lobsterchick's Diaryland Diary
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Chicago: Day One
Believe me, you will thank me for spreading this out over several entries. On with the show.
First of all, airplane travel was a big fucking disappointment. Apparently, I knew exactly what to expect, and there was no mystery. I expected to be nervous or excited or scared, but I was just... traveling. How boring.
But the plane got me to Chicago in one piece, so I can't complain. It is also only one of the myriad forms of transportation that I took for the first time on the trip. For those of you who don't know, St. Louis is not a public transportation city. Oh, sure, there is the MetroLink, but what with urban sprawl and all, there is no station anywhere near me, so it's not like I'd ever take it. That's a huge difference between St. Louis and Chicago: I walked more in four days than I have in my entire life; we took the bus, the El, the subway, or a cab everywhere, and cabs were only when it was so late we were all crippled with exhaustion. If you ever visit St. Louis and don't either drive here or rent a car, you're screwed. Because the motto in St. Louis is "Park within a block or don't go." That's actually on our city seal.
So we walked everywhere. And walked. And walked. Every night when we went back to the hotel, we swapped foot massages, with me imploring the kids to "TWIST THE PINKY" because there was apparently not enough room in my shoes for all of my toes. I shouldn't bitch, because Miranda has CP, and the kid was quite the trooper during our urban hikes.
The first touristy thing we did was eat at Bubba Gump's Shrimp, where I scored pretty high on the children's menu's Forrest Gump trivia quiz. Then it was on to Shedd Aquarium,
where I had an epiphany to beat all epiphanies. Now, I love animals; in fact, I have a dog and a hamster, and I have never ever harbored violent feelings toward either of them. But when we got into the aquarium, and I saw all of those fish, I was overcome with a near-irresistible urge to kill them all. I HATE FISH. Not in the food way, though it's not my favorite thing to eat, but in the way some people recoil at the thought of rats or spiders. This is something that's never come to light before, and trust me when I say I was just as shocked as anyone else. Who hates fish? Me, that's who. I felt so terrible, making this confession, and I know that everyone with me was thinking "Greeeat. Next we're going to find out she hates skyscrapers, boat rides, shopping, and ferris wheels." But I don't, so we were cool.
It was somewhere in here that my brother-in-law made a filthy joke. You have to email me if you want to know the joke.
To make matters worse on the fish-hating front, Mr. Weird bought me this keychain:
I added the crosshairs myself.
Ya gotta love the kid, though, because what other child would go to a gift shop in a museum and buy stuff for other people? Lest you think he is an angel, however, remember that I call him "Mr. Weird" and not "Mr. Sweet." Keep that in mind.
He brought me the keychain while Mamatoo and I were saving the family seats for the dolphin show. There was a family behind us comprised of the grandmother, who was a member of the aquarium, her daughter, and approximately seventy-eight million children. It is my experience that it is the members of any given attraction who mostly flagrantly disregard the rules, and these folks were no exception. Despite the sign outside the dolphin theater discouraging patrons from bringing in food or drink (for the safety of the animals, no less--you'd think a member would care), they had a regular picnic going on behind us, complete with kicking the back of the person in front of them. There were no actual seats, just a curved set of stone bleachers, so I got the full benefit of this kid's Buster Browns right in my lumbar. I'm a chicken shit, so I didn't say anything, but when the kid pulled the same trick on Mamatoo, my sister turned around and said, "Ex-ka-yooz me!" Her paying for the trip isn't the only reason I love her.
Then, the grandmother gets up and moves down three rows in front of us, apparently to take a picture of the whole family. Instead of asking me to move aside, which, given my attitude re: the kid kicking me, was a 50/50 shot at best, she just bitched really loudly about how she couldn't "GET EVERYONE IN THE PICTURE." I just sat there beatifically smiling and appearing to enjoy the scenery.
Then, onto the dolphin show. The crappy sound system, combined with a little kid wondering, right in my ear, if Patrick saw what the dolphins had just done, did he, did he, Huh? Huh? put me in an even better frame of mind. Also, don't dolphins get enough publicity? Yeah, they're very smart. Congratulations, dolphins, quit being spotlight hogs.
Dinner was at the Rainforest Cafe, which was the kids' favorite restaurant the whole trip. Give them a fake thunderstorm every twenty minutes, and they're happy. Gotta love that.
6:49 PM - 26 July 2003
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