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Time Travel, pt 7/10
11 years ago
True to my plans, I looked up some places after breakfast this morning where we could do some kind of theme park or roller-coaster-type thing. Though it was certainly hot enough to do so, most of the water parks were closed, and had been since Labor Day. I mean, it was five days into October now, so no water parks were open, even as hot as it was. I was pretty sure that being all wet wasn't Terrana's thing, anyway, and thought back to the park. Yeah. Nah. Roller coasters, though. She said she'd like that. It's something I never expected to hear from her. After all, roller coasters are fast and ... loud. Very loud. Terrana seemed to have a low tolerance for things that were loud and crowded, much like I do. I do have to say I will quite gladly put that to the side for the chance to fly, though, so perhaps I should not have been as surprised.
I avoided looking up Hershey until last, because I remembered also that Hershey park would have a lot of focus on our very acidic American chocolate, of which Terrana wasn't very fond. I had explained then that we actually like our chocolate that way... that it's meant to be very acidic, and that we actually even add things like spicy peppers into it and even rock salt sometimes. Considering chocolate gets spicier and acidic the closer it gets to the source (Mexico and the Central Americas), and seemingly milder the farther away (like the very creamy versions I tasted that my Uncle brought back from London), I shouldn't have been surprised about her preference, there, either. I mused over these old conversations while she and I silently tapped at our computers. I kept coming up with nothing. Everything was open only during the weekend. That would be too crowded; not only were kids out of school, but all the other things to do that are free, like the museums and national parks, were (guess what!) SHUT DOWN during the shutdown. We'd not be able to move for all the people in these parks on the weekend. I even looked at Hershey. Weekend only. I looked at corn mazes and pumpkin farms. Weekend only. I must have looked crestfallen, because Terrana let out a small "Hi..." to cheer me.
You know what? I thought, it'll be okay. We should just go have some fun. So I considered what we could do and decided that maybe Chris had some ideas. I texted him and he didn't answer and got a bad feeling, but put on a smile anyway. "Want to go on an adventure?"
"Well, why not?"
Terrana stayed in the car while I ran up to see why he didn't answer. Long story short: he wasn't ready to go anywhere, and wouldn't be for a long time. I decided, right then, to spend most of the rest of the visit without him, unless he apologized. He seemed to be having a good time without me, anyway, and I didn't want Terrana to see him like that. Ever.
Back in the car, Terrana was listening to beautiful instrumental music. I whuffed out the sour smell from the attic bedroom still lingering in my nostrils and got into the car. I took a deep breath and listened to Terrana talk about music she liked while I programmed the GPS for Frederick, where I'd gone to college. I considered showing her the campus, but I wanted to take her to the shops and Carroll Creek I thought she'd like the art there. It was hot and would be a perfect day for ice cream nearby. The sun was really glaring and angry. I tried not to remember the scene in the bedroom I just had to survey, but all throughout the car ride it kept creeping up on me and making me angry, too. By the time that I parked the car near the post office in Frederick, I had thought on the state of that bedroom a dozen times. It seemed like Terrana knew I was upset by it, because each time she started to mention soothing things like games or music, things she still wanted to show me, things she liked. She was mostly quiet when we were walking though, so I babbled over things that I liked and little shops I loved to visit and decided I wanted to take her to see the Rare Earth store. It honestly just has a sign above the shop that just says ROCKS.
I wandered with her but never found it, despite using my GPS walking map. By that time we were hungry and, since we were on Market Street anyway, I decided we couldn't very well leave Frederick without going to Brewer's Alley. It was actually ridiculously crowded, though we got seated straight away. This is what we mostly did. The service seemed rather busy. I wasn't as impressed as I was most of the other times I was there. The spicy 3-pepper was wonderful, though. Service so very slow. I get cranky when my tea is empty, dammit. Though it did allow us lots and lots of time to talk. I was starting to like talking to her more and more every day. Sufficiently stuffed with meat and delicious things, we wandered some more, past funny things made of glass and soaps and a nice little herb shop, but I still couldn't find Rare Earth. It was a pity: I wanted to show her the dinosaur egg fossils. We ducked in shops along the way to escape into air conditioning. What a pair of opportunists!
We did sufficiently enough walking that, by the time we got to the Ben and Jerry's, it was time for ice cream. I ended up with a pumpkin cheesecake thing and Terrana had a hard time deciding between a few and the Charry Garcia. Of course, as soon as we stepped outside, the ice creams started running down our limbs, so we looked for a place to sit and finish them that wasn't taken. We shared bites, slurps really, and giggled like kids. By the time I finally found a place, under the bridge with all the art, we had sucked down most of it anyway (especially mine, which I had made a smaller one so I wouldn't feel sick later). So we sat, sticky and grateful for shade, on the edge of the canal and watched the ducks swim closer and the koi swim lazily underneath. I opened a bottle of bubbles from one of my many pockets. As if on cue, a breeze rushed gently under the bridge to push the bubbles away. Terrana blew some bubbles, too, and they landed on the surface of the water, where the ducks imagined they were some new and prismatic version of some tasty breadcrumb or something. It was a sight to see a proud drake come up to a bouncing bubble on the surface of the water in the canal and shake his head in confusion when it disappeared. Though I knew there were far more worse things in the water, and at higher concentrations, I made sure we stopped blowing bubbles so close to the water; I didn't want to make the fish ill.
Even in the shade, it was humid and hot. I showed Terrana the door painted on the wall across the canal and the duck painted on the painted stairs that everyone thinks is real. We even got to see the optical illusion 3D cherub before we had to retreat to the comforting coolness of an art show. I glanced around at the local artists' fare. It was mostly crafts, paintings, and photographs. The prices were very art-showy, but it was cool in there and there was a bathroom, and Terrana didn't look upset to have seen it. I was getting better at reading her, though, because I knew it was time to say,
"How about we head back and play video games for the rest of the night?"
I stopped in Mt. Airy in the afternoon for a case of water at the drug store. Terrana marveled over how bottled water was "actually useful" over here. Really I had stopped for Starbucks, but I also needed products of my own if I were planning on not going back to the house for the rest of the week. Terrana and I had another cultural exchange about how expensive things are in the UK. I guess things are cheaper when you have a lot of people making things without considering the consequence of running out of dead dinosaurs.
There are only so many dead dinosaurs.
I am not sure we even got to play many games at all, actually. I think I did my homework and we watched some internet videos and crashed, mumbling and purring in a pile in the air-conditioned room, not caring that sleeping next to each other was just making it hotter in the bed. When I heard her breathing lengthen, I knew she was sleeping and rolled away a little.
I think you are getting to used to this already, I thought. You shouldn't.
It was sure nice to hear her breathing behind me, though. It made me sleep real sleep.
I avoided looking up Hershey until last, because I remembered also that Hershey park would have a lot of focus on our very acidic American chocolate, of which Terrana wasn't very fond. I had explained then that we actually like our chocolate that way... that it's meant to be very acidic, and that we actually even add things like spicy peppers into it and even rock salt sometimes. Considering chocolate gets spicier and acidic the closer it gets to the source (Mexico and the Central Americas), and seemingly milder the farther away (like the very creamy versions I tasted that my Uncle brought back from London), I shouldn't have been surprised about her preference, there, either. I mused over these old conversations while she and I silently tapped at our computers. I kept coming up with nothing. Everything was open only during the weekend. That would be too crowded; not only were kids out of school, but all the other things to do that are free, like the museums and national parks, were (guess what!) SHUT DOWN during the shutdown. We'd not be able to move for all the people in these parks on the weekend. I even looked at Hershey. Weekend only. I looked at corn mazes and pumpkin farms. Weekend only. I must have looked crestfallen, because Terrana let out a small "Hi..." to cheer me.
You know what? I thought, it'll be okay. We should just go have some fun. So I considered what we could do and decided that maybe Chris had some ideas. I texted him and he didn't answer and got a bad feeling, but put on a smile anyway. "Want to go on an adventure?"
"Well, why not?"
Terrana stayed in the car while I ran up to see why he didn't answer. Long story short: he wasn't ready to go anywhere, and wouldn't be for a long time. I decided, right then, to spend most of the rest of the visit without him, unless he apologized. He seemed to be having a good time without me, anyway, and I didn't want Terrana to see him like that. Ever.
Back in the car, Terrana was listening to beautiful instrumental music. I whuffed out the sour smell from the attic bedroom still lingering in my nostrils and got into the car. I took a deep breath and listened to Terrana talk about music she liked while I programmed the GPS for Frederick, where I'd gone to college. I considered showing her the campus, but I wanted to take her to the shops and Carroll Creek I thought she'd like the art there. It was hot and would be a perfect day for ice cream nearby. The sun was really glaring and angry. I tried not to remember the scene in the bedroom I just had to survey, but all throughout the car ride it kept creeping up on me and making me angry, too. By the time that I parked the car near the post office in Frederick, I had thought on the state of that bedroom a dozen times. It seemed like Terrana knew I was upset by it, because each time she started to mention soothing things like games or music, things she still wanted to show me, things she liked. She was mostly quiet when we were walking though, so I babbled over things that I liked and little shops I loved to visit and decided I wanted to take her to see the Rare Earth store. It honestly just has a sign above the shop that just says ROCKS.
I wandered with her but never found it, despite using my GPS walking map. By that time we were hungry and, since we were on Market Street anyway, I decided we couldn't very well leave Frederick without going to Brewer's Alley. It was actually ridiculously crowded, though we got seated straight away. This is what we mostly did. The service seemed rather busy. I wasn't as impressed as I was most of the other times I was there. The spicy 3-pepper was wonderful, though. Service so very slow. I get cranky when my tea is empty, dammit. Though it did allow us lots and lots of time to talk. I was starting to like talking to her more and more every day. Sufficiently stuffed with meat and delicious things, we wandered some more, past funny things made of glass and soaps and a nice little herb shop, but I still couldn't find Rare Earth. It was a pity: I wanted to show her the dinosaur egg fossils. We ducked in shops along the way to escape into air conditioning. What a pair of opportunists!
We did sufficiently enough walking that, by the time we got to the Ben and Jerry's, it was time for ice cream. I ended up with a pumpkin cheesecake thing and Terrana had a hard time deciding between a few and the Charry Garcia. Of course, as soon as we stepped outside, the ice creams started running down our limbs, so we looked for a place to sit and finish them that wasn't taken. We shared bites, slurps really, and giggled like kids. By the time I finally found a place, under the bridge with all the art, we had sucked down most of it anyway (especially mine, which I had made a smaller one so I wouldn't feel sick later). So we sat, sticky and grateful for shade, on the edge of the canal and watched the ducks swim closer and the koi swim lazily underneath. I opened a bottle of bubbles from one of my many pockets. As if on cue, a breeze rushed gently under the bridge to push the bubbles away. Terrana blew some bubbles, too, and they landed on the surface of the water, where the ducks imagined they were some new and prismatic version of some tasty breadcrumb or something. It was a sight to see a proud drake come up to a bouncing bubble on the surface of the water in the canal and shake his head in confusion when it disappeared. Though I knew there were far more worse things in the water, and at higher concentrations, I made sure we stopped blowing bubbles so close to the water; I didn't want to make the fish ill.
Even in the shade, it was humid and hot. I showed Terrana the door painted on the wall across the canal and the duck painted on the painted stairs that everyone thinks is real. We even got to see the optical illusion 3D cherub before we had to retreat to the comforting coolness of an art show. I glanced around at the local artists' fare. It was mostly crafts, paintings, and photographs. The prices were very art-showy, but it was cool in there and there was a bathroom, and Terrana didn't look upset to have seen it. I was getting better at reading her, though, because I knew it was time to say,
"How about we head back and play video games for the rest of the night?"
I stopped in Mt. Airy in the afternoon for a case of water at the drug store. Terrana marveled over how bottled water was "actually useful" over here. Really I had stopped for Starbucks, but I also needed products of my own if I were planning on not going back to the house for the rest of the week. Terrana and I had another cultural exchange about how expensive things are in the UK. I guess things are cheaper when you have a lot of people making things without considering the consequence of running out of dead dinosaurs.
There are only so many dead dinosaurs.
I am not sure we even got to play many games at all, actually. I think I did my homework and we watched some internet videos and crashed, mumbling and purring in a pile in the air-conditioned room, not caring that sleeping next to each other was just making it hotter in the bed. When I heard her breathing lengthen, I knew she was sleeping and rolled away a little.
I think you are getting to used to this already, I thought. You shouldn't.
It was sure nice to hear her breathing behind me, though. It made me sleep real sleep.
