Forty Pounds of Wet Corn: Colorado day nine

And where did we leave our intrepid travelers in our last installment? Why, we left them in Aurora, with everybody pissed off for different reasons! What fun!

Derek spent the night before predominantly in the garage, because I told him to sleep in the car. Whether or not he was actually trying to do what I asked him because he knew how angry I was, or if he was being petulant with a side of deeply embarrassed, because he knew I went into the house and told my dad and Caryn what he had said to me. The world and I may never know. But we had to get the car packed up and head out on the road, because this was a busy busy BUSY day. 

Derek got the car packed up, which took a lot of spatial reasoning (something my husband is VERY good at), and several hours of alone time, which I think suited everyone and Derek just fine. Once Derek got the car packed up, we somberly headed out for our first stop: Colorado Springs, so everyone could eat. We stopped at Urban Egg, which used to be Over Easy. I had been introduced to Urban Egg nee Over Easy by a fellow I was dating named Andreas, though I called him The Swede, and back in the day, I fucking LOVED it there. They had an amazing lavender lemonade, and a pancake flight that was to die for. But that was twelve or so years ago. As a person who spends years craving a taste and the overall experience of a great restaurant, I always always ALWAYS leap at the chance to go somewhere I loved once upon a time. as th saying goes, you can't go home again, but like...if it's open, I CAN go to Over Easy/Urban Egg again. So we went. 

And that was a mistake. Everybody was very lukewarm on the food. Derek was annoyed at the size of the meals. I was annoyed that if I wanted to eat, it would have cost me 14 dollars for two fucking eggs, some cheese, and avocado slices. So I had nothing but a sour time. I needed something to eat, I didn't feel like going to Sprouts or Trader Joe's, so I chose the food I had been wanting the previous day but didn't get to have: Little Nepal.

I was so excited to have Little Nepal, it was a bright spot in what had been a fairly shitty 24 hours thus far. A shitty 24 hours in which I was very hungry, as I hadn't really eaten. So naturally I sent a picture to Stevie saying I had demanded to go there for lunch. And she was ANGRY at me for it. Angry. Now, we had made a plan to go eat Little Nepal together the day I saw her while Derek, my dad, and Caryn went to Tava. My dad wanted us all to eat lunch as a family, since we were all on vacation together, so I told Stevie our plans had changed, and she responded with "YOUR FAMILY FUCKING SUCKS" and "I haven't seen you in person for six years" and very typical Stevie-centric nonsense. It's all well and good that we hadn't seen each other in a long time, and it sucks when you don't get to see your friends, but I was there on vacation with my family. I wasn't even going to initially tell her I was there, because I didn't have room in my schedule to see her and I had a sneaking suspicion she would not take that well. She messaged me something like, "I can't believe you're going there without me" to which I replied, "I was hungry, they have food I can eat, and I wanted Little Nepal". All things that are true. I am vegan, I am keto, and that combination of dietary needs makes my list of places I can eat VERY slim. Little Nepal fits the bill with food I can have. Additionally, I wanted Little Nepal. Stevie sent me a voice message a little bit after I responded, but as we were on our way to our second destination, and that put us in the middle of fucking nowhere, I was unable to listen to it. I couldn't have guessed what she was saying, but I had previously told her that I would be traveling to Durango, and I would be out of reception signal for days because we were in the mountains and would be driving, and that I would let her know when I got back. So I assumed all would be fine without me listening to the message or telling her I couldn't get access to it. I was with my family. That part I had ALSO let her know...again...before she dropped me off. I did not try to listen to it again, because I had other shit going on in my life, and she was not my priority. We'll put Stevie on the backburner for now, though sh will rear her self-centered head again in a few days. 

At Little Nepal, I got my staples: saag paneer, the veggie pakora sampler, and gajar ka halwa. They. Were. EVERYTHING that I remembered them being. Earlier, when I talked about chasing the taste of Urban Egg/Over Easy and being disappointed, and that being a trend with restaurants that Derek and I share with each other from our pre-each other times (I may not have explicitly said that, but it is true. Each of us have had excited restaurant shares, and then one of us is disappointed while boh of us are underwhelmed), Little Nepal deviated from the mean in a major way. I ended up eating there two more times before we left. 

We were officially on our way to our next stop, the first official destination on our Durango leg of the trip: Bishop's Castle. Derek and I had never been, and we had decided this would be a stop when the kids were still coming along, but my dad thought it sounded great, so we made it a stop for us even after it was clear the kids weren't coming with. It was an absolutely GORGEOUS drive.

Blue sky, clear day, and though tensions were still kind of high in the car, conversation had been pleasant enough. Derek was trying to ease into acting like nothing had happened when we WERE speaking to each other, but we were mostly not really speaking. Which suited everybody just fine, I think. There were a few conversations in the car, but it was mostly pretty quiet. Not necessarily an unpleasant or tense quiet, it was just quiet. Ready for an onslaught of photos from Bishop's Castle with minimal commentary? I fucking hope so, because that's what you're getting!

A fair warning at the entrance, though in the interest of full disclosure, I went in via the side route. 

The side route:

This is not a jungle gym. Just so you know. And I will tell you, as a person who has experienced Bishop's Castle that even if it WERE a jungle gym, I would not fucking partake. Because as cool as it is that this is hand built, this hand built mother fucker is RICKETY. And the higher up you go, the more keenly aware you are that someone hand built this, and it is not beholden to any OSHA codes. Everything is at your own risk. 

OSHA BE DAMNED. 

The entire aesthetic is fairly charming, though. It has that hand hewn "Don't Tread on Me" look and feel that says "fuck the government" while still being inviting. A look and feel that I lack, as I am not even close to inviting, but am very much of the "fuck the government" frame of mind. 

Live materials! Ladders! Dust! Rocks! So much stuff in an unfinished room!

I didn't get a photo, but there is a little room on the right hand side of this space where there's a few fold out chairs and a TV playing old interviews from the 70s of the builders. Which felt amusingly cult-y to me, but I can also see wanting to educate visitors of the process. 

Now THIS made me laugh, very audibly, despite the fact that I was in an underneath bad mood:

In case you couldn't read it from far away:

Did Willard build this mother fucking staircase or this motherfucking castle? THE FUCK HE DID, JIM BUILT ALL OF IT, WILLARD ONLY BUILT THIS BULLSHIT ROUND PART. You know. To set the record straight. In case you thought Willard built other stuff, it was Jim, you fucking MORONS. 

Good job, Willard. Your staircase round part is very nice. 

Tth second floor:

Now...what happens to these placques if someone says no? Do they stay there forever, a memorial to their inability to properly judge the temperature of their relationship? There was a piece of graffiti at Rainbow Falls in the springs that my friend Ian and I saw that said, "Marissa, will you go to prom with me?" and there was a tagged response that said, "NO, BITCH!" underneath it. Ian and I laughed about it all the fucking time, and we always hoped that it was Marissa that responded in graffiti. A shrine forever to boldness and extreme disinterest. 

A lot of these stained glass windows were purchased as memorials. Some of them were weird. One of them was Betty Boop with angel wings. 

More construction! Joy! It's everywhere in this piece!

The stairs o the third floor. 

I was gleefully unprepared for the goats. My step mom got a photo of one of the goats in my lap trying to eat my keffiyah, but I can't find it. I'll have to ask her to resend it to me. 

The third floor was so expansive. This would be such a gorgeous place to get married. Imagine the photos!

The pane glass wal that opens to one of the many outside walkways, like this one: 

Again, in the interest of transparency: I fucking chickened the entire way out after walking on this balcony walkway. It was so rickety and flimsy and my vagina was in full on fucking clenched mode. I usually try and tough shit out, push myself through my discomfort to get to the views I want, with mixed results, but I just couldn't here. I felt very unsafe. Derek went up MUCH further than I did, and I asked him to send me photos, but I don't think he made it all the way to one of the observatory balls. I will post his photos after I get through all of mine.

I admired how Caryn and my dad seemed unbothered by the all around hand built feel of the balcony. 

This was about halfway up the stairwell I was climbing to get to the next level, and I peeked out the window at about the place where there stopped being a handrail and you had to trust the physics of the stairs. I was unwilling to trust the physics, so I went back down. 

I sat down on a bench in front of this room, and there was a family that sat down at about the same time I did. A person who I assume was the grandfather, a tiny human I am assuming identifies as a girl about age 7, and a person I am assuming is the tiny human's father. Now, the tiny human had the CUTEST little outfit on, and had adorable space buns as their hairdo, and I heard them talking to their dad, but I couldn't hear them, I could only hear dad say, "I told you that you can't sit on the bench". I turned around and said, "oh, you now what, it's ok, I can get up and leave, they are welcome to sit here!" and the dad says to me, "no, they want to sit with you on the bench" and I said, "awww, well I understand if you would rather that not happen, but she is welcome to sit next to me, as well!" and the dad said no, and I was like, "I totally understand, I have kids, too." Because I don't know that I would just...let my kids sit down with a stranger. So I turned back around and chastised myself for not just minding my own business and saying that I would move. I know it would annoy me if I told my kids no in public and some well intentioned person unintentionally undermined my no by trying to be kind. I shouldn't have said anything. And then I heard the dad say something else that I couldn't distinguish, and the tiny human responded with, "but daddy. I look pretty. And she looks pretty. And I want her pretty to sit with my pretty." And I turned around again asked the tiny human, "were you talking about me??" and the tiny little human nodded and I was like, "that is the sweetest thing, thank you so much for saying that about me!" and the tiny human nodded very gravely and then smiled super huge at me. What an absolute little sweetie. It made my fucking day. Later on, after they left, I saw the tiny human one more time and I got the biggest happy wave from them. They were in a picture I took of the goats wandering the property, but I deleted it. 

This is the view from the gate that I should have passed through. I love the spire. I kept thinking about all of the photoshoots that would look gorgeous here. Especially with our wings. 

THE DIAGNOSIS IS IN, Y'ALL. 

Alright, here are Derek's photos from the levels of Bishop's Castle that me and my fraidy cat vagina couldn't make it to:

I CAN FEEL MYSELF CLENCHING AGAIN. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH. 

Once we all regrouped at the entrance, we headed off to our next destination, and my personal highlight for the day. Great Sand Dunes. 

It was about a two hour drive, and on the way, the conversaion veered toward my dad's recent interactions with his sister Renee, who is, as all great historians will report, a huge bitch. There had been a recent...uh...altercation with my aunt? She went over to my dad's and talked out of the side of her ass about my bestie, then followed it up with blaming me for making my bestie queer, and making my bestie's kid queer, and all of my activism is poisoning people and she just talked shit about me enough that my step mom had to leave because it was making her so angry. My dad told me he defended me a little bit, but I was aggravated that he was so just like...blithe about it in his retelling. He was more concerned about Renee finding out I knew what she said about me. And that turned into a thing in the car because Derek got irrationally angry about my dad not dfending me. He started yelling at my dad, and Caryn told him he needed to shut the fuck up (and rightfully so, he was way out of line), and when Derek said that he was just so fucking angry at the idea of someone saying things like that about his kids, I reminded him that he called me a fucking r****d not 24 hours prior, and he says shitty things about my kids all the fucking time and feels justified to do so. And that was the end of that conversation, and it just made the tension even more palpable amongst us. 

We drove in relative silence the rest of the way to Great Sand Dunes (a place with many different names to many different ribes who hold the place as sacred. This is a great primer on it that gives the Ute name So wap a wot to the dunes, as well as sharing a few other tribal names for them. Fast read and informative, I recommend it). It was uncomfortable. 

We drove by this really gorgeous lake on the way through to the dunes. 

I was still feeling very upset, and my dad and Caryn must have been, too, because conversation was stagnant.

But like...I can't lie, the second we got within eyeline of Huajatolla (the proper Ute name for what everyone calls The Spanish Peaks. I found a few different spellings of it. Wahatoya and Guajatoyah, all along the same pronunciation vein. Part of what is taking me so long to write these is all of the research I'm doing to give things their correct names, and I know I'm not doing the best job, but I AM trying my hardest. Let me know if I've missed anything or gotten something wrong, please!), I kind of forgot how angry I was at Derek and I was giddy about where we were heading. 

COME ON. This is the most amazing, beautiful, fantastic place, and every time I come here I am overwhelmed like it's my first time seeing anywhere on Earth.

What am I even doing with my life that I don't get to see this all the time? What is life even worth without this. 

I got out here to try and take a photo, but I'm sure it sucked. I have not yet looked at my actual camera photos, I'm too afraid of how shit everything will be. 

I was so fucking excited to get back to the dunes! The last time I went, I didn't get to climb to the top and take new photos, because SOMEONE had a massive hole in their jeans after their gigantic, zaftig ass split their pants at the abandoned factory we went to earlier in the day. That someone was me. The sand was literally blasting my skin, so I stayed behind, and I've been regretting it for years. I should have just allowed my skin to get worn away aggressively by mechanical erosion. I could use less ass, anyway. 

We had planned to go to Cuckoo's for dinner when we got to Durango, so I actually had VERY limited time to explore, and you just...you fucking forget how absolutely massive the park is. The walk from the parking lot to the river isn't very long, but the river is wide, and travelling across it takes a bit of time. And then the sand before you even get to the dunes is also huge. 

I think I had walked...maybe a mile? And I was almost to the base, but not close enough, and I knew we needed to go. So I turned around and walked back to the car. 

I am having a hard time finding the indigenous name for what we call Medano Creek. I took a picture of the sign hoping it would have something on it. 

I have taken a version of this photo every time I come to the park. It's like a ritual now. 

Goodbye, dunes!!! Until we meet again!

There was a heaviness to the sky that said it might storm, but it might also just be a gorgeous late afternoon. Turned out it was just a gorgeous late afternoon.

We didn't have time to get to Durango for food, so we ended up agreeing on stopping in Pagosa Springs for dinner, hoping to also find a store I could stop in to get myself some food. 

It was a lovely drive. The light was absolutely sumptuous. Almost enough to make me forget that we were dealing with some seriously rotten vibes in the car, and there wasn't a drop of clear air to be found amongst us. 

The place we stopped at for dinner was called Boss Hog's, and I stayed in the car because I wanted to eat my snackies. It has been reported to me that the dinner was, in fact, repugnant and nobody ever wanted to set foot inside of Boss Hog's ever again. 

We did find a walmart for me to stop at and pick up a couple things for myself to make dinner, but I had to be fast, as we still had about an hour and a half to drive to our place in PURGATORY.

Terrible photo, I got a better one the next day, but wih that, we were insde our next place, I cooked myself some food, and we went to bed. We were all EXHAUSTED. Next on the docket was tooling around Durango and Silverton. These ttravel blogs take me for fucking EVER. 

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.  

Forty Pounds of Wet Corn: Colorado, day seven

Yes, I am still a day behind, BUT I think I should be able to get caught up with this installment, as yesterday was a very easy day. 

The plan for yesterday was pretty much just to tool around the springs, which is now what we will be doing today. The biggest attraction for yesterday was going to be to head up to the top of Pike's Peak which, I have not kept up on sharing the indigenous histories of everywhere we've been, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it as I went or at the end in one long history lesson...but here's your history lesson for Pike's Peak: The tribe that lived in this region specifically were a tribe of the Ute called the Tabegauche, which we translate as People of Sun Mountain, but I do not know if that is a direct translation, or something we whited up as best we could to be understandable to us. They called the mountain Tava Kaa-vi, and we understand it as meaning Sun Mountain. Which I think is way fucking better than Pike's Peak. It's so weird how we just...claim shit? That peak isn't Pike's because he fucking saw it (fun fact, he never made it to the summit. And we STILL call it Pike's Peak. I will rarely give colonizers any flowers of any kind, but fuck, even the Spanish called it El Capitan, which is leagues better than naming it after one of themselves), and it isn't James' Peak because he summitted it in the 1800s...written records say he is the first person to summit the peak, but I flat out fucking refuse to believe that. I feel quite confident that there were any number of Ute people who had summitted it long long LONG before colonizers arrived. Written history is a scam.

Because I've been to the summit, I wanted to go visit one of my besties while Derek took my dad and Caryn up up up. So we planned on Stevie picking me up at 11:30 at the Garden of the Gods visitor center (my best digging can find an Arapaho name, but every single place I've seen it has a 3 in the presentation, and call me fuckin' crazy, but I doubt very much that the Arapaho were fucking around with leet speak. I can only find: Ho3o'uu Niitko'usi'i. I am trying to be realistic about this digging into indigenous history, because it's still written by white colonizers, and it is next to impossible for me to determine what is truth and what is bastardized, if any of it is true at all. This feels to me like a fairly good synopsis of the history of the Ute in Colorado, but who am I to tell? The language does not sound white washed...like I read something that said the buffalo were "dwindling" when in reality, colonizers were systematically slaughtering buffalo so tribes had to rely more and more on whatever the colonizers promised them and could more easily be forced onto whatever small pieces of land colonizers demanded they move to, separating them from their way of life, and making them reliant on mother fuckers who were not to be trusted. Dwindling. Be fucking honest). I did find this list of indigenous names for Colorado locations which I hope is accurate? 

On our way into town, I got so excited to see the place I had loved living in so much before I moved away to follow my husband all around the world. 

I sent a photo to my oldest, giddy as can be, saying "this is where your sister was born!!" I love that feeling of coming home, it's delicious. It's like my bones relax and my brain settles down and I am free to just be. It's tricky, because I am always hyper aware of saying I belong somewhere, because I know I really don't, both philosphically and historically, but there are certain places that make my body feel alive and settled. This is one such place. 

We drove down GoG, turned onto the road that would take us to the visitor center/park, and I just...I get so fucking GIDDY when I see the rock formations. I spent at least one day a week here when I still livedin Colorado. I used to bring a book, climb up to my favorite section of the park, and read in the late hours of the afternoon while the sun started going down as many days as I could. I loved being there. 

I am so excited to actually drive through and take real photos. I was, however, distressed to see the amount of build up they've done to like, fancy up the visitor center. There's a whole roundabout that really does not fucking need to be there. Like, just leave the fucking road as it was, that was disruptive enough. 

They dropped me off and made their way up to the summit of the mountain:

Look at my forever hot man piece!!! I did not go up to the top, obvy, so I do not have pictures of the road, the drive, the scenerey, nothing. I just have this picture of my hubbins that he sent me. 

and I went pee, found Stevie, and off we went to her place to go see her magnificent cat Gunter, her other magnificent cat Bacchus (who I have met on several occasions and was thrilled to make friends with again), to meet her mans Kyle and his dog Gus, and see the house they bought. Kyle and Stevie, that is, not Kyle and Gus. 

There is no real way to show the absolutely monstrous scale of Gunter. He is a bohemoth. An absolute ham. Just huge. A chonk. And I am obsessed. I took video of him...at least five, all of which I sent to Rhyann, hoping they would share it with their sister but realizing right this moment that I should have specified that they do that. I will just have to share the videos with Alex when I get home. Stevie is about 5'4, if that gives any scale to Gunter's relative size?

Stevie and I chatted and then she tried on all of her outfits for our upcoming photoshoots (the pieces she bought make me want to die, they are SO AMAZING), and she showed me her house and all of the things she and Kyle will be improving as they make the place their own. She also showed me her crochet projects, and she is doing such an incredible job, I can barely fucking understand it. I enjoy knitting, but I do not have the focus to keep track of stitches, so now I just knit into oblivion, counting nothing but enjoying the repetition. 

After Derek, Caryn, and my dad were down from the mountain, they picked me up and we headed down to Cy's for burgers. First we tried to head over to Crave, but found it had closed since Derek and I last checked to make sure it was still open a few months ago, and then we settled for Cy's. Which honestly isn't so much a settling, because Cy's was amazing. 

Derek and I used to eat here all the time, getting the Alaskan burger and loving every morsel. Of course, I didn't eat any of it, both because I do not eat meat and I cannot eat carbs, but I sat in the car and chatted with my children while everybody else ate their burgers. I did not get any photos of their burgers, fries, and onion rings. Derek is the most useless for documenting our trips!!! I am also the most useless at making sure he does it! Collectively we are fucking terrible!

After Cy's, we drove back up to Denver so my dad and Caryn could relax and Derek and I could drive around Rocky Mountain Arsenal to look for critters. Of which we saw a lot. Bison, coyote, deer...so many deer...and birds birds birds. Western Meadowlarks were plentiful and LOUD, and I love love love them. 

The light was so beautiful, and Derek and I drove around for about two hours, listening to birds, taking photographs, and enjoying each other's company. 

We drove back home, had a piecemeal supper, finished Ghostbusters, and then went to bed. A pretty easy day. 

And now I am caught up!!! I should be able to come home and blog what we do today, and I have no fucking idea what it is we'll be doing. Stay tuned!