Authority subway card machines do not give change, and whoever designed their UI doesn’t know shit about usability.   So $15 in the hole, I talked 7 good people into giving me $2 each and letting me swipe them through.   When I finally went through, the thing didn’t read my card and I had to jump the gate, leaving me with an extra fare after all that.   On the return, a clearly not-well-to-do   guy saw me looking for the right way to Midway and offered me directions, and I gave him the still-valid card.   Karma is cool like that.

Annoying travel note 2:   it is still ass-hot in Phoenix.

dummy

/ chollaball / 1 Comment

G and I were at the zoo, going on 3 hrs, and she was getting tired and being willful playing behind a roped area she ought not have been playing behind, and giving me static about coming out.   I finally got her out of there and we were looking at the black bears.   Well, I was looking at the black bears, she was being difficult and kept whining and asking where are they ?? where are they?? I can’t see them?? I sorta snapped:   “they’re right in front of you dummy!”

I apologized.   She wouldn’t let it go.   That night she bemoaned to Beckie how I called her a dummy.   The next day she bemoaned how I called her a dummy.   Next week back at the same spot, she bemoaned that I should not call her a dummy again.   I apologized again, I reminded her that I apologized last week, and that I didn’t mean it but she was being difficult and we both made a mistake and both were sorry and we both apologized again.   Then we hugged, and she even joked about it as we watched the bears: “we’re both dummies! we’re both dummies!”

2 weeks later…2 fucking weeks later…she was upset and   tired and cranky and said intra-tantrum: “Daddy always calls me a dummy!”   Apparently this bell can not be unrung.

I always try to be careful with my words around her, to compliment her about what a smart little girl she is, what a wonderful little girl she is, yet here one deserved insult is carrying such disproportionate weight its making me sick with guilt and frustration.     Its not like she’s been sad non-stop, or we haven’t immediately and every day thereafter been sweet, or she doesn’t understand that people make mistakes, or doesn’t get testy with those around her.   Its a double standard and I have to deal with it.

All that psychobabble crap about to a child you are everything, mother is the word for god, strippers dance on poles cause daddy didn’t love them enough…they seem pretty true right now.