Chapter Three: The Day of the Grump
I've been dreading writing about this day. I don't know what happened....well, I guess I do. I mean, I was just myself, and let myself be tired and fall into my normal Disney routine (which is walk around, take in the sights, be in my own little content bubble) and by the end of the day I really, really didn't want to be in Disney the next two days. I honestly didn't.
So...I'm going to try and write this chapter as fast as possible. Because reliving it isn't such a great feeling.
I woke up at 8 like I had the day before...we got out of the hotel at the same 9:15-ish time period. It's kind of shocking to me the difference in traveling with different people - it's very noticeable for me right now because I've just traveled with so many different types of people in such a close proximity to each other. I've got my lazy teacher schedule down - get up, get dressed, makeup takes the longest, and ready to go. So an average morning takes me 20 minutes to a half hour depending on if I chose an outfit the night before or not. I'm also strangely a morning person for someone who would be very happy to stay in bed and nap all day.
Anyway, moving on. This is what we call procrastination.
We walked over to Epcot. My original plan, which I had run by my aunt a few days previous, was to eat at the bakery in France (which opens at 9) and then go over to Futureworld. I had also been hoping to use the FP+ I had for Mission Space solo before we did our other two FP+.
No dice on either.
When we got to the International Gateway there was a CM standing there and from what I could hear her saying to another family that went over to her something was going on - I don't know if it was a private event or something had happened to keep the bakery closed but it didn't matter.
So: Plan B! Which is actually my normal breakfast stop since before Starbucks existed:
Sunshine Seasons!
I have had a deep love of Sunshine Seasons ever since I was a teenager and got an amazing soup with possibly the biggest piece of matzah I've ever had and even last year when Jey and I were obsessed with the fact that Disney had Starbucks (something that, if you look at my DL TR you'll see still holds very true) we still beelined for Sunshine Seasons.
I got:
iced mocha, banana, and croissant berry pudding.
I actually had a small problem with this at the register. The woman put it in as a quick service meal (which it counted as) but it wouldn't recognize it. She was flustered but very apologetic and the manager very easily overrode it once he was able to get to us but there was a problem at another register as well and he was fixing that first. I think they were having computer issues, honestly, so I wasn't upset or annoyed with them! Also it was like 9:30 so it wasn't like there was no place to sit or anything. There were tables a-plenty!
My aunt got basically the same thing. Probably hot coffee instead of iced, and probably no banana - probably a water. My brain's a bit fuzzy on the details.
By the time we were done eating I had very little time left for Mission Space so we just went to our next FP. For our first FP:
I know it seems silly to get a FP for Spaceship Earth but I did for a couple of reasons - 1: since it's the first ride most people hit I knew it'd be busy at that point and I definitely was not wrong, 2: there really wasn't anything else to use a FP for.
We went through and were blissfully not stuck in Ancient Greece (it happened to my parents 3 out of the past 4 times they've been on Spaceship Earth AND they were evacced from there 2 of those times; it's become a running joke!) and left. My aunt had to use the lav at that point which is why my picture's at a strange angle.
We went back to the Land and rode Livin' With the Land which I much tell you is honestly one of my favorite rides, silly as it is. I grew up gardening with my mother when I was a kid so I've just always loved the ideas presented there, I guess! After we got off we walked right on over to Soarin' and used our next FP. My aunt nearly didn't go on it, for fear of the unknown, but a friend had been on it before so it was okay. She loved it. I....I liked it at the time but hooboy I can't wait for the new one. I am currently enamored with the digital copy in Disneyland and don't know if I could go back to the grainy film, no matter how much I love the ride.
After that we started walking the World Showcase, since it was after 11, clockwise. I had a few minutes where my aunt was looking at the Arribas Bros. things so I started wandering around the Mexico pavilion, trying to take pictures because it's such a wonderfully themed area (I love the Mexican pavilion - the people who work there are always friendly and helpful; I could stay in there for hours). I didn't do a great job, but I think I did okay for someone who had just figured out their low-level/movement setting on a new-to-me camera the day before, maybe?
I saw my aunt waiting outside the Arribas Bros. storefront so I went over to her and we rode Rio del Tiempo or whatever it is now - the Three Caballeros ride. She hadn't been on it since before it had changed and I may have a small obsession with those three birds. I took pictures but they came out pretty horribly, and none of them are much different from the pictures I took last year, so I guess I didn't save them? Oh well.
Moving on.
We walked through the countries - though we skipped Norway
. I guess I wasn't talking much? It was commented upon - "do you not talk to Jey when you're together?" (no, actually, I don't, I guess, coz I thought I was talking a normal amount) and "can you tell me when we're going into a store instead of just walking to it?" (I apologized for that, as I had misunderstood what she wanted to do I guess? She had told me she had wanted to go through the countries so I was just going country to country and it was so hot I was personally ducking into the AC).
This....is going to turn into a venting session, I'm sorry, guys. Like I said, this was not a good day for me.
I...was having personal issues that day. On our arrival day my aunt flat out told me she was reading my text messages over my shoulder, going so much as to comment on them and tell me that if I'm reading them in public they're not private. Which irked me. So I was being very careful about how and when I was reading my texts because I didn't really want her reading anything that wasn't for her eyes. And I was getting quite a few texts that were very personal. See, I had gotten a text from my mother the night before that my mother's sister, who is very frail and has horrendous arthritis, had somehow lost her balance and had fallen, hurting her back. My mother couldn't be with her, as they live close to 6 hours north of us, so my cousin was calling/messaging my mother the blow-by-blow of what was going on/making sure everything was up to date in their knowledge of the family medical history, and my mother was texting me, letting me know what was going on, how she was, etc. Just really private at the time, personal things going on in my mother's family that I didn't want to alert anyone else to until we had all the information.
So I kept walking away from my aunt in the stores, sometimes legitimately to look at other things since we have different tastes, and sometimes as a pretense so I could just check my phone and make sure my mum was okay. I did tell my aunt that something had happened but I didn't have any information, which was true, just so she knew there was something up, but my not sticking right with her seemed to start a conflict I wasn't aware of.
Here's a random picture of Italian masks to lighten the mood:
When we got to America I sat down inside after saying I'd like to watch the America Pavilion show. I have no idea why I wanted to as it's definitely not my cup of tea, but I just had the urge to and I figured if anyone would see it with me it'd be my aunt. So we went in, I sat down, and the Voices of Liberty came out. I stayed in my corner while my aunt went over to listen to them; I just needed to get myself organized and just relax for a few minutes, I was so tired. I honestly almost fell asleep on that floor. The only reason I didn't was because they finished with the National Anthem and I auto-zombie-moded into standing. My aunt came back gushing about the Voices of Liberty.
Guys. I have a confession.
I really dislike Voices of Liberty.
Please, feel free to throw all rotten fruits and veggies at me. I know. I have no idea why, it's just not my cup of tea. Which is weird since I really don't dislike a lot of musical things. It's possibly that they give me flashbacks of concerts in the park when I was little with singing groups trying to sound like VoL and missing the mark that just put me off of the music they sing? I don't know... I admitted that and she seemed baffled.
Anyway, up we went on the escalator. I took this picture of the flags:
And promptly nearly killed the man in front of me because just as I was lowering my camera the escalator lurched to a sudden stop! So we had to walk up the last few steps. The show was as cheesy as I remember it and I'm still not sure why I wanted to see it again but I did so that should curb that craving for a while!
Our next stop was Japan. My aunt was raving about kakigori because it's my dad's favorite snack and she just HAD to try it (she asked if we could get it all the way back before we got to Mexico.) She got just the strawberry and I got my old standby from teen years: rainbow
It was good to have in the heat. We sat and listened to the drummers and I watched a giant group of Argentinian girls walk by on some sort of mission (probably going back to the hotel and rounding them up as they went because there were chaperones on either end of the herd). It was the biggest group of them I'd seen in a while so I remember commenting about it.
Once we were done eating we went into the store. I really wanted to just slowly look through the store but as i went through the anime section I noticed that my aunt was just shadowing me. Not looking, not doing anything, just shadowing. It actually made me really uncomfortable. I don't know what she was actually doing but this? This was weird. I tested it. I didn't look at anything (actually at that point I couldn't look at anything; I hadn't even been able to pull my glasses out of my case so I was going on the hope that they hadn't suddenly changed the store on me after 16 visits of the same layout) and just kind of wound my way through the stuff, taking random turns and doubling back. I told her twice she didn't need to be right on me, that she could go look at things, and finally in the second-to-last room I stopped and flat-out asked her why she wasn't looking at anything. She told me she just happened to be looking at all the same things I was. I pointed out that she couldn't be when I wasn't even stopped and looking at anything. At that point she walked a little bit away then told me she'd wait outside for me. It was strange. I know that when I was in high school and loved all things Japan she really disapproved so I think that was some of.
See, honestly and candidly (and man I'm sorry I'm using you guys as a sounding board but at this point it's kind of cathartic), my aunt still sees me as a child. I know she does. She treats me like one. But she also really looks down on the things I like, even if she doesn't mean to. All week she kept making comments about how she'd never spend so much money on something as unnecessary as a Disney Dooney, knowing full well that I have two Disney Dooney purses, and a part of me knows she didn't mean anything by it but another part of me...I don't know.
I just enjoyed the time to collect myself. I went back to the first room and walked through slowly, calming myself down. I had a conversation with a dad and son duo who were trying to figure out why the kit-kats were green. I came out maybe ten minutes later and we continued on our way, but I just wasn't feeling it. I felt on edge and altogether uncomfortable.
I know a lot of it was me, but I'm very used to not being tethered to someone's side. That's not how Jey and I travel - heck, that's not even how my parents and I traveled, even when I was a teenager. As long as I called or - in the time before cellphones - met them at spot A in ten minutes, everything was fine.
We kind of passed through Morocco. I told her why I didn't want to go into the pavilion without going into the embarrassing story because it's not something I really wanted to explain (short, home version: back in March 2013 I, er, may have gone on an impromptu date with a CM from Morocco and I kind of avoid the pavilion even though I'm pretty positive all the men who worked there then are gone because they were all on the international program) and we ended up in France. I had originally wanted to see the movie but it was hot and we both needed to at least rinse off the sweat before we went back out for dinner, so we just looked in the shops instead. We started in the perfume shop, which I loved but I had already bought my precious Laila. My aunt was waffling over one of the perfumes because it was expensive (actually as a perfume hoarder it wasn't a bad price) and I tried to help her convince herself she wanted it. She ended up buying it, which is good because it was her only big purchase for the trip and she really did like the smell of it. I thought I took pictures while I waited for her to go back and buy it, but I must have just checked in with my mother or simply people watched because I have 0 things from France and I had 3 cameras with me so that's saying something!
We were right at the International Gateway so we walked back to the hotel. My aunt stopped at the bakery to get the second resort mug that we hadn't claimed yet (i have so many and I knew I wouldn't use it since Boardwalk's kind of a pain to use the mugs at so I told her she could have both of them) while I told her I'd meet her back in the room and trekked back to the room and the glorious shower to rinse off. Honestly I'm surprised she didn't beat me to the room, even with the small line she said she had - I was so hot and tired and lazy that I actually ended up taking the elevator from the boardwalk-level to the main floor, walked over to the main elevators, and took the main elevator up to the 3rd floor to our room.
I showered and napped a little before we were ready to go to dinner.
