(no subject)
I'd kind of like to write out what happened today, since it seems like one of those memories I'd like to keep before the details escape me.
So! The current situation. I'm here for the summer before I (hopefully) graduate this next semester. I stayed here all summer, the longest I have since I moved out when I went to college. (Current plan is finish school, come back and live with Dad after graduation while I look for a job teaching ESL in Japan. Fingers crossed, knock on wood.) My cat Bastet is here too. :) Even if the puppies (Cocoa and Abbey) don't get along with her.
Just last week, Mom found out that after dozens of applications, she finally got a job offer in Cañon City, Colorado. And I was excited for her! But then the dread started to set in once it hit me (again) that she'd be so far away and we'd be leaving our home and all kinds of nasty stuff. And they're leaving a week before I fly back to school! Leaving me here alone with Dad to do nothing but miss them!
I really don't want to keep thinking about it, but it's been gnawing away at me, the constant dread. Plus I've developed anxiety problems and my chronic depression has returned, so I've been crying a lot more now and getting worried.
But onto the diary!
I woke up early today. Set an alarm for like 12:00 (yeah I have sleeping problems) and then reset it for 1:30, but Mom got me up at 12:30, easy compromise I guess, I got like six and a half hours of sleep.
We were going to go to [name redacted] Village for a community picnic. I got up, showered, and tried to talk to Mom (while Riss played Skyrim in the other room :P) about how worried I am about the move. I cried haha. She tried to talk me down and highlight the positives, but it's still hard.
Dad came up the stairs in the middle of the conversation. Turns out he was coming to the picnic too, which I didn't expect! Though he had a blister and decided to take his own car so he could leave early if his feet got sore.
We went ahead to the Village. Mom tried to goad Dad into a car race jokingly when we passed him on the road but he didn't really get it. Parking was restricted for some reason? So we had to go into a grassy parking lot instead, one attached to a road that led directly into the Village.
We went in and there were booths around from different places in the city. Swim clubs, a bank that gave us free chips and a magnetic chip clip on the way in, but we didn't stop at many of them. We wanted to get food first.
Mom got a sandwich I think? Dad got some meat too, and went back for seconds. I just bought popcorn and a Diet Mt Dew and three pieces of gum (since they were on sale in a group of 3). We went out to sit on a couple benches in front of a rope-making shop which was closed. Later we saw that there were tents for eating behind the food store, whoops.
A lady randomly yelled DAMMIT MICHAEL really loudly and Riss said she'd make that our new running joke.
We saw the blacksmith shop and Dad talked a little about how for three generations of men in his family, they'd had a blacksmithery. But Dad's dad wanted to do something different and got into investment advising and did well at it, though he didn't make much money off his own investments.
Then we went to see the blacksmith shop. I asked about safety regulations and they bragged about how this was before OHSA compliance. They showed a kid a leaf that they were making out of metal. We passed the DAMMIT MICHAEL woman on the way out.
After we ate, I kind of forget exactly where we went. Maybe that was when we started walking down by the church. There was an event about to start there under tents for spectators. (It was raining on and off toward the begining, just sprinkling, but Mom brought an umbrella I didn't need as long as my popcorn kept dry under the free chip bag.) We had missed the first performance at 1 pm or something though I don't remember what it was. The 2 pm performance was about to start: polish dancers. (It lasted half an hour. The third performance was at 3 and was some kind of America music inside the church. Mom suggested it to Dad but none of us actually was there to hear it.)
It was interesting, a little odd, all kids and teenagers with a couple adult women running things. I felt bad for the performers who sort of had to perform in the rain, though it wasn't bad at that point.
One of the musical scores was something that sounded like it was out of a Zelda game, I told Riss. She said an earlier part sounded like Animal Crossing music, though I thought it sounded more like a kids' show soundtrack.
Riss was sick to her stomach and thirsty.
One of the songs we all clapped along to.
After that, as we were walking to the barn, Dad wanted to leave because of his foot. He said he wasn't sure how to get out but he'd find his way, which apparently he did.
We stopped in the barn to look at face paint, but it was all Avengers and rainbows and Olaf from Frozen and a minion (ugh! we'd seen one of those on a kid in the Polish dance tent, which Riss pointed out.) We left without getting it done.
In the field, there were games and stuff set up. (Earlier, a guy with a knapsack race tried to get Dad to join and failed miserably haha. Though we weren't sure what he wanted at the time.) Stilts, some kind of game involving catching a hoop on two sticks, that kind of thing. But also, badminton! I don't think I've played that since high school, where it was one of my favourite if not my very favourite sport/s.
Surprisingly, Mom and Riss wanted to play too. At first it was just Mom and Riss sat on a nearby bench. When Riss joined in (I don't think she had played before so she didn't do so well, though we were all rusty, and she started to catch on--she kept complaining about her health and eyesight and dizziness. At first she played without glasses but then tried to play with them on, though I think they kept falling off or getting knocked around? I'm not sure), the interpreter there also played. She was an older woman but she did as well as I did, probably, though I don't think she was having as much fun.
There was a kid there named Abbey who played some and got teased by a boy I assume was her brother, until he joined in and quit a few minutes later.
There was also a teenage/young adult guy there who played for a while with us, and he actually really got into it. Later Mom said he was showing off for us girls >_o Even though he was only about as good as me. I don't know his name, but he looked like a Spencer.
For a few minutes when it was briefly me against Riss only, Mom wandered off to look at the herbal garden nearby.
It was a lot of fun. I did okay (missed several hits and we couldn't keep up much of a volley, but I think I hit more than I missed) and I had really missed playing badminton. It's probably the first time I've played a sport in years, geez. It was hot out but it didn't matter much.
After that... I think that was when we went to get a drink and some food for Riss. On the way, Mom bought an ice cream sandwich and Riss got a Drumstick from the ice cream vendor. (Which I'm pretty sure had been my job as a junior interpreter.) There was some tree we couldn't identify above the picnic table and I had fun teasing Riss and tossing its berries at her. When we got up, she shook them out of her hair. (She said she counted 5 falling out but I only remember putting 3 in :P) I left a flier given to us earlier for the Polish festival thing there, since Mom wouldn't even be in town while it was happening...
There was a booth advertising the Village itself. (I'd earlier mentioned how member booths didn't matter anymore since Mom is moving... :c) They were advertising the Wild West show. Mom thought it had happened recently but the man sitting there said it had been years, which I think was more accurate.
I asked if we could go check out the booths again, but there wasn't much to see. There was someone in a costume that Mom took for a bumblebee at first. Apparently it was some kind of power-company-related booth? I'm not sure what all it was, but the costume was a lightning bug crossed with a lightbulb. And it had holes in its head, which Mom said she didn't need more of I think, of course.
We kind of reminisced about the buildings we passed all day (like the fire house, which we'd gone to on our previous visit, we thought, and I remembered a hangman's noose being displayed on the top floor; the schoolhouse where I'd spent a day as a kid and Mom had visited a lot; the hotel where I'd gone to a birthday tea party in elementary school.) The other booths weren't interesting, though Mom had a quick question for the insurance people there, since she's looking into Obamacare-allowed provisional month-long insurance to cover her while she switches to her new job. (sigh.)
We doubled back and decided to go to the actual museum and gift shop, since Riss wanted to buy a sock monkey item to remember Rockford by. We tried to go out one entrance but there were ladies coming back who said it was locked. Mom tried to direct them out the correct entrance but they ignored her and asked other people for directions :| Mom gave up.
On the way out, we asked someone at a booth whether the museum was open. It was. We decided not to go in the dollhouse house because Mom and Riss weren't interested and I wasn't crazy about it or anything.
We checked out the gift shop first, but didn't buy anything yet. (They had Peaches stuff, which made me remember we wanted to see that movie.) We started to go in the museum and saw a cape like Wirt's from Over the Garden Wall, which made Riss talk about how she wanted to cosplay him. There was a no-food-or-drink sign which I was willing to ignore (since our chips and drink were sealed) but Riss wanted to follow it, so I dropped it off at the desk. The lady there first acted like she was going to scold us for taking it in the museum before she realized we were just asking her to watch them so we wouldn't have to.
We looked at the museum stuff. There was a room through which we could briefly see a Japan flag, not sure why (there were other flags but not ones we cared about), so I was trying to tell Mom and Riss the joke about going to bed on your period and waking up on the Japanese flag, but there was a kid nearby so it was difficult to get it out.
There was a small sock monkey puppet area, so I fiddled around with it for a minute. Mom said I was getting an audience haha. Riss came back too but we didn't get much of a chance to put on a real show; little kids were crowding around the back so we passed the puppets to them.
Then we went in the new wing with the fake immigration street. I listened to a couple "telephone" recordings from immigrants.
Mom found a shoeshine stand and did a really funny impression of Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec. Riss used the umbrella handle to give her a fake moustache.
There was a nice dress in the window that Mom commented on.
There was a small 'factory' woodworking area. Mom was telling Riss some story that I missed because I was trying to put together a fake mini-door out of wood pieces, but I kinda failed. There was a model but no instructions.
Then we went in an old-timey house (in the new wing). There was an old radio that played music. I got Riss to link arms and dance a little with me but Mom refused because it wasn't the right kind of music for that kind of dancing.
There's also a fake kitchen there. Mom said she had the same kind of coffee/espresso maker they had on the stove. And for some reason there was a cooking pot IN the stove, which I fixed.
Outside that wing, there were old time bicycles. We talked about how in Murdoch, the title character rides a modern looking bicycle rather than the big-wheeled kind. (They had an example there whose wheel I tried to spin because I thought it was a replica. It wasn't and it couldn't spin and I felt bad for touching it.) But they had some pictures of more modern looking bicycles from the same era, but without years attached.
There was a statue there of some woman who represented Charity or Justice or something that Riss said was eyeing me up. Her pupils and irises were actual holes bored into her eyes.
There is a fake porcelain cow there you're supposed to be able to 'milk' but as far as I know it hasn't worked in years. Mom tried it out to see if it had been fixed. The udder CAME OFF IN HER HANDS. We laughed at her and I said the cow was staring at her reproachfully. (Another kid came along soon and actually started SMACKING THE FAKE COW'S FACE WTF KID how mean)
There was a room about the various famous airplanes connected to the town, but also a new little wooden airplane with a flight simulator in it. Mom figured out how to open it to let me in (I was looking for a door, but the whole back half of the plane came off.) It had a propeller on the nose that was supposed to work when the plane was 'flying' but it didn't, boo. It also had lots of levers that were difficult to figure out.
I tried to pilot it and it took a long time (with Riss laughing at me, while Mom wandered away to look at the other stuff in the museum), but eventually I managed to get it to stay in the air. That got a bit boring so I forced it into a nose-dive crash. No satisfying crash, just a bonk on the ground and starting over with a level plane. I passed it onto Riss but she didn't play for as long. I'm not sure how well she did.
The last wing of the museum (har har) was about some kind of industry or company or something. I think that's new too and it's pretty obviously sponsored. They had an assembly line you could try to take part in, which I did. Riss gave up very quickly but I tried to finish. (It took me so long that the computerized instructions quit on me :|) It was a box surrounding a fan? I don't even know. I was supposed to screw some nuts on some bolts but it didn't fit very well. I kind of shoddily finished after I realized that the pieces weren't very well made and then tossed it in the blue box underneath the workbench. Mom and Riss had been talking in the meanwhile. I announced that working for this company was difficult, time-consuming, and unrewarding, and Mom thought my 'employer' would agree.
Mom said she and Riss were thinking that if I were actually an assembly line worker, I'd waste too much time focusing on getting the details right so I'd have too small an output. She's been talking about how detail-oriented I am a lot lately and how that could apply to a future career. I'm not sure that's completely accurate but w/e.
So that was the museum. (Mom batted a ceiling-hanging sock monkey on the way out.) We got our food and Riss went to buy a mini sock monkey that was extremely adorable while I waited alone. She later told me she'd name it Rocky-[redacted]. She told me she'd tried to pick out the most symmetrical face. :P
We went outside and Mom offered to pick us up so we wouldn't have to walk all the way to the car. (I didn't mind but Riss wasn't feeling well and didn't want to be left alone.) We went out to the driveway of the Village and asked the workers there if we could wait for Mom there, and they said yes and ignored us. I tried to play sword and eventually chopsticks with Riss with some twigs and she played along.
We dropped Riss off at home because she wasn't feeling well and went to the grocery store, so that was just Mom and me. I still had a good time but I guess I don't really need to write down every detail of the grocery store visit.
Tonight I made some fancy spiced rum drinks with some lemon juice we'd bought earlier and some raspberries we bought a fourpack of. (Not in the same drink... hah.) We watched a TV show about people getting bad tattoos fixed. Mom made some plans with us in regards to going to Chicago and then went to bed, but came to get us later about getting new phones.
I feel really guilty about this because they're $140 phones and I JUST got a new $40 phone 5 months ago. Crazy, right? The new-old phone does have some flaws and it's just because I was a few years late in upgrading. So now we're upgrading again. I told Mom to leave it to her best judgment whether to buy it for me or not because I'd feel reeeally guilty asking, and it's not like I NEED a new phone, and I've been costing so. much. goddamn. money. this summer anyway. But I have had some phone issues (call issues, missing texts/voicemail, not being able to reliably input numbers on the keypad while in a call) so I said that yes I could use a new one. In addition to needing a new computer, ughhhh. So much money in so many different ways.
Right now Riss is in bed, I'm just writing IC to Ten on Skype, and Abbey and Bastet are out here ignoring each other. (Bast was cuddling me a lot while I was typing this.) Cocoa had an accident so she's in her house right now. :c And I guess that was my day!