Forty Pounds of Wet Corn: Colorado day ten

Alright, so where were we? 

Purgatory. Both literally and figuratively. 

I woke up first that morning, made my iced coffee, and sat down in the living room, admiring the lovely view from the balcony, which we had not been able to notice the night before. A super late arrival will do that to you. 

Not a very good vantage for a photo, but looked pretty nice to  me! Let's get closer. 

Just a really fucking gorgeous view. The place we were staying wasn't so bad, either. Very cute, very mountain townhouse. 

I don't know why I didn't think to take any photos of the bedrooms. I have to assume I DID think of it, and I just opted not to. 

I had my coffee, Caryn came out and had hers, we all eventually got up and got ready to go to Silverton. This was another day where like, I had a bajillion cell phone photos of the drive, because I couldn't stop myself from taking photos. It was just so gorgeous. 

We actually got out of the car here to take some photos wih real cameras, not phones. This light is so beautiful, and I am positive the photos I took will not do these mountains and sceneries justice. My daddy got out with me to take a few photos, and then we got back in the car and kep driving. 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! My millennial hackles!!!! They are raised!!!!

The drive up to Silverton is absolutely lousy with waterfalls. We didn't stop at all of them, but we did stop at a few. Here was our first waterfall we stopped at. 

I didn't know if I would be able to stop on the way back at this same waterfall, so I wanted to make the most of it. 

When I looked across the street, I could see the bigger waterfall. I was fairly certain I wasn't going to get any kind of good photos of it from so far away. I can't remember if I put on one of our long lenses, but I do know that when my dad said he saw a little path to the waterfall, I was like, "Then that's where I'll be heading!!"

It was so beautiful. And empty. There wasn't anybody trying to get to that waterfall, just me. 

Little waterfalls like this are my favorite. The ones that look like little fairy grottos. I don't quite know how these photos turned out, but I felt like if I had maybe an hour to spend there, I would have gotten something great. Hopefully I got something mediocre that is still worth....something? I don't know. Most of my photos from Ithaca weren't worth printing, and that was the whole entire point of taking photos out there. I wanted them to print, to keep a part of home with me. I suppose that's part of my drive here, as well. 

I climbed through the brush to get to the head of the waterfall. 

And took some photos. There was a way where I could have gone further up and around this part of the waterfall, but I didn't take it because I knew everybody was waiting for me. And I would have taken forever. 

The waterfall's river looking down, toward where I had come from. 

I couldn't have asked for a prettier view, though. Doesn't that just make you want to fucking cry?? If you look REALLY hard, I believe you can see Derek peering down at the edge of the road. 

Even the "boring" scenerey was gorgeous. 

The light got SUPER yummy for like, four minues as I was putting my equipment away....

And as we were driving way....

And stayed stormy and sunny and wonderful. I loved the storm front. I was obsessed with it. I didn't ask to have everyone pull over so I could try and take more photos, because I know my shortcomings, and my shorcomings in this instance are being terrible at landscape photography. 

And I mean, the vibe in the car was icier than it had been at the start of the trip, but it wasn't WHOLLY terrible. I wasn't as outwardly giddy with Derek as I had been a few days before, but I wasn't exceptionally frosty. 

But look look look look look!

We made it to Silverton!! The first time Derek and I took this road together, we were in his WRX, and he very much enjoyed the drive. I recall there being far too many corners taken at far too high a speed, but this drive was not like that at all. It was leisurely enough, perfect for taking in all of the scenery. 

And Silverton again, but betterer. 

Here we have the infamous Pickle Barrel. Infamous to Derek and I only. The first time we went to Silverton, we thought we would find an adorable mountain town, packed to the gills with cuties and open cutie shops. What we found instead was exactly what smart people know to expect of a mountain town in the winter: nothing. We found two open shops and the Pickle Barrel, and little else was open. Derek and I popped into the Pickle Barrel for lunch as a consolation prize to the fact that there was no fudge to be found (I kept seeing advertisements for Silverton Fudge), and I was served an open face sandwich that looked like someone barfed all over it, and Derek got some wings. I took a picture of him with his whole mouth pushed through the wing bones (which he devotedly redoes at Cuckoo's later this evening), but that was the only highlight of that restaurant. 

No thank you, Pickle Barrel! Not this time!

We parked at the end of the main drag, right by The Wyman Hotel (a building which gave me the weird and creepies. I have been meaning to do a historic deep dive on it, but have had other things going on and have not had the time). My dad and Caryn got out and waited a few minutes for Derk and I to get our shit together, but then they walked off to look around the town. It isn't very  big, it's not like we were going to lose each other in a major way. Derek and I debated whether or not we were taking our cameras. Derek took his, I did not. 

We walked to a tiny antique store, fully expecting the prices to be fucking outrageous, and not being disappointed in the slightest. 

These charming hinges were 15 dollars each, though they ARE absolutely gorgeous. But 15 bucks? And no provenance? DO I LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT TO YOU? I'm sure I do, but that is super far from the point, I don't know why I brought it up. 

This very normal painting of two people, one of whom is holding a hacksaw, was 150 dollars. Again, no provenance. With these prices, I better get a fucking lie of some sort, like a ghost painted this right before it ate the couple. 150 dollars is absurd. Even though I will grant them that the hacksaw is amazing. 

Have you ever wanted a wreath made of fuckin' shoe stretchers? GOOD NEWS, you can have this one for 300 dollars!!! Worth every penny if you are a fuckin' weirdo wih money to drop on your fuckin' weirdo aesthetics. I know I shouldn't yuck people's yum, but...I can't help it in this scenario. Who sanctioned that. 

Is this service still available? Asking for a family of foxes that slaughtered all of my chickens and left half of their corpses in the run. 

Do you fucking know how disappointed I am that this wasn't a fucking bizarro women's choir with a very specific niche, and was instead...something else? This TOTALLY looks like an an ad for a small showing of a choir group that is very dedicated to their schtick. Forever upset that isn't what it is. Like...obviously they are objectively terrible regardless of them being a choir OR a rabid pack of entrepeneurial gun lovers who blended the sarotiral demands of patriarchy into the gun obsessed demands of colonialism and came up with a purse for super cool moms, but I really wanted them to be the former.

We walked around for a little bit more, I got cruised by a REALLY CUTE, very Colorado femme...cruised so hard that not just Derek noticed it, but I noticed it, and as a very meh looking person who is like, never cruised unless I'm dressed for it and in an explicit contextual environment where cruising makes sense, I NEVER notice if anybody cruises me. Derek swears it happens all the fucking time. I disagree. But here we are. They were VERY cute. Very in the vein of my type. I am fairly equal opportunity when it comes to masc presenting people, but I for sure have a type for femmes. And they were very close to it. My dad and Derek had a drink at Avalanche Brewing, but because Caryn and I stayed in th car I didn't get any photos of their beers. When they got back in the car, we headed back down the mountain. 

It rained while we were in Silverton, but thankfully not on us. And with that, the beautiful storm went away, and we were left with lovely, fluffy clouds. 

Wolf Creek Pass really is fucking packed with waterfalls. We stopped at a whole bunch of them and grabbed fistfuls of rocky sludge from the bottom of the falls to look for rocks with Rhyann when we got home. Every single falls would mermaid. This one would be stellar for mermaids, but the light was so blotchy that I didn't bother taking a photo with my camera. I grabbed this one really fast on our way out, because of COURSE the sun ducked behind a cloud and evened out the light as we were leaving. Derek asked me if I wanted to stay to catch a good photo with my camera, and I said no. 

We drove right to Durango for dinner at Cuckoos Chicken House and Waterin' Hole. 

So, Durango/Silverton was the very first trip Derek and I took together. When my friend Tom heard I was going, he was like, BITCH YOU GOTTA GO TO CUCKOOS THEY HAVE THE BEST CHICKEN. I told Derek about it, and we went. And uh. Tom was right. That was over ten years ago, and I have been a vegan/vegetarian for seven years, and I STILL wax rhapsodic about how good Cuckoos is. Derek loves telling everybody how, the night we went to Cuckoos, I ate a fuckton of my own broasted wings, I ate a fuckton of onion rings, and then got really drunk, came back to our hotel, and ate all of Derek's leftovers while I drunkenly watched the finale of Psych. I am not as big a fan of that story, but I DID find myself telling our serve how the very first time I came here, I ate about 18 of their wings. Obviously our server was like, super duper impressed. 

I had a teeny tiny bite of the onion rings. Still fucking fantastic. 

My dad ordered 12 wings, I believe. I think those are the buffalo wings. 

I don't remember what wing sauces Derek got? But here they are! 

Caryn ordered wings with the mild sauces, and I can't remember what those were, either. I did not do a good job documenting our meal here. 

Daddy Tucci, enjoying his wings!

And here's Derek, recreating his iconic Pickle Barrel wings photo. An excellent recreation, ten years later. 

We drove home, and I kow we were talking about SOMETHING where we all had differing opinions, but I cannot recall what, and it derailed the entire night. Almost derailed the trip. 

Derek went off to look for a place where we could take milky way shots, so while he was gone, Caryn expressed how angry and irritated she'd been at how Derek has been speaking to everybody. My dad expressed similar sentiments. I expressed similar sentiments about Derek so they understood I heard them, but also expressed how Derek and I have been similarly irritated at how they have talked to us. Tempers ran VERY high, and we argued for a couple of hours. It cleared the air quite nicely, but it sucks that the air had to be cleared in such a volitile way. 

The consensus after all of that air clearing was that I had to go talk to Derek, because he was kind of the common denominator here. We were all on edge because of Derek, Derek had been....less han great for several days, and we were all feeling pretty fucking thorny toward him. So I asked him where he was, he said he heard us yelling and sat down in the car. So I went out to the car, texting him that we had to have a hard conversation, and to please steady himself to not call me any names. He sent me a little heart emoji, and then we proceeded to argue for three hours in the car. About everything. About his behavior on the ttrip, he way he's been talking to my dad and Caryn, the way he's been talking to me, the way he's been treating me, and then that turned into me just emotionally vomiting the rather pentt up misery and guilt and disappointment and stress that I've been feeling for quite some time. We talked about the possibility of getting a divorce, that maybe we just aren't a good fit. That we probably never WERE a good fit, and that, for my part, it isn't like I resent him for not being who I need or want, it would be shitty of me to demand someone be an untrue version of themselves to please me. Something I refused to do after being with Dan, as I spent the entirety of that relationship trying to be Dan's Version of Worthy instead of myself, and it's fucked up and exhausting. Sometimes relationships just don't work, and you can love each other but still not fit. 

Derek told me he had been off of his meds for the last few days, and everything has been a struggle for him (which explains why he's been so very fucking aggro over the last several days), but that a divorce is essentially in my court, though he does feel shitty that the ways he expresses love for me go unnoticed. And I understand how that could wear a person down, but it was kind of what I was saying. That like, if I'm looking for XYZ expression of love while Derek is putting in work to show LMN expressions of love, we are not meeting needs, and we are not communicating effectively. 

We went to bed at about 4am. Really late. It had been an emotionally draining evening all around. Derek asked me to tell everybody he was very embarrassed, and fel very ashamed, and to tell them he was super sorry. I did that the next morning. 

I told my dad and Caryn before going out and fighting wih my husband that conflict isn't necessarily a negative thing, most of us are just afraid of it. Often, conflicts are where we can finally say what we need, who we are, where we are in a given moment, and how we need to define our boundaries going forward. Conflict doesn't feel good, but it can be a net positive. I think that's what we had going on. It erupted in a way that I think could have been avoided, but the outcome was overall a net good. On to the next.