Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Right about now, I should be coming back from my daily walk to the Starbucks up Culver Avenue and sitting in the tiny hotel room's overstuffed chair, typing on my similarly teeny phone screen. Instead, I am sitting in the living room with my laptop at home. The only consistent thing? Mason is still SOUND asleep.    

So, yesterday was a very short day, even though our plane didn't leave until 6:40 pm. That was partly because my wife is a bit anxious about planes, and, as it turns out, so it Mason a little.

We did have time to a few things, however. rachelmanija  took us out to a VERY COOL (look how I didn't say "amazing," even though it totally WAS _amazing_!) dim sum place. Mason had only ever done dim sum where you check things off on a menu, so he was very impressed with the controlled chaos of the carts. He was also happy to have recognized the word for "pork bun." The food was exceptional (and also AMAZING.) 

I was quite distracted by the giant screen TVs showing Beautiful Cooking (for jiawen : 美女廚房). Before Rachel thought to look it up on Wikipedia, I was trying to piece together what was happening. It was clearly part variety show, part cooking show, but that was all I could entirely understand. Fascinating to watch, because so much of what makes a competitive cooking show work clearly seems to be universal. There has to be some competition that's timed. Judges have to make expressive faces while tasting the food. And, there has to be some kind of drama involving live animals in need of butchering. Fascinating.

From there we went to a manga/comic bookshop where we probably would have stared sadly at all the things we wanted to buy but couldn't find room for in our luggage, except that Rachel offered to ship it back to us. Suddenly, we had most of the run of Full Metal Alchemist (for Mason, he's read it, but wanted to have it to re-read) and the next two volumes of Spider and Me for me. At this point, Shawn was frantically texting, "You're shopping? But... heading to the airport next, right?" The conversation ended in: "Okay, do what you think is best. Love you!" and I figured Shawn might actually implode at home if we didn't hustle towards the airport.

We finally ended up in a Lyft at Rachel's instance. It was fine, but I can't say it was monumentally better than any of the other forms of transportation we took around LA. Possibly superior to the bus, but that would be about it. I mean, the guy was nice? His car was clean? But, so was the taxis? He even took the exact route the taxi driver had taken us FROM the airport. Possibly it was significantly cheaper, but since it was Rachel's app, I have no idea.

Of course we got through security and to our gate, HOURS before we needed to. On the other hand, that gave me time to get started reading the book Mason loaned me, Six of Crows. 

The flight on Spirit Airline (mostly known for it's pay for everything as you go model) was fine. It was, at least, direct, unlike our flight out to LA. So, three and a half hours (and a two hour time shift) and we were home just after midnight. 

Today is a lot of laundry, retro fitting the photos from the trip, and then... I work tonight at Maplewood. I would totally blow it off, but we now need to pay for this trip AND, thanks to Shawn's illness, I think I've already missed four out of the six days I work this month.

C'est la vie. It's only a four hour shift. I can survive.

One of the very few planned events of this week was a tour of the School of Science and Engineering at UCLA.

We got up early because I had no real idea how long it would take by metro and bus. Google map said twenty minutes, but in a strange to me town, I don't trust myself to execute transfers flawlessly, etc.

I'm also anxious anytime we have to be at a place at a time. Knowing I kind of just needed to feel "underway," we left the hotel and klled a little time at a neighborhood Mexican deli. I'd stopped there once before to grab empanada for breakfast. There was what looked like a full restaurant next door and I really wanted eggs. Mason thought the adjacent restaurant looked too fancy for his tastes, but he spotted a menu on the wall of the deli side that had things like breakfast burritos. So I ordered that a he got nuetla and banana pancakes. Mason later said, "That might have been the best breakfast I have ever had." Apparently, we have simple tastes and they involve chocolate and hazelnuts.

The trip, in fact, took twenty minutes. Despite the fact that LA buses are like the ones in St. Paul, in that there is no real indication of what stop you're approaching. You're just expected to recognize your destination. Luckily, UCLA plaza was the terminal destination of our first bus. On the way home, I was reduced to watching the 'blue dot" on Google maps GPS as it made it's way along the route. I would complain, but as I said, the busses are really no better at home.

One way our MTU is better is that our Go card covers all metro transit. You can beep the same card on train or bus. In LA, they are separate fares. Luckily, Mason had two dollars cash so we didn't have to get off the bus and figure out how to purchase a bus pass. We did end up 25 cents short on the fare home, but the bus driver let us get on anyway.

Not that having to get a bus pass would have necessarily mattered to our timing. We arrived at UCLA over an hour early. We argued a little about what to do with the extra time, but we share an anxiousness about appointments so we hung out at the science school's food court area.

The tour itself was a mixed bag. Our guide was a student going into her second year who seemed to have drunk the Kool-Aid (considering she was in a sorority and enthused about 'the Greek life,' maybe literally) that science was something to be awkward and ashamed of. Which... is NOT what you expect when getting a tour that starts in a part of campus called the Court of the Sciences, or where one of our first stop was the very room the precursor to the Internet, ARPA Net, was born. But, our tour guide kept saying, "It'll be hard, but...sure you can..." to a lot of the questions like, "Can I also minor in music?" or whatever. It was only Mason, me, and one other family, so at one point I broke. She was saying something like you can take your general electives in the summer, most people do, "except me, I decided to take physics instead of something fun," and I said "Physics is fun, isn't it? I think you mean fun, but rigorous." Oh yeah, ha ha. I gave her another squint and said, "You do know we're ALL nerds here, right?" And then she talked about films that were shot on campus and literally all of our eyes glazed over because none of us has seen "Legally Blonde" or have any interest in the Cohen Brothers or other stars name we didn't recognize.

The guide was kind of a poor match, but me and the other mom got excited about the binary code on the floor and Mason and the daughter pressed their faces to the glass to see the makers space. So, the nerds found a way to be excited.



Afterwards we wandered a bit, but then made our way home. Rachel picked us up and we got a accidental driving tour of all the things you're supposed to care about. We saw the Hollywood sign on the hill, drove down Sunset Boulevard, saw Beverly Hills and Hollywood Boulevard with the stars in the sidewalk. We also fought someone for a parking space (and lost) but had a lovely dinner at a Korean place and dessert in Thaitown. We ended the night hanging at Rachel's place, talking shop.

Another really great day. Today we drive up the coast in search of tide pools!
 

 All my classes are finished, the evaluations filled out and turned into to the main office. All that is left for me to do is unpack the various bags I used to haul things to and from the Loft.

Mason has been delivered to the Science Museum for his work. This week, he's doing another camp as an assistant counselor. He confessed to me over coffee this morning that he's kind of excited to be a helper at this one, because it's LEGO camp. It's kind of fun that he's basically getting to participate in camps that we would have loved to have been able to send him to as a kid, if we could have signed-up in time (I think these always fill up quickly) and/or had the money.  

He's such a good kid that he told me that he'd signed up for the 8:30 am shift because he wanted to have time in the afternoon for house projects (like those damn steps we still need to fix) and being around for mom.He HATES getting up early in the summer. So, this was a sincerely lovely gesture.

Shawn is trying a few hours back at work. She was looking exhausted already when I dropped her off, so we joked that she would go in long enough to drop off a puzzle to the break room and I'd swing back after having delivered Mason and she could call it good enough. It's the migraines rather than the blood clot that seem to be dogging her. She's on DAY THREE of a cluster headache that she can't shake and you can just see the wear on her face. But so, I agreed to head back to fetch her around 10:30 am. I have to say, I deeply approve. No point in pushing it. Nothing is so important at work to compromise recovery.

But, so it feels weird to have the mornings and the house back to myself. I'm sitting right now, but I can see all the laundry that piled up in the meantime and the dishes that won't do themselves. I don't even want to talk about how long the grass has grown or how weed-choked the gardens are.

Even so, this feels good.

It's a return to a kind of normal, and I'm so very grateful to be on this side off all that medical nonsense. 

Mason and I have even started to plan his birthday trip.

He decided to ask for "a pony." By which I mean, he asked for something he's always wanted but never assumed was practical or affordable. He wants a trip out to Los Angeles, of all places, so that he can watch a live game of his e-sport (Overwatch.) I have never had any desire to see LA, but now that I have several guide books in hand, I can see how this could be quite a bit of fun. We're planning to head out the Friday after next (15th or something like that) and return mid-week. He's booked tickets to see the Overwatch League and I made us a School of Engineering tour at UCLA (we would have done the general tour, but the guided ones were all filled. Looks like there is an easy-to-follow self-guided tour of campus that we can also do ourselves, so we won't miss out on too much.) The only thing that's left to do is book the actual plane tickets and figure out a hotel, which I will do today--as Mason's godparents have generously offered to pay for his ticket as their second birthday present to him--they also bought him an air conditioner for his room, which we plan to install tonight. (Should have probably done it last night, given how steamy it got, but we thought of it kind of late in the evening.)

So, if any of my readers here know anything they want to impart about places to go and things to see in LA and surrounds, please let me know.

I'm a little worried about leaving Shawn on her own so soon, but there really should be no issues. She's eating nearly entirely normally now, and there's not a LOT to be done about the blood clot other than to continue to take medication.

In a couple of weeks, all three of us should be over this overwhelming sense of exhaustion, which I'm sure is partly just a flood of relief, you know? 

Right, speaking of exhaustion, I'd better hop to that housework.

 I didn't write much while we were at Bearskin for reasons of poor internet.  The Lodge at Bearskin _has_ wifi, but they encourage you to only be on briefly as it does not have a huge amount of bandwidth and, even if it did, you're up on the Gunflint Trail, for gods sake, why are you on-line!!??

Instead, we spent many days doing this: 



We did go on a couple of new-to-us hikes, while up at Bearskin, however. One day, Mason and I decided to drive to the end of one of the roads and hike up to Ruby Lake.  From where we parked it was only about a mile to the lake, so that was just about the perfect distance for our "indoorsy" family. There was a rowboat there with a sign that suggested we could take it out for a fee, but there was no place to pay and no oars. Possibly, we were supposed to get such at some lodge or other? Our Bearskin front desk person had made it sound like if we brought money along, getting the row boat out would be self-evident.  Alas, no. But, we enjoyed the scenery at any rate.



You can see what kind of weather we've been having from both these shots, which is to say: SUNNY.  This was possibly the most ideal weather we have ever had up at Bearskin (this is our fourth year going to Cabin 1.)  

The second hike that we did involved a LOOOOOOONG drive to the end of the Gunflint Trail.  The drive itself was both beautiful and... unexpected. We were up early-ish, around 8 or 9 am, and the roads were packed with tourists.  I like to meander on the Gunflint Trail, not going more than 50 and always obeying signs that suggest that hairpin turns should be taken at 25 mph, etc., so that meant that several times I had to pull over into a cutout to let faster traffic get around me.  

Plus, we drove through a huge swath of countryside that had been devastated by the 2007 Ham Lake Fire. Shawn always has a very visceral reaction to burned landscape, even when it has had years of regrowth. She did not like the sections of Yellowstone that had been burned, either. I don't have the same reaction, but I can understand it. The forrest looks 'wrong.' 

We stopped at the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center and did a bit of hiking on their "trails." I put trails in quotes because honestly? Some of them looked like we had taken off down deer trails until we hit signage that marked the names of the various trails.  A couple of the trails took us to nice vista where you can see how the fire affected the area.



Mason is in his hoodie because the weather was also very mild. Today, here in Grand Rapids, I overheard one of the servers at our hotel say that the high was going to be 67 F / 19 C.

After six full days at Bearskin, we packed up and headed off for the second leg of our grand summer vacation: the slow meander home/north woods road trip.  

Last year, after our monumental road trip to Yellowstone National Park and back again, my family discovered that we LOVE road trips. Plus, leaving Bearskin is really hard, so for the last few years we've always extended our vacation with mini trips to somewhere vaguely civilized, but new to us.  A few years ago, we tried out Thunder Bay (which led to the experience of being several hundred miles into the trip and Shawn realizing we forgot our passports.)  The last time we stayed a few extra days in Duluth.  This time, we are exploring some classic Minnesota spots like Ely and Bemidji, with a special trip to visit the headwaters of the Mississippi.  Because Shawn is from Grand Rapids, MN, we are staying here a few days to check out some of her old haunts and to use this hotel as a launching off point for other adventures.

Yesterday we drove from Bearskin back down the Gunflint trail to Grand Marais and Highway 61.  From 61, we veered back north for Highway 1 and Ely.  Highway 1 should have been idyllic, but there was a LOT of construction and somewhere just before Ely we hit our first batch of bad weather since leaving for Bearskin.  Plus, there always seems to have to be "that one town" where we all arrive hangry and grouchy. This trip it was Ely. I was made especially mad by the fact that my family was starving and so wanted to JUST STOP AT A SUBWAY.  I wanted a nice sit-down meal at a cute place in Ely.  My family won out, because even I was too famished to really enjoy driving around trying to guess which place would be good to stop at.  And, of course, literally the moment we stepped into the Subway an ENTIRE TROOP OF BOY SCOUTS got in line in front of me. I kid you not, and I could have screamed.  But, food helped and soon enough we were stopping at Ely's International Wolf Center for a close-up at the Ambassador wolves.
 
The wolves were nice and, for once, Shawn enjoyed a museum.  Shawn isn't exactly a museum connoisseur, but she is the State Archivist of Minnesota and, thus, has a few standards. Let me tell you, the museum at Chik-Wauk did NOT meet them.  The wolf center? Yes. Though we all agreed that the entry fee ($13 a person) was a little steep considering what you got out of it. Though we did not stay for any of the demonstrations, which might have made it worthwhile.

The wolves were hanging out near the observation window, though, to snooze out of the rain. The white wolf, Greyson, got up and shifted to a new position and I got this picture of a very sleepy doggo.



It was funny because as Mason and I were returning the canoe to Bearskin Lodge, someone's husky came bounding around the corner at speeds and my honest first reaction was to grab Mason's arm because I thought we were being rushed by a wolf. Though it only took a second to sense the happy-puppy vibe off the husky AND to notice that it wore a harness.  But, yeah, for a brief moment I thought, "HOLY SH*T, WOLF" and, yeah, looking at this fellow, you can see the resemblance.

The rain stopped by the time we were leaving the wolf center and so we made our way down to Grand Rapids with only a few roadside attraction stops. This is the other thing about my family. We are all about the roadside attractions. Last year, our go-to phrase was "might be worth a detour!" and we still live by that. (That, and "the destination *is* the journey.") So, we stopped to see the world's largest floating loon in Virginia, MN as well as the "Iron Man" (but not Tony Stark) statue in Chisholm, MN.





After that we collapsed in our hotel room. 

This morning we got up moderately early and attempted to drive the "Edge of the Wilderness" Scenic Byway (aka Highway 38). But, we discovered less than halfway up the byway that it was CLOSED. It's very rare that the entire highway is closed, but this was both lanes blocked, giant signs reading DETOUR, ROAD CLOSED.  Undeterred, my family followed the detour through Leech Lake Indian Reservation and reconnected with the scenic byway in Marcell, MN.

Our favorite was a stop to hike the Trout Lake and Joyce Estate site. There were nicely maintained (wide and "easy," aka no steep grades) trails that took us into the woods. If we had known we were going to hit the closed highway, we might have lingered longer here and explored more. On the other hand, my family is rarely up for hikes of more than a mile or two roundtrip, so we probably did just enough.  



We did eventually get reconnected with Highway 35 and we went to the trail's end at Effie, MN.  Effie apparently sports Minnesota's largest open air rodeo and a metal sculpture of a mosquito, jokingly known as Minnesota's state bird.  Mason really wanted to pose by the mosquito giving it the finger (mosquitos consider our son an all-you-can-eat buffet and always have, when he was little we some times called him 'Skeet Rounds, because he was covered from head to toe in mosquito bites), but Shawn managed to keep him from doing it.



We are still on the road for two more full days. Tomorrow, we head to Bemidji where we'll spend a night. Then, it's off to the headwaters and home.  If the wifi is good in Bemidji, I will try to do another write-up.

Adventure!

 We dropped Mason off at the airport just a little over an hour ago.  He's on his way to compete in the KidWind National Competition.  (https://www.kidwind.org) with his team.  A lot of my friends contributed to the team's fundraiser, so A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE. YOU MADE THIS POSSIBLE!! 

If you want to read more about what is actually happening at the National competition: https://www.kidwindchallenge.org/p/17-about-nationals



Mason will be back on Friday, and, until then, Shawn and I have the place to ourselves.  I suspect we'll get up to all sorts of mischief, including maybe going hog wild and cleaning the house. Books will be read with abandon!  We might even have DORITOS AND CHEESE FOR DINNER.

Crazy.

Yesterday, it was sunny, so I spent much of the day outside. I'm really proud of how my faux Japanese garden is looking this year, and I'm working very slowly on getting other parts of the yard in decent shape. (I should really take some pictures before the ENORMOUS bleeding heart stops blooming).  I don't think we'll ever be a showcase garden, but it would be nice if I could look out and feel happy instead of thinking, "OMG what a mess." I definitely think we're well on our way to that.  Especially since several bulbs showed up for stuff I don't remember ordering. I planted them in a couple of different places--a few near the little free library (which is my one remaining "problem" area) and a bunch in the front of the Japanese garden.  I think they're going to be irises...?  We'll have to see what blooms next year, if the squirrels don't eat them all and/or replant them for me.

I got a couple of letters from my international pen friends yesterday.  I love all my pen friends, but I have a couple that I adore. My friend in Canada is AWESOME. Of course, I didn't get her from IPF.  She's actually someone I know from Bleach fandom who volunteered last time I put out a request for pen pals. Her letters always make me happy.

The other letter came from an IPF friend from the Netherlands. I like this particular woman because in her very first letter back to me she talked about her daughter and her daughter's partner (female.) This meant that I felt free to be my honest/authentic self, which is something that I've been sloooooowly revealing to my other IPFers.  I mean I had that one German lady quit me because I told her I wasn't Christian.  Can you imagine if I'd said that I was a big ol' lesbian?  Probably we could have heard her head exploding from across the ocean, eh? But, my Netherlander is great. She got me following the recent election there--another country that held tight against the rise of fascism.  She always closes her letters with "Ah! That Trump of yours!" in various iterations.    

A sign of our times.