The First Of Many
2006-06-20,

20060620 - The First Of Many

Walking would be the theme of this weekend's Father's Day extravaganza. Which was fine, because hey, exercise. Could use some more of that. I got to do something I haven't really ever done myself - house shopping. Not for me/us, for my dad. He's looking to move out of his stamp-press condo he's been in for getting close to 10 years, and find a place in nearby Chippewa Lake, which, not surprisingly, has a lake (and an abandoned amusement park - see link). It's privately owned and, depending on where you live in the town, involves lake use rights and whatnot. It has the feel in many places of a has-been town, like it used to bustle but now it's mainly forgotten to the area and is merely lived in or summer-visited. Basically, the town has a feel like it's primed and ready for a Stephen King novel. But at the same time, it has this mid 1960's, summer-of-love kind of charm - a somewhat dilapidated Dirty Dancing set.

My dad wanted all his boys with him on the search (which he'd already started, but this was the main leg of the journey) - myself, my older brother and my younger half brother. And off we set, ending up scouring nine or ten houses in the span of about 4 hours, running the gambit between built in the last ten years and one place that my older brother dubbed "perfect for a meth lab." That place was small, short, and spooky, and had this overall sense of wrongness about it. The newest-built place was owned by a woman who literally had potpourri in every single room of the house, and many of the walls were strewn with these craft-market, annoying wooden plaques that had sayings painted on them, like 'we may not have it all together, but together we have it all' and 'believe' and such. The first thing I said was, "Oh, there's just so much to know!" The house itself was really nice, though.

More than just a house, we were also shopping for the right garage - which is something of a challenge in such a small, summer cottage kind of area. One place - a house that was sent to the top of the list - had a three-car garage that was overbuilt enough that, if you put your mind and steering wheel to it, could fit five cars in it. Which is a good thing, because right now my dad does, in fact, have five cars - one of which is still in my garage, damn it. Here's hoping it'll be gone soon. The car, not the garage.

The last part of the day was spent having dinner at our new favorite in-town Mexican place, Fiesta Jalape�os, which may be in contention for the Worst Name For A Mexican Restaurant award. I just can't get my head away from the image of dancing, sombrero-wearing peppers. They party down and burn your tongue! Arriba! They do have excellent food, though, and is owned by a guy who immigrated (legally) to the area starting out as a dishwasher, and now he owns four restaurants. Not bad. I just hope the stupid McChipotle (were you aware? they're owned by McDonald's... though Wikipedia tells me that they'll be divesting their interest by the end of the year - yay!) they're putting up down the street from them doesn't hurt their business too much.

So that was dad's day. Sunday, it was my turn.

We got up earlyish so we could get The Boy and The Girl to prison their dad's place by 10am, and then we started heading east from Lakewood, rather than south, which would head us back toward home. H had packed up some things before heading out, and I at the very least expected maybe a picnic. But instead (or as well, really, since there was a picnic at the locale in the afternoon), we went to the ultimate First Father's Day location - the zoo! Yippee!

I hadn't been to the Cleveland Zoo in years. If I'd known we were coming, I'd have brought my Packey Storybook elephant key with me. (I was pleased to see that they once again have setup there with the same concept, though the key now is a credit card style, slip-in slip-out dealie.) Also, I would have brought some sunscreen, but that's another story.

We had an awesome day there, looking at all the different animals. We took it slow because it was pretty hot and didn't want to wear out either the baby or ourselves too quickly. We started a clockwise circuit of the park, and Laurana would wave and say "bye" every time we left one of the animals behind us. There was even a small scale petting area, where she got some close contact with some goats and a pony.

After that we had our picnic lunch, which consisted of veggies and hummus, a crusty baguette, brie, sliced turkey, apples, pears and Nutella. All of us ate well, and it made for a perfect Father's Day meal. We also had some ginger snaps, because my wife knows me so very well.

Later in the afternoon, while we were looking at the giraffes (we pointed out that Laurana has giraffes on her favorite wooby, and now she points to them often), the sound of African drums wafted up the hill. We meandered down to see what the to-do was, and it turned out there was a performance by actual African (I forget which country) drummers and local kids doing traditional dances, aged from sixteen down to six, and all of them were excellent. Laurana was, of course, enamored, music lover that she is.

We took respite in the cool where we could, like in the primate house/aquarium. H and I sat looking at the huge shark tank while the baby crawled around on the carpeted seating area and checked out other kids her size.

-- Transmission Terminated --