lydamorehouse: (Default)
Ugh, I have not had a chance to really sit down and finish the story of our trip to Chicago. It was amazing, honestly. The only other thing we did before leaving was go to the Shedd Aquarium.

a giant crab looking out of the aquarium at the camera.

This lovely crab is not the star of the story that i'm about to tell, but I didn't actually think to take pictures of the murder in progress that we observed in the tank two doors down, as it were. There was a crab that Mason and I watched that had cornered--pincered, really--a sea urchin and was greedily munching on its tank mate. We initially thought, "Oh, maybe that's crab food?" but then Mason noticed a picture of that exact urchin on the list of tank inhabitants and we were like, "Oh. Oh MY." Mason, who, when he was four of five would tell you that he wanted to grow up to be a marine biologist, was enraptured. I mean, I was, too? We must have stood by that tank watching the carnage for a good two or three minutes and Mason was like, "Okay, I want to come back to this, so let's look at other stuff and circle back around."

When we came back, the urchin had made a break for it (somehow!) and the crab was desperately trying to fish it out of the crevasse it had snuck into.

Such drama!

Also, Mason could NOT have been more excited to see an isopod and a ratfish, both of which are denizens of the very deepest, darkest parts of the ocean. A place Mason has longed to visit since he was a toddler. Other kids dream of the moon; Mason, the deep ocean.

Isopods, I should tell you, look like deep-sea pillbugs (or sowbug or rollypolly.) We sort of attracted a lot of "??" attention when Mason was like, "OMG, ima! An isopod!" Literally, everyone in the throng around us was like, "What's so damn exciting about a sea bug?" If anyone had asked that out loud, however, I'm SURE Mason would have been happy to tell them.

The drive back was uneventful. I managed to take a "wrong" turn leaving Chicago, so we ended up heading home via Milwaukee, but that wasn't the end of the world. Even as I veered off, I thought, "Eh, 90 / 94 both lead where I'm going, what's the difference?" And, sure enough, it wasn't much. We saw some slightly different scenery, is all.

Mason was back to school Monday and I worked at White Bear Lake from 10 to 2, which was only exciting because when I went to take the recycling out--Buttercup got out. Most of the time, this is no big deal. I nab him and toss him back inside.

This time, as one other time that I remember, Buttercup FREAKED OUT. He hissed at me when I approached him and growl/whined like I might hurt him. When I picked him up he got so scared that he basically ran over my face using his claws to get away from me. The cuts were not deep, but foreheads BLEED like a m-fer and I literally had to change my shirt before work because of the fountains of blood pouring off my face.

The reason I think Buttercup was having some kind of weird post-traumatic stress (he was stray before he came to us) is because when I opened the door, he ran in ahead of me like he was so, so very glad to be home away from that scary person trying to hurt him. He wound around my legs when I came in as though to say, "Ima, there was some scary sh*t out there, I barely escaped with my life, I love you so, so much!" My only other thought is that the other time he hissed at me like this and freaked out until I opened the door for him was another time when he got out and I kind of corned him between me and a wall. This time, it was me and a fence. Makes me think something really nasty must have happened to him that's lodged in his subconscious.

Poor baby.

I'm also deeply angry that, despite all the blood, I barely look injured. If you look closely (or I point to them) you can see the various scabs, but damn it. I was mauled in the FACE! I wanted to tell people some wild lie about how I was attacked by a bobcat!! My mutant healing factor has cursed me again. I never black eyes, either, damn it.

And now, three days later, everything just itches... and I can't scratch because they're all still so new and surface.

Sigh.

Anyway, I don't have much to report in terms of reading. I'm currently reading a manga called Hinamatsuri by Ohtake Masao, about a magical girl who falls (like literally, out of the sky) into the life of a low-level yakuza thug. She's from an alternate dimension/other world where telekinesis is a thing and so she's got superpowers that come in handy from time to time, but she's also like 11? So, the yakuza guy kind of becomes a trying-to-be-tough/secretly-softy foster father for her. I'm on chapter 40 or about 83 and I'm not sure I'm going to finish it? I don't hate it--in fact there have been a lot of fairly touching scenes so far and some humor that I could appreciate, but this kind of light touch is always a tough sell for me. I love humor in manga, but I tend to really prefer humor as a side note to more serious material? 

Anyway, a friend of mine also let me know that there is a second season of "Morose Mononokean" available on Crunchyroll, so I've been watching that. It's yet another story of a high schooler who can see yokai (this is apparently a MAJOR epidemic among high schoolers in Japan,) but I really have been digging the world-building around the yokai and the Mononokean (a kind of living, temple/tea house that moves through space, and, of course, currently occupies the folded space inside the high school.)  And the relationship between the master of the Monokean (Abeno) and the aforementioned high schooler. 

So, that's me ATM. I am working again tomorrow, from 9 to 1 at Shoreview.  But, we now have to pay for the trip to Chicago, so that's how it goes.

In other news, it's April 10th and it's snowing BUCKETS outside.
lydamorehouse: (Default)
 Our trip to Chi-Town was successful.  Mason got to see "Sue," as well as fall deeply in love with the "Evolving World" exhibit in the Natural History Museum.  I had to laugh.  Whereas I was very much conscious of the fact that we only had an hour until we were going to meet up with Susan and Zoe (the most adorable baby in the world), Mason just wanted to watch the prehistoric ocean video over and over.  It was fairly awesome.  I was completely animated, but it looked real.  It showed various prehistoric arthropods and triobites and other weird creatures -- some of which, we learned from a volunteer, they couldn't animate eating because they still hadn't discovered where the mouth of the animal was located.  I shot some video of the video, so that Mason would always have a little taste of that exhibit.  Anyway, Mason was much less impressed with the hall of the dinosaurs (which I have fond memories of tearing through with Maureen McHugh's husband, Bob, at the Chicago Worldcon.  I really wanted Mason to see the underground exhibit that Bob and I loved best, but, alas there was no time.  Next year.)  

My favorite part of the trip happened while we were waiting for Susan and Zoe to find us.  Right on the lawn between the Field Museum and the Shedd, a hawk came swooping down and landed in the grass -- which is quite unusual for them.  I thought it looked like it might have captured something like a songbird, so Mason and I crept closer to investigate.  It took off with a pigeon in its claws and dragged it into the underbrush.  Then all of a sudden -- whoosh!!! -- out flies the pigeon in one last daring attempt at an escape!!  Mason and I are watching this drama with our mouths open.  I'm shouting, "Go!  Pigeon!"  But, the hawk won the day.  She nabbed that pigeon right out of the air and slammed it into the ground again.  This time opting for cover right away.  A couple of other women passing by watched with a lot less enthusiasm.  I think they thought we were pretty insane to be so enraptured with this gruemsome display of the natural food chain in action.  Anyway, with the excitement over, Mason and I noticed Susan coming, and we all exchanged hellos and greetings and oohing over the baby.  Then as we were heading in the stroller-friendly entrance to the Shedd, who should hop up out of the bushes but the well-fed and satisfied hawk!  It sat there digesting for some time.  I got a great photo of it, which I hope to put up here sometime soon.

The jaded Chicagoians mostly ignored the hawk.  I mean, here was this amazing and magestic wild animal sitting less than a foot from the entrance to the Aquarium and most people just walked by it, as if were a common sight.  If I hadn't been "oohing" and "ahhing" and shouting my excitment to Susan, Zoe, and Mason, I think most people wouldn't even have stopped.  Which seems wierd to me, since they were all headed in to "view" animals.   The experience reminded me of what Mrs. R. said about Mason at our parent/teacher conference.  She seemed genuinely impressed at how engaged he is in his environment.  At the time, I mentally chalked it up to our lack of TV obsession, but I think that it's all down to grandma and grandpa Morehouse in the end.  My dad was notorious for slowing the car to a crawl the moment we spotted an egeret in the marsh between the north and south side of LaCrosse, my hometown.  My mother could identify most species of wildflowers, even when we were passing clumps of them at highway speed.  My folks would have been just like me -- shouting "Holy cow!  Would you look at that hawk?!!!"  

The Shedd was amazing as usual, though as Susan said at one point, "And now we're viewing the exhibit: Sea of Humanity!"  There were a LOT of people there -- of course it was a Friday, so I should have figured, but it made the experience a lot less personal than say the one we'd just had with the hawk.  Mason's favorite part was seeing the baby hammerhead (shovelnose?) sharks, and the blue monitor lizards in the new lizard exhibit.  Again, most people just took a look to see if they could spot the animal and then moved one like a scavenger hunt, while Mason sat and watched those blue monitor lizards for ten or fifteen minutes.  They were very active and... uh, playful.  They laid on each other, as, I told Mason, ima and mama do.  

It was a good time, and I'm very glad to have met little Zoe and had a chance to hang out with Susan, even though it was classic parent with children chat -- a few minutes of "oh, yeah, the baby" and "hey, Mason, don't get lost!"   

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