There Is Time To Blog

There is time to blog because I am home "sick" with a no longer ingrown toenail. I went to the doctor's yesterday expecting a simple perscription for antibiotics to heal what I believed to be an infection, but no! Au revoir, toenail. LBF said "Oh my god! Have you seen what it looks like? It's going to be a bloody mess that looks like raw meat! You're toenail will be GONE! Did he take off the whole thing?" or something to that effect. I was worried, because I didn't know exactly what had happened because the doctor put up the little surgical curtain so I wouldn't be traumatized. It's only half missing and not terribly dramatic. It's high maintenance only because it involves soaking it three times a day and making a fancy wound dressing for the next ten days.

Now I'm home, feeling healthy and not really in any pain anymore. I am going to soak the foot today, and catch up on projects. And watch Screech on some show called "Dr. Keith." I think people watch these shows every day. I can't imagine.

Soon, however, I may not have anything to do with my days. D had his first interview yesterday and thinks it went well. They said he wouldn't have to start for a month, so this means the possibility of either working more here, or travelling! Exciting. Hopefully I'll be able to find some sort of temporary one month employment to occupy my days, or maybe I'll volunteer.

To catch up: Florida. I didn't have time to do my taxes. The visit was actually the perfect length - it started off rocky with my entering upon a lavish lunch involving meat and having various family members explain to my the ingredients available to me for a possible lunch. I didn't understand what this meant - was I supposed to cook something myself? Were they offering to cook for me? I am a person who is awkward in other people's kitchens - helping myself when I barely know the people, especially when the kitchen is enormous and I'd have to be interrupting THEIR lunch to ask them where various pots and pans are. I decided not to eat lunch at all (rather than make myself scrambled eggs while they ate), and ate instead an apple. D, my hero, found some secret bread stashed in the garage and made me a grilled cheese sandwich. After that it was smooth sailing - chatting, a nap, dinner (this time there was specially made tofu on the side, awww.....), bingo, sleeping too much, an entire day spent at Epcot Center just the two of us, more sleep, a nice long lunch of Vietnamese pancakes supplemented with herbs picked fresh from the garden, learning about Vietnamese wedding customs, more bingo, dinner, and then a delayed flight home after my fantasizing about becoming "estranged" from certain members of my own family who nearly sent me on a rampage after a phone call at the airport.

D's family is mellow, and I want to get used to that. Without great intimacy, I feel like there aren't as many expectations. This seems to me a better way to be. There's no drama. They just hang out without judging people, although D cautions me that people are always on their best behavior when there are non-family members around.

I only took photos at Epcot Center, and even those aren't too thrilling considering that we were, well, at Epcot Center.

This is the awesome water fountain (with the water that jumps in the air from pool to pool) near Journey to The Imagination that we loved when we were little kids. D loved it too (D' had never been to Epcot). I remembered exactly where it was and stood staring at it for what felt like an hour:



Kodak owns the pavilion into which Journey to The Imagination exits. It's a sensory experience - what would the world be like if photographs could evoke other senses? In this particular example, it was hearing sound when seeing a photograph:



This was a very high-tech photo laboratory involving the extremely high tech rainbow slinky:



We had lunch in the Mexico pavilion, across from the fake Chichen Itza:



Contrary to popular belief (or to rumors started by Father in the 80s in order to dissuade us from demanding Mickey Mouse ice cream on a stick while in The Magic Kingdom), food in Disney World is not drastically overpriced. I had a gigantic burrito with lettuce, tomato, sour cream, and salsa for $6.

There was a glassblower in the Mexico pavilion:



We watched him for about 15 minutes.





He was making turtles:



This China pavilion was awesome.



I wanted this dragon marionette:



I didn't buy him, however, because what am I going to do with any sort of marionette other than recreate the Lonely Goatherd scene from The Sound of Music?



One thing I realized being in Epcot Center was despite having been there three times prior, as a kid, I had never actually set foot in any of the pavilions. I guess the most we did was walk by, thus missing all of the fabulous shopping and snack-size museums. This makes sense, given that we were children and more concerned with going on rides.



This was a scale model of some of the soldiers found in a Chinese tomb. I guess in reality they stood 6 feet tall and there were about 60,000 of them.



There were smurfs for sale in the Germany pavilion. I didn't buy any of them, but I really wanted to buy the smurf at his desk with his laptop for Brother:



Tin toy robots in the Japan pavilion:



Fabulously packaged Japanese candies:





The Japanese have a mastery over packaging and what-is-cute, thus forcing you to want to buy every single thing. Our trip to the Japan pavilion only confirmed that we will do everything we can to take a trip to Japan within the next two years.



Japanese sodas:



I bought these Hello Kitty cookies as a consolation for not buying the Hello Kitty purse, bag, beach robe, stuffed kitty in kimono or ring:



D bought a Japanese soda that involves some sort of marble being pushed into the soda from the cap before you could drink it:



It caused a lot of confusion, but was worth it because the soda tasted like carbonated bubble gum:



We also visited the America pavilion (D had said "What would it be like if they had an America pavilion? A bunch of fat people walking around eating fast food?" Needless to say we bought a funnel cake with cherries on top in the America pavilion), the France pavilion (strawberry mousse!) and a couple other ones I'm not sure of because we didn't eat there. We also went on a few rides - Soarin', Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Test Track, Universe of Energy and whatever the ride is that's in the globe. Both the Universe of Energy (aka The Dinosaur Ride) and the globe ride broke down while we were on them. It was most surreal in the Universe of Energy, which involves a movie with Ellen Degeneres and Jamie Lee Curtis on Jeopardy with Alex Trebek. When the ride stopped, a woman got on the loud speaker and started describing to us what would be happening if the movie was still on. As in "Ellen would be writing for a while, Jamie Lee Curtis finished sooner, Alex says..." and so on. We had to be evacuated. It was insane.

After Epcot Center, we drove to downtown Disney with the exclusive purpose of going to the Lego store!



You could design and purchase three Lego minis for $9.99:





Best thing ever = a wall of Lego mini's:



D made a Lego Ninja:



I think the Lego Emergency Room is the funniest thing ever:



Don't they look delicious?



Outisde was a giant Lego T-Rex:



And giant Lego great white shark:



D was scared of them both. The best thing about these giant Lego sculptures is they design them to look like they're actually made of giant Legos.

Saving the best for last:



Lego NYC, complete with Lego King Kong.

We had a good time. The visit was the perfect length. I could have been there for one more day, but then that would have been too much. We'll be back in June for D's cousin's wedding, which will hopefully give us all a change to warm up to each other some more.

I should probably be soaking my foot now. I never thought I'd have to buy Epsom salts.

Have great weekends!

Mexico

I've been to Mexico and the Epcot Center version of Mexico in the last 6 months.

I bet you can't tell which one is the real Mexico!





Florida was actually quite pleasant and relaxing. More later when there is actually time to blog. When will there actually be time to blog? Never.

Taxes

Is it rude to do your taxes while visiting your potential future in-laws?

I don't see why it would be. What's the difference between reading eight books and doing taxes? There are no differences. Actually, I imagine I could do my taxes for 16 hours straight and not even be missed, so yes, I will bring my taxes to FL and check them off of the list. Woo. Hoo.

I'm off to Orlando tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn. I will be there, unnoticed, for three days. I am less than thrilled about this for a variety of reasons, the main one being that my time in NYC is limited and I don't want to spend what time remains in Orlando or anywhere else, really. Especially under these circumstances, but love is most important and you just have to do this sort of thing whether you like it or not. I am feeling particularly "not" with all that is going on - moving, uncertain future, wanting to spend time with people here (my family, in particular), the big day possibly happening on Tuesday but not finding out until Monday when I am in Orlando with people who couldn't care less about my existence.

I had too much tequila last night and when I crawled into bed, D took the opportunity to say "I know that you've been withdrawn lately and in a bad mood and I think it's probably because of what's going on with your family and I just want you to know that I'm here for you if you ever want to talk about things." He's so wonderful, so I didn't say what I truly wanted to say, which was that I'd be in an exponentially better mood once we returned from FL. In all honesty I just want to fast forward to the possibility of Tuesday so I can deal with things instead of dread them.

I hadn't anticipated that I'd be freaking out, and I can't freak out while around D's family because they, well, it's cultural, I know, and its not a culture of, well, feelings. They also obviously (thankfully) don't know what's going on, and I'm not going to tell them because they will be unresponsive and that will hurt my feelings even more.

I hate having secrets, and I hate having to pretend. I thought I'd feel stronger but seeing Father last week was more difficult than I'd anticipated. I keep seeing the scene, over and over again in my mind, where we all walked away while he got into his car and drove away by himself. It makes me want to cry every time. I guess I would rather be in MA than FL (although somehow not staying with anyone to whom I'm related unless it was Sister), but I'd rather be in NYC just crying this all out Just In Case.

Instead I'll be in FL staring at walls, catching up on phone calls, doing my taxes, reading books and magazines, taking long walks by myself, hopefully doing some photography, hopefully not playing more than 15 games of Phase 10, hopefully keeping my mind occupied where there's nothing to occupy my mind. We didn't get tickets to the Cirque because we didn't talk about the trip until this morning. We're not renting a car, which means we won't be going anywhere although we can borrow the car on Sunday to maybe go to Disney World. That could be fun. D's never been. I have nostalgia and can't decide if I want to ruin it or not.

I'm also getting sick, which is destroying any potential I have to psych myself up for this.

Anyway.

Have good weekends.

Until Tuesday...

I Am Reminded That I Never Finished Blogging About Portland....

... so here you go.

On our second day in Portland, D and I separated from Brother and drove around randomly in search of the coast. Everything from Day 2 was accidentally discovered as we didn't adhere at all to the trajectory D had outlined on the map.



Ummm....



... we found a place to buy guitars! And guns!

We were thrilled when we happened upon Cape Meares.







Cape Meares was very quiet and absolutely breathtaking.





There was a cool lighthouse.





There is a little forest/picnic area at Cape Meares. Here are some trees and also some more trees:





This is "The Octopus Tree" - the eight cancerous stumps are attributed to wind, but seriously, how is that possible? No other trees in the area had eight cancerous stumps.

















Cape Meares was gorgeous. We did a lot of skipping around and lying on the grass, enjoying the clean air. After walking around for about an hour, we decided to hit the road in search of food. You can imagine our ecstasy when we accidentally drove right into...



... the Tillamook Cheese Factory.

D and I are both insane for cheese, as well as for factories, thanks, on my part, to the saxophone factory segment on Sesame Street.



You can give yourself a tour of the factory for free. There are observation decks above the factory. Needless to say we spent about two hours staring down at the processes. It was amazing. Quite possibly the best thing ever.



I think that they actually make the cheese in the morning, so we weren't able to see that. We were only able to see the packaging of the cheese.





Yes, those are huge blocks of cheese.



You could sample cheese curd in the store.



The store has tons of cheese, as wells as gifts.



There is also Tillamook ice cream, but we didn't get to see that being made.



We did, however, try the pistachio (ew) and blueberry cheesecake flavored ice creams. The blueberry cheesecake flavored ice cream tasted exactly like blueberry cheesecake, and was therefore the most wonderful thing I have ever consumed.



On our way back to the hotel, we encountered more amazing coast.



But the best was yet to come. We accidentally came upon this...



... which turned out to be the beach from Goonies!



It's called Cannon Beach, and the tallest rock is around 250 feet tall.





It was low tide so we could walk right up to the rocks.







I think I was the happiest I've ever been on this beach. It was so majestic, so unexpected, so serene. It's been a year for amazing sights - Stonehenge, Chichen Itza, The Goonies beach. I am so lucky.





D found a starfish at the base of one of the rocks. It was hard to photograph since it was pitch black outside.





On Day 3 the weather was gross (normal for Portland, we were lucky to experience the abnormal weather the previous two days), so we went shopping. Brother had found this amazing store the day before:











I can't even begin to explain how happy My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcakes make me now. My recurrent nightmare as of late has been that I am rummaging through these old toys and wishing that I was a kid again. I'm not sure that I'll ever get over certain things, and I commend my subconscious for trying to protect me by transferring my angst onto the toys.

Post-shopping, we met DH for brunch at The Pancake House, which was crowded and lame, so he took us instead to a little vegan-friendly place downtown where I had an amazing tofu/garlic/herb scramble. We then went to some vintage clothing stores and ate more food, drove around the city for a bit, shopped, shopped some more (I bought the most amazing shirt for $20 and the most amazing dress for $43 - no tax! weee!), ate Lebanese food, and drove to the airport, where I instantly fell asleep in my chair.

Portland - a cute little city, but dreary. I don't think I could live there. I think the weather would get to me. The car-driving would get to me. The ocean and cheese factory job I would try, perhaps, would negate these things. Would I live there? If I had to. I wouldn't protest. The people were so very nice, hopeful, smiley. The coast, the forest, the food... all good. We had a great time.

I'm illiterate right now, if you couldn't tell. It's nearly 7:30 and I've been at work since 9:00 and NOTHING IS WORKING. Awesome.

So yeah. Portland. Awesome time had.

I need to get out of here.

Until tomorrow...