Third Day in Florida

On the second day my Grandmom had a delusion that we were supposed to eat breakfast at her house, and we saw that she bought materials when we went to use her bathroom so we agreed to eat there the next day.

I woke up next to my sister and apparently my mom woke me and was wearing my green Brasil jacket (which contained my Aviators) and I just said, "MY JACKET" and apparently dreamed she had been wearing it the previous night. Then I guess I woke up and got ready to go, and we walked over at about 9:30. My grandmom said we were very punctual.

We were afraid she would make the batter too thick so I handled the batter with a little help from Jess, and Jess tried to cook at first but they kept getting burnt so I took over. They turned out all fine but I thought some of them were mushy in the middle and they were "wheat honey" pancakes rather than just plain pancakes, so that wasn't great. My parents came at the end of breakfast after we had helped clean up a little bit and talked to my grandmom about moving and her whole ordeal and basically ordered her to keep it colder in her apartment. It was weird. We were about to go shopping and Jenn and her family were going to come for a spaghetti lunch; Grandmom kept trying to leave with us but after a while we got it through that she had to stay to have lunch with the rest of them.

The walk to and from Grandmom's was very wet because it rained the night before. I walked barefoot through the grass and my dad said it could have lizards and snakes and he was serious.

We went to the stores a tiny bit later and my mom saw a jewelry store where she could get her watch battery replaced. It was decorated from Christmas and it had very gawdy jewelry that Mrs. Rock would have loved. The couple running the store was from Brooklyn and an old customer walked into their store down here and was surprised. They moved because of the weather (the owners, that is). We asked how long a drive it was to Kennedy Space Center - about 90 minutes, they agreed.

We kept walking by the shops. My dad asked what 3 Rednecks was because it was headlining one of the places; my sister and I figured it was a band or a show. It was very hot and I kept feeling tired and just a little bit sick to my stomach, and I was just not in a very great mood. We went into some stores looking for gifts or sunglasses and were mostly disappointed. One store we stayed in for a while was April Daze; I look at "Porn for Women" which had muscley men doing things like cleaning a cat litterbox with talk bubbles saying things like, 'Nothing better than cleaning up after the cutest things on four legs.' The shop owner said, "THAT'S SO FUNNY YOU'RE READING THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE AFRAID!!!" which drew the attention of my dad to the fact that I was reading Porn for WOMEN, which was a little bit awkward. I think my sister got some journals for her students there.

There was one shop with two very small dogs in it of the owners' and they were very cute, but we left quickly.

There was one shop with a peace-sign shirt that I liked but it was for girls. They also had things that let water fall down glass that you put up against a wall that I like so much, but they were prohibitively expensive, ruining my plans to line my entire house with them.

After that we looked for a place to get lunch. Burger King's broiler was broken, so we went to McDonald's, and I got chicken. I took a long time to eat because I took the fried part off, and I ended up not even being done eating when everyone else was, so I had to rush and eat a little bit of the fried part, too.

We were supposed to go to Sea World that day but it was a long drive and expensive and no one really cared enough to go, so we went to a local Florida Oceanographic Institute instead with Jenn and her family. We got in free. My sister spilled some soda on the car floor. We looked at sting rays and then went on a nature trail walk and I talked to Jenn about the movie Milk and things at Brown and politics and how people called her husband Dead an "Obamacan" and that she was proud to have converted him, which I thought was sort of funny. We walked back to the stingray pool to watch a program on them and then you had an opportunity to feed them because they had been de-barbed, but it was too slow for me so I lost attention and wandered to other things. There was a hermit-crab-finding-its-shell game, a starfish pool, and a help the turtle find its way to the sea game. We checked the gift shop and then I checked out the indoor part and then we left for the Shell Beach.

(We saw bathtub beach the day earlier; it was guarded by a shallow reef and had very calm water)

Shell Beach was largely eroded and had huge coral/rocks sticking out everywhere which was very painful. Richard danced on them which was dangerous and he didn't seem to understand why. We drove down to a nice beach while Jenn/Jess/Mom/youngkids walked to the nice beach, about a half-mile down. We hung out there for a little while and then went back to our hotel and showered and watched TV before going to dinner at a place called Dolphin Bar.

The wait was very long. First we went to the gift shop but there was nothing I liked, so I went back and saw my dad at the desk buying a giftcard for the Brandt's (since we're staying in their apt). He told me there was a lot of history and to check out the pictures, so I did, they were of people I didn't know, including some girl named Florence whose last name I forget (it started with an L) and letters from Ronald Reagan and an old couple sitting beneath a picture of Richard Nixon and lots of other people I didn't know. My mom made my dad buy her a really gawdy silver/stone beachy bracelet for her big Christmas gift since she's impossible to shop for and he hadn't gotten her anything big. She liked it, and liked that she got it cheaper than his website said it was worth (she checked at home). There was a book on the table of letters from kids in a JD Parker 4th Grade class to someone who got them a class subscription to Cousteau's Kids, which apparently had stuff about albino dolphins, beluga whales, and pollution in its September and October issue. The kids wrote well but used the word "elated" to describe their reaction to the magazine with surprising frequency.

I texted when I got bored. My sister was about to make us play the Name Game when our table was called (the one about people's initials) and my dad was getting really impatient. My mom didn't like the table so we got another one that she liked about 5 minutes later. I got chicken and chocolate cake, and we fed bread to a bunch of catfish that were hanging around the dock at the back of the restaurant. When I got back, I mostly read SomethingAwful's topic on creepy reads from Wikipedia, then came here.

Peace out.