Forty Pounds of Wet Corn: Colorado day eight

Well. I had been so excited to be caught up, and then everything got derailed the next day. Par for the course, I suppose. Alright, let's get to piecing together the next day, June 6th. 

This was our second "tool around the Springs" day. I had opted for two pretty solid days of easy, because our next day, tomorrow in the past, was going to be a whole fucking metric assload of driving, so I wanted my dad and Caryn to feel fairly rested. 

Which went to shit, because the day derailed. 

The morning was pretty good. Our first stop was Garden of the Gods, and as always, I am unsure of how to proceed with utilizing colonized names that are easily recalled by people, or going back to using indigenous names? Why does something about the latter make me feel like I'm treading on something sacred that isn't my place? I feel like we should be moving back to indigenous names for things, but I also don't want to be disrespectful. I've been reading things for about an hour now, and it appears that my gut is right, and moving toward giving back indigenous names from the things we stole them from is the right move. My new thorn is that I can only find an Arapaho name for GoG...the one with the 3 in it I mentioned in my previous entry...but are the Arapaho the Ute in the way that the Onondaga are the Iriquois? I really don't know. And now I don't know how to proceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. I DID read a piece from a local Colorado newspaper from 2022 that said there is a movement to stop referring to it as Pike's Peak and to move it back to being called Tava-kaavi, or just Tava. And yay! Two years later and I'm not seeing that that's happened, but as Derek lives to remind me, things take time. 

Back to business. Our first stop was....the red stones park that has always been my favorite place in the city. I sent a video to Rhyann explaining to them how I used to bring whatever book I was currently reading to my favorite section of the park, climb up, and read for a few hours. What I DIDN'T tell them was that I also had a favorite place to hike up to at night, and just...lay there listening to all of the nightttime critters. Bats would swoop around, I would hear foxes bark, coyotes call, I had a mouse run over my legs once and scare the ever loving shit out of me...I didn't do that one as often, because I was afraid fo getting busted by the rangers that circled like vultures once the sun went down, but I did it once a month or so. At least 6 times a year. 

On the way there, I had to take a phoo of the street that Alex, Derek, and I used to live on. Derek only lived with us for a few months before we bought a house, but he lived there, too, so it counts. I was really surprised at how much had been built there. I suppose I wasn't that surprised, it's happening everywhere, but I was disappointed. And as alarmed as I always am about sprawl. 

When we finally turned on to the road thatt would take us where we were going, I got as excited as I had the day before. I have so many photos of this in my phone, which just....it's a nothingburger of scenery. It's just very nostalgic to me. I could drive there with my eyes closed and tell you exactly what we're passing and what it looks like. Thankfully there hasn't been much build up in this area, though I cannot say enough how much I fucking HATE the roundabout. It is un fucking necessary and like...just why. 

The view as you're going into the park!!! It is June, and that snow pack is still so intense. It really unraveled a few of our plans, but that's ok. Nature is going to nature, and I love that for her. Plus, with the nosebleeds that I kept getting (three! I had three nosebleeds on this trip!), it is best that I didn't fuck around at altitude any more than I did. That first nosebleed really wiped me out, and my next two were minor, but I think it was best all around that we didn't do everything we had wanted to. Thank you, snow pack, for forcing me into being gentle with myself! I love you!

I did not take a picture of the ugly roundabout. Because I fucking hate it. But once you turn into the area itself, this is the view. And how can you not just want to like...fucking lick it. It's so gorgeous. Awesome. Breathtaking. How am I supposed to believe in tap dancing for capitalism when nature gives us THIS. 

LOOK AT HER!!! AN ABSOLUTE ICON.

They had also built this new, awful elevated viewing balcony/patio thing above the bathrooms. Fun story...to only me, I'm sure...about the bathrooms at this parking lot: back when FourSquare was still a thing, my friend Ian and I were in constant competition to stay Mayor of these bathrooms. I don't even know what our suggestion for these bathrooms was (like, my suggestion for the gym was "try the self-loathing!"), but we were constantly taking secret trips out here to take the mayorship from each other. I usually had it, but sometimes Ian would wrest it from me, and I will maintain that THAT is why we rarely speak. Not that friends grow apart, but that our mayoral battles were too much for our friendship to survive. Power ruins everything. 

Side view of the entrance area. The really stark white rocks always tickled me in contrast the the deep orange of the rest of the park. 

Probably the second most iconic place to take photos in the park (my guess is the park overlook from the vantage of the gift shop is the most popular, but I could have it backwards). Did we stop? Yes. Yes of course we did. I took a great...well, great for me circa then...photo of a singular snowflake nestled in hoarfrost at this stop off, and I was sad to see that the tree I had spotted that on twelve yars ago was gone. 

Derek, backdropped by the beautiful view. We stayed there for a solid twenty minutes, just soaking it in. How do you leave? It's hard to determine when enough there is enough and it's time to move along. 

Our next stop:

I did not get out of the car here, as you may have noticed from the glare of the windshield. The other three got out, but I instead stayed in the car. This place makes me very sad. 

If you follow that path upward, you come to a rocky area bump out, which is where I gave a cairn burial to my Bunny. While I know that Bunny's little body was found and eaten by scavengers years and years and years ago, I am still deeply saddened to be here anytime I go. After I buried her and subsequently discovered her body had been natured, I rarely if ever went that way. 

Now. Here's the thing: I never did the incline. Derek used to do it all the time, but it wasn't something that I ever had the right partner to do it with. While I was a fairly active person (I ran 3 -5 miles a day 5 times a week before my accident, and I went hiking all the time), I knew I was among the least fit of Coloradans, and I didn't want to look foolish on the incline, where octogenarians run it three times in a row. No thanks. I did the one on O'ahu...barely, as I had a MASSIVE panic attack on the way up and had to go back down before I could finish. Maybe inclines just aren't my speed. Since we are hoping to get back to Colorado once Derek has finished out his term in Missouri, it is something I am putting on my list of things to finish. Not tjust finish, but do once a week. Derek and I used to cycle twenty or so miles a day together, and we have agreed that the incline is for Saturdays, cycling is for Sundays. Unless we're doing big hikes. Like getting to the top of Tava, which is generally a 2 day affair, as I understand it. 

Of course, you pop out from that drive in Manitou, and while I took a few pictures of the thoroughfare, I am only adding one:

That license plate says ONIONS. 

Here's where the day runs full speed off the tracks. On our way out of Manitou, I see the sign for Ivywild. I had been on a few dates there before I met Derek, and I liked the vibe enough to go back with Derek, though I can't recall if I introduced him o Ivywild or if he had known about it and we were both like, yeah, cool place, we should go together! It doesn't even matter. But we went there a few times together, and Derek LOVED The Principal's Office, so when I said we were passing by, Derek was excited to go. We sold it to my dad as having a brewery, and he was like, YEAH! BEER! So Ivywild was our next stop. 

I was a bit slower than everyone else getting inside, because I was trying to get decent enough photos of the outside. Which I have never, ever achieved. 

When I walked in and found this Art-O-Mat repurposed from a cigarette dispenser, I was fucking elated. I wanted to get the kids something from our trip, because I missed them, but I didn't want to get them something schlocky and touristy. Each piece of art you could buy from this machine was only 5 dollars, and it was so personal that I knew this was where I had to get Alex's gift from. 

There were quite a few great artists to choose from, it was a hard choice, but I eventually went with Wee Monsters. 

How cute is this shit!! 

I laughed at the Winston-Salem collab credit here. I texted Steffie and was like, I saw this really great little art sale thing! And she was like, oh yeah, I've seen some of those around Vegas! And I was both delighted and a little bummed? For some reason, this struck me as VERY of the vein of Ivywild, and I kind of assumed this was a one of a kind thing. 

Here's where the day starts to fall apart. I walked over to the brewery, fully expecting my dad, Caryn, and Derek to be sitting together having a beer, but I only saw my dad and Caryn. I asked my dad how his beer was, he said it was great, I asked them both where Derek was, he said he didn't know. And I was like, I bet he's at The Principal's Office sampling some whiskey. So I walked over to the bar, took a quick snap of this little hallway because Ivywild really IS cute, no matter how soaked in pretention in feels, and I see Derek sitting at the bar.  

He looks up, sees me, and gives me this look that struck me as seeming VERY guilty. He made a distinct, "I'm caught!" face. Which made me very confused. So I keep walking over to Derek, and I notice that he's chatting with the two femmes sitting at the end of the bar. I finally get over to Derek, I say "Here you are" and the blonde femme at the very end of the bar looks at me and says immediately, "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't realize...I had no idea he was...I'm so so sorry" and I was straight up confused as fuck, so I was like, "you're fine?" because I had no fucking clue what she was apologizing for. So I looked at Derek and as he's asking me about whether or not I have our website pulled up, to which I responded, "...no, why would I?", the blonde starts saying, "he was just telling me about how he's a fashion photographer". Which Derek categorically is not. So I am feeling very strange, very much like I interrupted something I wasn't supposed to interrupt, and the vibe is fucking WEIRD. On Derek's phone is an instagram of some blonde...Derek swears it was NOT the person at the bar...in a bikini, but to my ye, it definitely looks like the same person, so my hackles were further raised. I did end up pulling up the website and started chatting to the blonde about my photography, my mermaid stuff, my boudoir work, while Derek is saying nothing at all. The blonde was very nice, very complimentary about my photography (though my gut said she was less enthused about my work on its merits and was more interested in smoothing over whatever slight had been committed against me, so I firmly believe those were pity noises masked as adoration), very eager to chat with me. We talked about my mermaid photography more than anything else. But all around, I felt incredibly irritated. Something about my presence was clearly putting a strain on the air. So I patted Derek on the back and said I would let him finish whatever it was he was doing, I told the blonde it was lovely to meet them, and then I walked away to seethe and figure out if this was something worth being angry about, or how I might have misinterpreted the situation. I found a little room that was empty, and stretched myself out on the couch. 

I was wearing my very favorite fishnets (of which I have an obscene amount. Most of them are neon colors, but these ones have a snake pattern that climbs up and down the leg), so I took pictures of them and sent them to all of my girlfriends. 

I really love these fucking fishnets. AND I was wearing them with platform sneakers. And my shirt that says, "calling my representative wasn't enough, so I fucked his wife". I felt like I was living out the sartorial desires of my thirteen year old self that was not allowed to express herself. And I was still EXCEPTIONALLY angry. I asked all of my friends what their thoughts were on the situation, and after twenty minutes of group thinking every single scenario, including one where I just entirely misread every single vibe going through the air and I was being an assumptive beastie, we all agreed that SOMETHING was weird. Something was very very off. People just...don't apologize profusely like that without a reason. And given the face that Derek made at me when I walked in, that just compounded my irritation. It all added up to something that felt shitty in the pit of my stomach. However, I did not want to make a scene, so I opted to only say something to Derek later, when we had a few moments of privacy. 

I recently saw a reel that said, "when you're hanging out with your friend, but they have a face with subtitles" and it showed two femmes sitting next to each other, one with a neutral dace and the other wearing a face full of very clear disdain, and I was like, "oh shit, I have a face with subtitles!" My face and aura were putting out some VERY BOLD TYPEFACE subtitles. Because everybody in the car was annoyd at me being annoyed. Derek said, "Why the fuck are you being so shitty? Your bad mood is ruining everyone's good time" which was categorically NOT the thing to be saying to me. And my dad chimed in with, "Yeah, Drea, what the hell is going on?" so I snapped and was like, "I JUST WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE AND BE QUIET, I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT". So the whole car stopped interacting. After a few minuts, my dad said he just wanted to go home. We had planned on going to Little Nepal for dinner, but my dad wanted to scrap it entirely because I was in such a bad mood. We stopped at a liquor store that Derek had been wanting to go to, because it was one that we came to all the time when we lived in the Springs. Caryn came back into the car first, irritated at me because she thought I was angry at her. I ended up telling her what happened, and she was irritated at Derek. When my dad got into the car next, he started to complain about me being a bitchy downer, so Caryn was like, no she has every right to be mad! And then I told my dad what happened and that I just didn't want to start shit with everyone in the car trapped together for an hour and a half. As Derek was walking back into the car, my dad and Caryn said they wouldn't say anything, they just wanted to get back to the townhouse in Aurora. 

So we drove back in relative silence, with Derek and my dad occasionally chatting about something small. When we got back to the townhouse, my dad and Caryn opted to relax, and I don't even remember what I did. I think I hung out with them in the living room while Derek went upstairs. Unfortunately, I needed to go to the store to get myself something to eat, since our dinner plans at Little Nepal were changed. I told Derek he had to drive me to Sprouts for food, and on the way  home form Sprouts, I asked Derek, "So why did that person apologize to me at the bar?" and Derek EXPLODED at me. He was so fucking angry that I was bothered by that, that THAT was what had been eating at me all day. It is unendingly frustrating to me that Derek forgets that my insecurities in him as a spouse are not coming out of the ether with no precedent. Derek has crossed lines on more than one occasion in the ten years we've been married, and more than once with more than one woman. The first three years of our marriage were REALLY rough, and Derek was not a very good husband to me. I don't think he understands how hard incidences like that color the way you percieve the actions of a person. So without Derek's appreciation for that, and with whatever anger he was feeling at me for my frustration, and what he swears was me misunderstanding the reality of the matter, we had a massive argument. Where it ended with him calling me a "fucking r****d" and me hitting him in the face for it. Not a good time. I ran into the house, told my dad and Caryn what Derek said, and what he did, and then Derek stayed in the garage for hours and hours. I am assuming it was out of embarrassment. But that pretty much put the end on the day. 

And this trend of negativity would follow into the next two fucking days. Let's catch up with our brave travelers in the next episode of FORTY POUNDS OF WET CORN.