Trip Report Segment 16 in which we still don't get to the tea, dang it, and we have a flashback.
HaleyB said:
I really really don't like that flashback so much.
Mr. S. said:
First off, if this thing seems rushed or incomplete, that's all a carefully crafted stylistic choice I made. This section is a result of a number of minutes of dedicated focus and determination.
HaleyB said:
The S. Dude said:
Warning: I don't think everyone will necessarily like this section. It might be regarded as tedious by some, and disturbing by others. As a Trip Report artist I have to say that while I regard this section as a beautifully executed example of the form of report that shows that baroque inner drama that all artists face to some degree, not all will necessarily find this sort of thing fun to read.
HaleyB said:
It might even be regarded as both tedious and disturbing to some. And now I remember why I never finished that 2004 trip report.
So as another little prequel, while I was writing this my dog was spazzing out, as he is wont to do. When he goes into psycho-amp-dog mode, I usually issue one of two commands: "dude, chill," or, "inner peace." Neither of these commands ever work, but I credit myself for persistence. Anyhow, at one point after shouting, "inner peace," at my dog, I came up with an idea. I would write a book titled "Dog Meditation," in which I would instruct the reader how to train their pet in the ancient art of meditation. I idly thought about it and came up with a bunch of good lines, and even had a bunch of illustration ideas. I would put this together, and then float it to a few publishers, and see what happened. Thus went the plan. Over the next few days I came up with even more material. It was great. It was a really good book. Then I googled "Dog Meditation," wondering what might come up... Some jerk had stolen my idea prior to my having it! I was very distraught for a few minutes. I came up with a twist, "Dog Yoga." Someone else had already pre-stolen "Dog Yoga" from me as well. Dang it! I realized something then. Some people think about their pets all the time, so coming up with funny things to do with a dog is an exercise in walking in other's tracks whether you know it or not. The same thing is true with cats. Let this be a lesson to you that you might learn from my suffering.
That had nothing to do with anything, I just needed to get that off my chest.
HaleyB said:
Herr S. said:
So back to our tale, I really want to get to the tea, but reaching that point is a reward that can only be enjoyed after the prerequisite work has been accomplished. Right now in writing about wanting to get to that section, but not actually doing the actual of writing on that section that would move me forward is puzzling. If I want to reach the goal of writing on the tea, which can be achieved by reporting on those events prior to the tea, why am I not doing that but instead writing about recording those events, and even writing about writing about them. The horror of this is that it is a kind of trap where once one starts on meta-reflections there seems to be no proper way to end them, one is in an eternal pre-tea hall of mirrors. The only escape I know of is just to stop even if things are incomplete, for the problem with writing on things that are eternal is that one can never give an absolutely complete account, but understanding that the account cannot be compete is the key to ultimately reaching the tea.
HaleyB said:
This is why inviting Zeno along was such a bad idea. We never got anywhere!
I sometimes wonder if the sorts of things I think about might be a little weird.
HaleyB said:
The S. said:
At times I just assume that everyone really is secretly thinking about the kinds of things I am usually thinking about, so when I talk to people at the supermarket or whatever and they seem puzzled by me, it's all part of a game. They really know all about these things, but don't reveal it because either:
1) They lose the game that they have never let me in on, or
2) They are stuck talking to me more.
Either way, I understand the sentiment, so I sort of play along as best I can.
So I just had a significant insight: Holy crap! We went to Disney World in October, and we still have not gotten to the tea. Criminy Crackerswoggle! (This is a new exclamation I am working on popularizing).
So enough with the whole blabbering on about whatever carp is rolling through my head with a few mentions of stuff we did in the park. We are going to turn over a new leaf. We will have focus. We will get down to the brass tacks (an expression that is really interesting, but since I am focusing on writing about specific details of our experiences of the trip, you now see me even now powerfully and effectively refraining from these side topics and regressions). At this very moment I am really impressing myself by how effectively I have avoided getting bogged down in some side topic other than describing what we were doing in the Dis.
One of the problems with being me is that while I have the ability to say rather cruel things about the amazing combination of brainlessness and general psychosis that is out there creating dramas (almost always tragic) all over the place, at the same time I feel guilty even thinking that sort of thing, let alone writing it down. Unless the dramas are comedies. But even then it's sometimes iffy.
Okay. So I have an admission to make. You might notice that despite my adulation of reporting on the trip, and my determination to do so, it hasn't happened. I just can't say why, but I think it's that I once had a sense of humor, but I have misplaced it, and so I'm worried about writing the trip report. I may actually have one, but I can't tell, because I never really know if something is funny unless someone else is amused. And H. always plays her cards close to her chest. And our dog Cowboy is rarely amused by my jokes, though the trick where you fake out throwing the toy and he runs for it and then can't find it he finds really funny. But beside that he just seems confused when I run things by him. So I'm cursed. I was briefly considering just finding some of trip report section 8 or 12 or whatever and just cutting and pasting it in and hoping nobody noticed. But I worried that someone would notice that we were doing the wrong rides for the section of the park we were in. Now my only hope is that H. will include hilarious interpolations that keep this thing rolling, so dear please be sure to do that, okay?
HaleyB said:
Um, sure thing.
The thing is this is sort of an internal dialog of yours, and it is sort of hard for me to comment on your internal dialog and all. So I didn't so much. Except to correct it where it was wrong, because that is what wives do.
I used to write a lot of short stories when I was younger. I stopped for some reason that was probably bad (now I think of stories and write hunks of them - "The Last Temptation of Elvis" will be a classic once it is done in In A.D. 2101. When war was beginning. And all your base were belong to this novel.) This is a similar thing. But instead of laying out the whole psychodrama and writing a tragedy where a lone psychologically tortured writer say alone in a car riding in a wild crazy path, never finding that solace, or whatever it was that was being sought and then turning into the darkness, that was a metaphor for a certain kind of void where you look into it and it looks back at you, but suddenly there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope appears. But that light is the headlight of an oncoming train. You scream "Criminy Crackerswoggle!" as the train crashes into you, with a loud blast, and then in the void you see Hell. What does it mean? Surely the implications are deep and profound. Whatever the case we went from that Pooh ride which I cursed roundly in my notebook, including using the very harsh term "piece," truly the vitriol dripped from my pen as I angrily cursed the loss of a favorite ride... Anyway there was a parade at this point and so we stopped to watch the parade. For whatever reason I find all parades really dull. Since we are on the topic of parades, I need to relate a story about a parade in Dis., even in the M.K. that we saw but which which missed being reported on in from my perspective, and I think in this case my perspective is worth discussing. Anyone who complains that I am writing a trip report about a different trip and this is not fair can just look into the void where they might just find it looking back with a bright light.
HaleyB said:
I think the term 'void' is an interesting choice of terms, given the story that follows. This is not really the funny sort of comments you were looking for from me.
Warning - some description of peeing and incredible agony is required in this section. If you have delicate sensibilities and are offended by bodily functions please do not read this section, you might just wind up calling out "Criminy Crackerswoggle!" Instead just look over into the void for a little while as you jump past this section. Here is the marker for the beginning of the section, and the same marker will indicate the end of this section:
(*VOID*)
So in 2004 in some month we went to WDW. H. had gotten some cheap DisneyQuest passes, so we went a few times, which will be significant later. Now during the trip I had been having an unpleasant time. Sometimes when I peed it kind of hurt. I figured that I had some kind of bladder infection and did what I could to try to find cranberry juice, though I did not have much luck. Since we hadn't been to WDW many times before, and H. had been obsessed with this vacation I did not want to get us waylaid in wasting time trying to find a doctor and deal with the question of whether our insurance was in the right medical groups or whatever. All of that would take away from the kids and H's fun. Also we had Ryan with us, who was a teenager and more or less alienated from us (as all teenagers are), but I was doing what I could to sort of try to keep him amused, since I sort of felt guilty about being a bad parent somehow such that he was alienated. So there it is. So we had been to DisneyQuest a few times and done the arcade games (the first time we went were irresponsible parents who stayed until closing plating the old the 80s games we used to play in the arcades). Then we found that CyberSpace Mountain where you design your own roller coaster on a computer and then ride in it in the little car that displays video of the coaster as it twists and rolls and moves appropriately. When you make the coaster it gives you a score for intensity. Now on the day before the we went to that parade we went to DisneyQuest first. Now that day the crowds were very low. Most things were walk-on. It was great. My bladder infection was getting pretty bad, but I was just avoiding drinking and was taking painkillers. Now I was trying to do things that Ryan liked doing so that we could do them together. It was a bonding thing. Since we liked the coaster, and there was no line, we designed a coaster, did the ride, and thought it was pretty cool. So we did it again. The first time we hadn't really known what was going on with designing the coaster so we had a few straight sections and mild turns and so on, so our intensity score was not so high. So we decided that we needed to have a goal of getting that score as high as we could work out. We connected our corkscrews into loops into jumps that flip into more loops. The cast member warned us that the ride was kind of intense and we about to go upside down seventeen times or so. Dude, thats what we were trying to do... The coaster was way more fun, but there were not enough loops, there was not enough upside down. So we worked even more carefully at designing the coaster to maximize loopage. Since there was no line we looped the coaster ride over and over and over making the most extreme coasters we could think of.
A brief note on naming coasters. When you name the coaster you have separate lists of word to put together to name your coaster. We worked at finding combinations of words that would be the least like that anyone would willingly speak. This "make a name that mixes kitsch and poor agreement of terms" game actually is pretty fun, I recommend it.
So we did a few loops. I noticed that I was starting to not feel so well after we had done a few of these, but just ignored it since I didn't get many chances to hang out with Ryan where he wasn't a surly teenager. So we did it over. And over. And over. Eventually we caught up with H. and the kids. H. and I did the coaster, which was once again a nice intense one. After this I noticed that the pain that had been rather localized to my lower gut had reached the point of throbbing agony that was pushing up to my chest. I went to the bathroom and noticed that there was blood in my pee. And it felt like I was peeing shards of glass. O.M.G. After I peed walking was a bit harder, and not a pleasant thing. So it got to be the evening and H. asked if we wanted to go do the parade of go back to the hotel. In my state I really wanted to go to the hotel. I had discovered that if I stood still, especially if I was seated, things were not too bad, but once I stood up and began walking then the pain throbbed through most of my body, and increased as I kept walking. Sitting in the hotel with my Ukulele sounded pretty good to me. I don't like parades anyway, so I suggested the hotel. But I was overridden, since H. wanted to see the parade, and wanted to make sure the kids got to see it.
HaleyB said:
"The parade" was Spectro Magic, tfi. He is never enthusiastic about parades. They are a waste of valuable ride time.
Mssr. S. said:
I don't really have anything to add, but I wanted to throw something in here anyway.
I was not enthusiastic since there was a lot of walking to the bus, then to the park, then in the park, then to the next bus. I was wondering if that much walking might be fatal. I started wondering about life insurance. We went to the Magic Kingdom to see the parade. My walking relating to going to the Magic Kingdom was kind of slow, though happily the kids were also rather slow so my agony waddle did not really stand out, though the more walking I did the more the pain, which started to give me a sense of nausea as well as feeling like I needed to pee. Once we finally got in, we struggled to find a spot to watch the parade. I think that H. tried to send Ryan and I ahead to get there quicker and get a spot. But this was not really working out since I constantly felt like I had to pee, so I kept gong to the bathroom, and while there were a few false alarms, when I did pee (which required some effort) it was maximal agony. I remember letting out a lot of pained grumps and groans at the urinal that drew looks from fellow bathroom-users. I briefly considered giving my story, and there was a lot more blood, I could easily point to it. It was getting more red every time. But I decided to be kind to strangers and not bring them in my little horror-world.
Also I figured it would be better to wait until the vacation was over before reporting any of this to anyone, since I didn't want to disturb anyone, or make anyone miss anything good. And I figured I either needed some antibiotics or something, or I had a fatal disease and it didn't really matter what I did, so I figured it would better to live out my final days having fun with the fam. in Disney World rather than sitting in some horrible Hospital probably with no insurance so that I would bankrupt H. and sit there in agony with them doing the horrible kinds of things they do in Hospitals. So I figured I would just keep looking for cranberry juice, maybe be a bit more aggressive about searching. Due to my circumstances, I seem to recall I was somewhat hostile to the parade. Eventually the parade ended. I waddled with them to the bus and then waddled to the room silently cursing Disney for making the walks from buses to everything so accursedly long. The next day as we left the Pop or wherever we were staying the blood levels were a little lower, my pee still looked like Cherry Kool-Aid, but it had been somewhat opaque, and now it was less opaque. So there was progress. I hated to do it, but I decided I needed to drink a lot of water in case it might help my death be deferred a bit. The pain killers were not being that effective.
H wanted a stroller and asked me to get one. I walked across the front of the MK shuffling along in agony. Someone shouted something unintelligible to me. I stopped to try to spot the person. It was a guy with a camera. I started to walk towards him to figure out what he said. It was, "God-damn, get the hell out of our picture! We've already lost two shots because of you."
HaleyB said:
That night was actually a lot worse than that. Mr Silly forgot about a little trauma with Max that unfolded on the Monorail. Somehow getting from where we were to where we were going involved a Monorail. I think it is possible that Mr Silly is misremembering the 2004 trip a little. He has combined a few days. Since I never finished the TR it is understandable. I guess.
An S. said:
I'd just like to say that I find that my account is more aesthetically pleasing than the actual events, and inasmuch as truth is beauty and beauty truth, it therefore stands to reason that my account is more true than what actually happened.
HaleyB said:
We were in Epcot prior to going to Spectro. We ate a Beavertail, and discovered that Max is allergic to hazelnuts. Darn Canadian snacks. Max' body rejects food he is allergic to. He, um, rejected the beavertail on a very full Monorail. We did not have a change of clothing with us. Which is why Mr S was in charge of getting a stroller and a spot for the parade. I was in charge of finding and buying a new set of clothes for the boy. It all worked out and Spectro was Spectro. We viewed from right in front of the flag pole on Main Street. Close to the bathrooms. In 2004, I mean.
An S. said:
I'd forgotten about Max puking Beavertail on the Monorail. Glad to have that memory back...
The next day H. told us that we were going to stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge for a night.
HaleyB said:
Really I think I may have mentioned that to you earlier. It was three nights.
It's S. said:
No, it was one night, but we liked it and extended it out to three.
We'd never been, but it was supposed to be really cool. I think I mentioned to her that I thought I had a bit of a bladder infection or maybe a kidney stone or something and that I needed to get some Cranberry juice. Or perhaps I just grunted something about needing to go to the store since I needed something. I think I might have just grunted something. Whatever the case, I went in and got some cranberry juice. The store had some amazing produce, and things, so I got some fruit salad thing too, which was really good - it had Papaya, Mango, Pineapple, and Strawberries, if I remember correctly. I think I got some other things. Looking in the med. section I didn't see anything that looked any good. I peed in the store (in the bathroom) and it was another agony nightmare. Again people in the bathroom looked at me giving my dreaded, "Dude, ***," look.
I did my careful shuffle walk where I sort of tried to not bounce up and down back to the car. I got to the car and immediately opened the cranberry juice and slugged down quite a lot of it. H. had some questions at this point. I said I had a urinary tract infection, and downplayed it as much as possible. As we drove I reflected on mortality, which is something I just like to do all the time normally, but when the prospect of death comes up I enjoy it even more. I was a little depressed at the idea that I might not get to see Sophie and Max grow up since they were so small. And that I might destroy H's life (stupid funerals are expensive, I wished they could just dump my corpse in an incinerator, and maybe have a little get together with some folks with some wine and cheese, and leave it at that). Then I remembered I was a Mason, so maybe I could get a free burial plot. And there would be a cool ceremony as they buried me. Anyway, I was slightly distraught as I was still kind of attached to a few things, as this picture might illustrate:
I kept drinking cranberry juice. We wound up staying at the AKL for a few days and hanging out there and taking it easy, the blood slowly cleared up and I decided I was not going to die. The blood sort of came and went depending on how busy the day was...
So once we got back to Austin and things were still not well we went to our doc. and they saw a lot of blood in the urine and sent us to a Urologist (well we kind of told them which Urologist to refer us to since there is a world class doc here.)
HaleyB said:
He was my doctor first. I produce stones somewhat regularly. I don't think any one here wants more details. He is a cool doctor though.
We went there and they took an X-Ray. The nurses looked at it and seemed sort of surprised. I assumed that my death was imminent, and began to try to think of everyone that I held a grudge against so that I could forgive them and keep my peace of mind. This was a little hard with my brother... Maybe I have perhaps not fully worked everything out there, but I think I'll probably die before everything is worked out there.
The doc. said that I had a massive bladder-stone. I looked at the Xray. It looked like cancer. I double-checked that it wasn't cancer. He said it wasn't cancer. It was a bladder-stone. It was a big one, the kind of thing you might see in a textbook as an extreme case, and that he'd never seen one as huge as mine. I was hoping he'd write a paper in a journal so that my death might at least help someone somehow. As it turned out I did not die, I just had to have an agonizing surgery where they blew up the stone with a laser into smaller stones, and then kept blowing up the stones until they were small enough to filter out. I asked him if he ever played Atari's Asteroids and whether this was similar.
HaleyB said:
The laser tool that the doc used was new. He (the doc) was excited that he was going to get to use it. He didn't even attempt to hide this from us (I think he actually told us this). The surgery was scheduled and it was a bit of a long wait. When it hurts to pee any wait is a long wait, tfi. They made us come in at about 5 am for pre-op stuff. We waited around for hours. They started an IV after about five teen attempts. We waited some more. Finally they came and broke the news to us. We had to go home and reschedule. Apparently the laser takes hours to 'warm up' and the guy who was supposed to turn it on that morning forgot to.
S! said:
Amusingly, the next opening was like a month later. No, wait, that's not amusing.
Here is the X-Ray:
The bird egg looking thing is the stone.
Here's the stone from the inside:
It became clear to me why going on a ride that kept shaking me around and flipping my upside down might cause that spiky ball to bounce around and tear things up, thus causing a lot of bleeding.
A number of horrible things happened, but I didn't die, and the doc. didn't write a paper about it, or didn't tell me about it if he did.
So, sorry for that, I hadn't written about it before, and needed to do a brain dump of that so I could lay out all of my poor decisions in a nice clear form. And there they are. Criminy Crackerswoggle!
(*VOID*)
HaleyB said:
Ok, so I suppose we need to do a bit of coverage of the Oct. '06 trip for those who (perhaps wisely) opted to skip that last section. So we went to watch the parade. My reflections on Mr. Toad perhaps embittered me a little, or it could just be that I've never really been impressed by parades. But it was getting late. We struggled to find a spot to watch the parade. My notes report that we wandered along led by H., who led us into a weird place that wound up being a dead end. My notes say: "Heh. Miss Disney Expert."
HaleyB said:
Humfff. We were not trying to watch that parade. We just got cut off by it.
Agent S. said:
Well, my notebook clearly says "dead end." Which might not exactly relate to what you said, but still sounds good, so I'm sticking with it.
We sat on the ground which was hot.
HaleyB said:
We sat on the ground? I don't remember that. Maybe he is just making stuff up again.
Sir S. said:
My notes have a very insistent note on the side with an arrow that points to just at the end of the parade with this phrase: "This pea is crummy." I am hoping H. knows what that means. At this point I have no recollection of this whatsoever. It's just a blank. Not even a vague feeling or anything. Just the void, and I try not to look into the void, as you might have noticed that staring into voids can be unhealthy.
HaleyB said:
Perhaps you thought the weird snow globe things looked like peas????
Meister S. said:
So from there we went back to Autopia (which they gave the unpalatable name "Tomorrowland Indy Speedway," but we still use the better name). Max was finally tall enough to drive by himself, though I was a bit unsure whether he was really ready to do this or whether it would be an exercise in frustration. I'm not sure why I was worrying about this at this point, since we had been on it earlier in the day. But there I was worrying about this. To assuage our concerns, we put him in the front so we could at least kind of push him along if need be. H. was in the middle since my driving habits might have disturbed Max as I pounded him along. I told Sophie that this was for the "Pincer" operation so that Max would drive slowly and we could nail Mommy's car. And once again ignore those signs about no bumping... But Max took off and jammed along at high speed. H. tailed him. And my car was slow. So I fell behind. I struggled to catch up and hit them at ramming speed. It was not to be, save once. There was one point where I hit H., who lurched forward and hit Max, which was pretty impressive. Also, I did get them at the end when they were parking, but it was just not the same. Ramming while parking hardly counts. But overall we suffered the agony of defeat.
Then we saw another stinky parade - Spectro. I took no notes, and all I remember was that I wanted it to end as quickly as possible so that we could do something cool instead. Wait, I did take notes, they're just sparse. My account begins "Creepy Mask-Monster at the beginning of Spectro very very wrong." Other hi-lights include, "Mask-o-Trons seem less creepy," "bus people missing legs," "Giant fish is... giant," "Ariel's float - no wardrobe malfunction. Maybe next time."
During the parade I counted three pagan gods: Poseidon, Dionysus, and Artemis.
HaleyB said:
I think we called Horsey from the parade. Or at least we thought about calling her. Because of her great fondness for the creepy guys with the big heads.
M. S. said:
After the parade ( I can only infer that it ended since I have notes about post-parade activity) we went and met Push, which I quite enjoyed. He asked a lady what a Pirate's favorite letter was. She said "Arrrrrr" with the proper piratical inflection. As someone who had been milking pirate jokes for may years, I was proud, all of us were generally delighted. Push replied, "well actually it's a little known fact, but pirates actually prefer Q." Sophie was very delighted when "the trash can asked to have a picture with him."
From there we went and found a spot to watch fireworks, and H. and I discussed the Sidewalk SUVs that are all over. We eventually found a spot. My toes were run over at least four times by strollers, and one Sidewalk SUV.
The fireworks show is so much better in Anaheim, that we were a little disappointed. I put in my notes that the
Disneyland display is "much much better. By far."
The fireworks were still okay, but they had characters doing voices over part of it, thus I wrote, "Oh God please no. Not Genie again. Robin Williams' spastic coked-up free-association ramblings seemed funny to me as an eight year old child, but now he is a no-talent hack who basically gets himself worked up and speaks in tongues. Not my thing." So at this point, while I could go on for a lot longer, in the interest of getting this thing posted I am just going to stop right here.
HaleyB said:
This section was really not very funny. Sorry 'bout that.
I could go gank some dialog from The West Wing or Napoleon Dynamite, but that has all been done so many times before.
One way to get rid of them is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time we went over to Shelbyville during the war, I wore an onion on my belt....which was the style at the time...you couldn't get those white ones, you could only get those big yellow ones.................now where was I........oh yeah, the important thing was I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, you couldn't get those...
Rabbit hole-
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=11758401#post11758401
The spell checker really doesn't like "Criminy Crackerswoggle," TFI.
Very funny! Apparently you have been hanging around with teenagers. 
And here I thought it was in my honor since the number 14 has such special significance in my trip report. 
.
Pure appearance, really, we're very nice! 
Mrs. Silly, count at least another reader in, from your 3.5. 
TFI. (FYI - TFI means FYI). 
