Be A Kid! My Day With Ginger Snap

Last week I talked about adulting and how it sucks.  This weekend I decided to be a kid again.  Ginger Snap turned nine earlier this week and his mom and dad, Second Daughter and Second Son graciously agreed that I could kidnap him on Saturday for one of our adventures about Chicago.  I wish I had lived in a city with this much to offer when my children were young.  Movies and books became our adventures.  Which was in hindsight not bad at all. 

But Ginger Snap and I had Chicago at our feet and for a few hours decided I that money would not be an issue.  When I'm in this mood it's usually a great time to be near me because I plan events at places I've never been or can't afford to go to often.  It started for us, as it usually does with a train ride to downtown from our neighborhood.  Not being in the suburbs it doesn't take very long but Ginger Snap still loves the train rides.  And to get to Navy Pier we needed a train and a bus.  But that just means more chatting time with Ginger Snap.  I thanked him for wanting to hang out with me and he looked at me like a thirty-year-old and said, "Grandma, for you I will ALWAYS want to come."  If only that were true.  But there will come a time very soon now where my loving little Ginger Snap will want to spend more time with his friends, girlfriends, and then partner than grandma.  You know what they say, " A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life."  I assume that's double for grandmas.  But I'll take him at his word until adulting time comes for him too. 

Now if you aren't from Chicago, look up Navy Pier on google so you can see how large it is.  It's like two malls full of shops and food are at either end, with an amusement park stuck in the middle so our enormous Ferris Wheel is seen predominantly from sea or shore.  It stands 196' (50' taller than the old one First Daughter and I rode) and can withstand winds of 115 mph.  Modeled after the one in Hong Kong it has 42 gondolas.  Unfortunately, they just finished the new wheel and will be testing it all next month before a May opening.  I may have to make Di and Dave ride it when they come for Mother's Day.  But never fear Ginger Snap and I went to Amazing Chicago Maze, and the Children's Museum instead.  They were playing Superman v Batman at the IMAX but his dad is taking him to that so we passed.  We attacked the children's museum, climbing all the rigging like a pirate and burying him in the dinosaur digging room.  The other kids helped and then dug him up...the rare Ginger Snap fossil.  Of course, we bulked up on popcorn and ice cream before attempting the maze.  Neither of us had been before.  And we both loved the mirror maze part.  And actually got lost for a while with all the flashing laser lighting and twinkle lights.  It was like a disco on crack.  I can't remember the style of instrumental music that assaulted us during our time in the maze but I do remember that the more lost we became the more annoying it was.  So I blocked it out in favor of trying to find the secret mirrored door.  There were a lot of parents and kids lost.  So when we found it, we yelled out and waved hoping our reflections would help others lost in this hideous dungeon.  The rest of the maze was twisting halls and darkened dead ends.  The motion sickness tunnel was awesome.  Although if you didn't keep moving you felt as though you would fall off the narrow metal bridge into nothingness.  Once we found the exit we went back and did some more.  We didn't want to leave yet.  And we even found time to build a couple of bears and the Build a Bear Workshop.  Ginger Snap built an all black Darth Vader Bear, (that's my grandson!) and I built a Minion Bob Darth Vader.  Who looks just like me since I have a brown and green eye too.  The staff loved the idea and I couldn't understand why no one had thought of it before.  One millennial was eyeing it fondly and when I called him on it, he said he did want it.  LOL.  Darth Bob was the star of the moment.  The way home, six hours later, was a bus and two trains so Ginger Snap could go underground on a train.  I showed him where I worked and we hopped the blue line to our familiar brown line and home.  I was so excited to have been able to show him such a fun day, and I had so much fun being a kid with him.  We both want to bring his whole family to the maze as soon as Sammy Bo Baggins is old enough. 

Kind of makes today's grocery shopping and writing seem dull by comparison. 

Cheers,

Adulting Sucks.

Happy Spring!  It's the first day of spring and it's a beautiful day here in Chicago.  The clouds are moving, hopefully away from us, and the blue sky should be inviting.  But for me, it still feels like a chore to get out of bed and get to the store.  I'm feeling better so I have to venture forth and get laundry done.  But I don't want to do anything except sit here and either game and watch shows or write.  I hate it when I have to force myself to do chores like I'm still a kid inside and only want to do what I want to do. 

This cough really won't go away.  Day eight.  But I'm not sick enough to go to a doctor or miss work.  I did rest all day yesterday.  I even took a nap.  Slept for five hours and felt a lot better when I woke up.  Sometimes I think all I really need to kick this is a few days to rest.  But I can usually only get one.

Adulting is hard.  I hate it most days.  But I'm really good at it.  I find ways to pay bills and keep my head above water in an economy that is so scary that any minute I could be without all the things I've worked so hard to achieve.  And, like you, I'd like my days off to be days where I might just be able to enjoy life.  Instead of having them be full of things I have to do to prepare for more work and responsibilities, and adulting.   I suppose I could try to do some adulting after work.  But I'm so tired at night after work that I can't face doing more adulting after all day of adulting. 

And then there are all the things I should do.  Like diet and exercise.  More adulting.  I'd rather just play or quietly color.  Reading a book and escaping into another world seems like the best use of my day.  But that stupid adulting keeps telling me I have dishes to wash.

I think the hardest thing about my job is that when I'm done cleaning their house the last thing I want to do when I get home is clean my own.  So mine waits until I can't stand it anymore, and then I clean it.  Funny thing about that is that it's so small it takes me about an hour to clean it.  So when I tell you that I hate adulting and I'm lazy, it's not a lie.  I think I need someone to do my laundry and dishes and grocery shopping for me.  LOL  Then I can just write and play all day on my weekends.  That would be the best.  So maybe to appease the child in me I need to do more adulting on the scheduled adult days and allow myself to be a child on my days off.  What a great idea.  I wonder who will be stronger after work....my inner child or my inner adult?

More coffee for my inner adult while my inner child thinks about giving up the computer....

Cheers 

Too Sick To Write

Writing has started!  I'm on chapter three of the final draft of my fantasy novel!  I'm so excited that last weekend I was able to write.  My grand plans for continuing the momentum this weekend have been derailed as I have a sinus infection of some kind. It hit me Friday afternoon.  Yesterday was the worst and I hope with a lot of rest today that tomorrow I'll be at work again, sniffing and coughing but at least in an upright position with no more fever.  I always catch a really good spring cold, or bronchitis.  And being a nanny I catch everything the little darlings bring home from school or the parents and I bring in from the dirty city.  Everyone thinks I catch everything because I don't eat right or take care of myself but it's more than that.  I have no adenoids.  They were removed when I was two with an emergency tonsillectomy.  And your adenoids are the first defenses for your immune system.   At least, that's what my doctor told me.  So I do try to eat well, and take care of myself, but it never surprises me when I come down with the same thing as the kids or parents EVERY TIME. 

See I'm so sick I can't focus on anything but how I feel so I'm going to go back to bed and get better, and continue watching House of Cards, now that I've burned through all the Gotham episodes I can find. 

Cheers

I NEED to Write

So here I am with a perfect Sunday morning, and I'm alone.  And I mean perfect.  I was starting to wake up, when I received a text from Mr. Hopeful.  What a wonderful way to wake up.  We chatted while I got out of bed, and made coffee and put bacon in the oven.  We're still chatting as I write and drink my perfect cup of coffee with the best peppered, applewood smoked, thick cut bacon I've had in a long time.  I feel very honored he is spending this time with me.  He knows my Sunday mornings are my time to write and spoil myself with whatever special treat I happen to have around.  It's where I hope the blog writing will continue to novel or playwriting, not on line games, or Pinterest or other time wasters.  But I'm a writer and so easily distracted. 

But maybe today it will.  I wrote yesterday for the first time in many months.  And I finished what I hope to be the last draft of the first chapter of my fantasy novel.  And when I say it like that it makes me want to edit.  So, since I have to still get errands done and hit the 4pm movie of Lawrence of Arabia in 70 mm at the Music Box theater, I think I'm going to write.  Thanks, Mr. H.

Cheers.