safari part deux, belated

Now that I have half a chance to sit down and accomplish something while the boys are at school, I am heading back to vacation land of the first week of August. I am returning to the day I covered in this post, when we safari'ed in the morning, journeyed into the deepest caverns east of the Mississippi at midday then returned to the safari place in the afternoon. 

It was a very hot day. Before we entered the Natural Bridge Caverns, we sat and ate lunch outside. Toots said, "I will sit here, and you will sit there, and we can have a picnic!" to Mr. Cynic, who nicely obliged her.

I will eventually post some cavern pics, as soon as I have a good chance to go through them and single out a couple of not so dark highlights from Luray and this place. After a chill visit deep underground, we headed back to the Safari Village to walk around and feed some more animals. Thank goodness for all day leave and return tickets!

African Pygmy Goats and my somewhat pygmy teen

I can't recall the name of this primate, but he was way too hot. Can you see his tongue hanging out?

African Pygmy Goat. They tickled.

Hot peacock. I love peacocks. This guy found a rare piece of shade.

Here is where he found the shade - in Kangaroo land. This Red Kangaroo looked like a playah. 

What?

Take your picture and get outta here.

Lorikeets! They are loud and sound cranky. 

A friend of mine in Sydney talks about the racket they make often in his yard.

Squawkity squawk squawk!

What are you looking at? Squawk! 

Rainbow birds

Captain Comic was fascinated by the warthogs.

Hot Tigers.

Hot Honey and Toots

These box type turtles - sorry can't recall species - got very horny later and all three kids were like "ew!" and Captain Comic couldn't stop giggling while he was repulsed.

Different kind of llamas. Thank you, Mr. Cynic for humoring your sister.

And okay, your mother, too.

I wish I could have gotten this shot in full context.

Captain Comic walked up and the lemur jumped right at him to say hello.

Spider monkeys!

This giraffe was very disingenuous. But he still ate from our hands after he huffed indignation.

De Brazza's monkeys again, like at the other zoo earlier. 

They clearly did not want to be there or to have us look at them.

They do this cool thing where they turn from you and sit super still for hours at a time when they feel threatened. Hide in plain sight. 

You smell good to eat.

Tamarin monkeys are among my favorite. Creepy little humans.

After the overheated walk around, we got back in Bertha with Captain Comic in my old passenger seat from the morning. Why should I have all the fun just because the back windows don't roll down? Honey was ecstatic to sit in the air conditioning and drive around again.

Captain Comic was a little fearful, but thrilled to feed the animals.

Especially the large "raptors"

Just look at his face in the side mirror.

I love that kid.

He loves Emu.

And Ostrich and Rhea, too. 

In fact, he didn't want to feed anymore mammals after they pecked in his bucket, rather like dinosaurs.

Gorgeous Rocky Mountain Elk I fed in the morning.

Bison closer and in the shade after their morning plains walk.

I kind of forced him to feed the Elk. He was very intimidated, but I got him to pet the big guy.

Hello again.

Captain Comic ran off with my reference pamphlet since my last safari post. 

This was one of the Oryx. Jogged my memory hard for that one. 

Arabian Oryx

Wildebeast, I think.

Hotchatta-cha-cha Llama. 

And thus concludes our safari adventures in the mountains of western Virginia. Caverns coming soon.

i won!

Liz Hum is the author of Vampires Don't Drink Wine, a new collection of short stories that put Vampires back where they belong, in your nightmares doing twisted murderous things - Not sparkling or dating humans while drinking synthetic blood.

She is an excellent and opinionated blogger here and here. She is married to a Viking and the mother of three Viking children in the suburbs of Chicago. Her No BS meter runs in the red zone all. the. time.





I was lucky and won a hard copy in her blog raffle. Please click on the book cover to purchase her book. I bet she'll buy her neighborhood bike helmets if she sells enough of them. At 99 cents a piece in e-reader format, that's a lot of books to sell to keep rabble-rousers safe and blood off the streets.

Maybe. She had to get the idea for the vampires from somewhere....

1st day of school

Yesterday was the first day of Mr. Cynic's Junior year and Captain Comic in seventh grade.

Mr. Cynic has been riding the bus to high school for the past couple of years, though we live .4 mile from the school. That's closer than I lived to my high school, to which I walked - up hill both ways in the snow. Seriously, I did. It was hilly where I lived growing up in Connecticut. Not here though, and only the occasional appearance of snow.

But back to yesterday, Mr. Cynic and the first day of school. He had the same bus driver for his first two years of high school. She could probably drive her route with her eyes closed. She retired and there was a new bus driver, who drove rather like a lab mouse introduced to a new maze. She had no idea where she was going in the morning. And again in the afternoon. At every intersection she turned the wrong way, according to Mr. Cynic. When his bus was significantly late on the way home, I received a text message: going to be late. bus driver doesn't know what she's doing.


When he finally arrived home, he declared he was never taking the bus again. I smiled. The boy who eschews exercise will be getting some. Every day.

Captain Comic's bus involved less drama but more nerves on my part. He has been riding the SPED bus since we moved here five years ago. He stands at the end of the driveway in full sight of his peers at the corner bus stop to get on a different bus. Last Halloween, I found out that they all knew him, but he didn't really know them. As we walked around the neighborhood, the common cry was "I see him at the bus stop." Last spring, his IEP team and I decided it was time he ride with his neurotypical peers. And when I had an IEP team meeting last week, they all told me, "Mom, you cannot walk him to the bus stop. You cannot ask his friends if it's okay for him to sit with them. He needs to do this himself. He's thirteen."

And while my instincts know this is true for any other kid, I still want to protect him, manage his interactions. So I stood at the window with the camera and watched him. He did alright.

Which one is Captain Comic? Look at the socks.

I checked in via email with his case manager and he had a great first day, even with a homeroom teacher change. 

Mr. Cynic is excited to have friends in most of his classes, and is excited to be taking Music Theory with most of his band mates. Keep in mind, they have not rehearsed all together once as of yet, so band mates is still a relatively loose term.

In the meantime, Grandma took Toots with her to her morning pool exercises, and after three weeks without even cracking the manuscript with all the mayhem here, I had an excellent edit session at the local library. I dove into the creative river, doused myself and completely rewrote two chapters really well! The session exceeded my expectations, especially since I felt so lost as I opened the document.

Honey, post-surgery, went back to work yesterday, even though I felt it was too early, but I can't keep him from work. It's his thing. It's hard to see that he loves it sometimes, but deep down, I think this is his creative drive, even when used for others' purposes and under crushing deadlines. 

So we have returned to the usual mayhem, and having a routine for it that's a little stiffer than summertime benefits us all, especially after this area has been hit by Mother Nature with smoke from the great Dismal Swamp fires for weeks now, and an earthquake and hurricane last week. The ten to fifteen inches of rain that came with Irene did not douse the swamp fires. Yesterday afternoon, we had a good bit of buckets full rain while Captain Comic was walking Lucy, and with them came Tornado Warnings. And still there is smoke in the air. But we go on, relatively unscathed, unlike many of my friends and family all over the East Coast and inland. Some are still waiting for power after the Hurricane while others in Texas droughts and fire fields, are now without well water. 

I feel very blessed that we are back to our normal. Almost - Toots starts preschool next week.

things and school

Captain Comic's birthday evening before Hurricane Irene. 

Pogo sticks are fun.

My head is spinning.

I haven't been sneaker or school supply shopping yet.

Honey had surgery, and is recuperating at home. Now to wait for official biopsy results. But the surgeon said it looked good.

I had an IEP meeting with Captain Comic and his team this morning for the start of 7th grade. He made it about a third through before claiming, "I am about to have a freak out." How's that for self-advocacy?

We let him have a break in his case manager's classroom while we went over the Accommodations.

We have our old case manager, which we were told at the end of last year wouldn't happen, so we are extra grateful that he has a familiar anchor.

I can't get over that Mr. Cynic will be a Junior this year. How......? He informed me yesterday that he is now the VP of the Anime Club. I know he's still interested in the Writing Club, and he's applying for jobs and is still trying to put together his band, writing songs, a book, and going to his bass lessons, starting to go to local music open mics...No wonder every time I see him, he's merged as one into the sofa.

Toots is going into a 3 day/3 year old preschool class this year. She's an old pro now and asking for swim and ballet lessons.

Captain Comic is asking to get back into a Martial Arts class. It's been about and year and half since he was a blue belt w/2 black stripes in Tae Kwan Do. Now he wants Karate.

Looks like the usual mayhem is getting started and more mayhemic than it has been before.

And now there's my bellydancing class on Mondays and Chorus on Thursdays....

That's okay, I like the mayhem. I just wish writing didn't drop out of sight so easily. It's been two weeks since I opened my manuscript to try to finish this draft, and my writing group wants to meet on the first day of school. I'll have to see how that works for my ability to concentrate.

Happy September everyone!

aftermath

Hurricane Irene came and went, and left a lot of damage in her wake. My family hunkered down, battened down the hatches, took naps, did puzzles, read by candlelight for just a little while. Overall, though the house sounded threateningly battered and buffeted, in the end we really had no damage. Just had to clean up a lot of little branches in the yard. some not so little, but still we could carry them.

I wish I could say the same for everyone. A mother lost her child in Newport News, near us. Old college friends' family in upstate New York had to evacuate their house by rescue boat. Within twenty-four hours prior, they had an epic battle to remove a squirrel from their house. It has not been a good weekend for them. They are okay, but their driveway and basement are awash.

Many others had it much worse. A fabric artist's studio in Shelburne Falls, MA, picked up from its foundation and took a ride down a raging river that had formerly been the street. There is impressive video of that pink brick building before and after its journey floating around the internet. My apologies for the wordplay.

Back in our vicinity, Southside, at Sandbridge Beach area of Virginia Beach, again, there is impressive video and photography of houses ripped apart there around the internet.. It's my family's favorite beach to day trip to. The little low lying town next to me was under mandatory evacuation, but a friends of mine stayed while the husband volunteered for Community Emergency Services.

In the meantime, here, I am amazed that Mother Nature can go from this:

The night before Hurricane Irene

To this on the day of:

Taken early on. Later those birches were bending in half like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. I did not want to be that close to the windows when she was at full strength.

To this the following day:

Solid blue, grace of an egret.

My hopes and wishes are that you and yours are all well, and survived to pick up the pieces as we did. 

Blessings.

he's a teen

It's hard to believe sometimes that 12:31am thirteen years ago and today are part of the same lifetime.

But it is, and constitutes the whole life so far of one of the most interesting, funniest and challenging people I have ever known.

At 1, 2.5, and with his brother at 1.5 years old.

Mom: Smile.

Capt. Comic: I don't want to smile. At least I've got a thumbsup.

Mom: Don't you dare laugh.

Capt. Comic: Pbbpbpb!

Capt. Comic: C'mon, Mom, I don't want to smile. I can do what I want now that I'm a teen.

Mom: Pikachu!

Seriously, Mom. Just take the picture.

Mom: Then give me an old movie star smile, like Clark Gable.

I love this kid.

I usually post a birthday blog in which I list a number of things about the kid whose birthday it is equal to their age. This time, it took three days to get Captain Comic to come up with a list himself, and in the end he drew it in about 10 minutes. Click to zoom, they're fun drawings.

Just in case you can't tell what he is representing:

1. Making movies.
2. Godzilla.
3. Drawing.
4. Making people laugh.
5. If you don't know, you're lucky. (oops, mom's commentary) Pokemon.
6. Other people singing hurts my ears, "it's like my Kryptonite."
7. Videogames.
8. Star Wars
9. Need I say more? (mom again)
10. Pugs are my latest obsession.
11. The Hill (really a berm at the back of our neighborhood baseball field)
12. Jaws
13. I like fights in movies, like Jackie Chan.

Captain Comic is becoming a teen.

I wonder if that's why Mother Nature is bringing this epic Hurricane Irene?

He's a great kid. He's big, he's loud, he's talented, he's an original and the next handful of years of my life will be epic indeed. I love him.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo.

that kid's got talent

Please click to blow up. It's worth it, really. 

It also grows funnier, the expressions more distinct the more I look at it. 

In the words of King Crimson, The more I look at it...The more I like it. I do think it's good.

*As I proudly showed the kid that he was getting laughs all over various places, he admitted he riffed it from a 'Cyanide & Happiness' strip.