Catholicism at its very best, and da Creature

We have been quite busy here in Salt Lake City at the CMAA's Sacred Music Colloquium, and da Creature has been HARD at work managing his sensory systems and trying to function during these amazing and beautiful Masses, though they are quite high-sensory overload.

• there is sound:  and in the case of yesterday's Mass, there is also Organ (very very very loud and boisterous Organ, I might add) and chant (all chanted Masses, some Extraordinary Form, which means everything is sung, which I love), and choral polyphony (four-part a capella motets and even choral ordinary).  
• there is smell:  the thurifer(s) knew what they were doing at these Masses and the perfume of the incense rising to heaven was thick and magnificent, and da Creature has adjusted very well to the profound and pervasive smoke throughout these often nearly two-hour Masses
• there is visual stimuli everywhere:  the Cathedral of the Madeleine is incredibly beautiful, rich with paintings and carvings and enormous stained-glass windows
• there is even gustatory input:  and da Creature never fails to comment on the crispness/staleness of his experience of Jesus at the altar rail
• the tactile sensations are generally created by da Creature as he rocks and slams his body into whoever is standing near him, bangs his hand on pew rails when it's overwhelming and leans on you like a kind and familiar large dog when he is calm

If you look closely at the photo above (from http://charlescole.com/ ) at the altar rail there is a little guy in a pale blue shirt next to a lovely young woman (da Sister) in a peach shawl and white veil....that little guy is our Creature about to receive Communion.

Normal vacationish blogging will resume when we get to Moab tomorrow night and tool through Arches National Park.  This has been one of my favorite weeks, though, learning more about Gregorian Chant and teaching da Creature about how beautiful our faith really can be when we SING THE MASS rather than sing at Mass.

Hogle Zoo with Interview and POLAR BEAR SWIMMING

So, today, while da Mama worked very very very hard at Gregorian Chant and Conducting with Charles Cole, da Sister and da Creature were out galavanting around Salt Lake.  Today's adventure took them to the zoo.  It was a great zoo apparently, and he managed an interview:




These are the highlights of today's FUN:




The POLAR BEAR SWIMS AROUND:

YELLOWSTONE!!!!

Twelve hours of driving through the park.  da Sister took hundreds of photos, all of which will be on a new tab marked "Our Flipbook Gallery" with the slideshows set to "fast" and no captions, if and when I have wifi that can handle hundreds of photos in less than hundreds of hours.

In the meantime, enjoy the slideshow on slow WITH captions below of the high points of da Creature's FAVORITE PLACE ON EARTH!!!

We sadly do not have an interview.  The rangers in Yellowstone are all very nice, but very busy and often grouchy (I rather suspect it is the crowds and all the people breaking rules all the time that makes them that way) and most of the families were very intent on getting things done.  We will go back to interviews in quieter attractions.

He did earn his Jr. Ranger badge, but if you click on the header and scroll down a bit, you'll see why you don't get the "achievement" picture I usually put on the blog when he gets one.

No SOTD either today.  She was about to draw when the chaos began which is narrated in the post below this one.

Highlights:

Where'd Y'all GO!???!?!??

An explanation of sorts.  Remember my last post about being exhausted and wanting to rest after our 12 hour day in Yellowstone?  We'll call that the moment before all the chaos began.  So, here's the narrative of what happened next...

We were at This HORRIBLE Place which you should right now tell all of your friends to tell all of their friends to avoid like the plague should you be planning a trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming.  As I was writing my post about Yellowstone being exhausting, da Creature was in the whirlpool tub relaxing, when the motor just stopped running suddenly.  He was whining and I went in to see if I could get it to start, and I pushed the button some, then I fiddled with the timer.  Nothing.  Oh well, I said, it's broken.  He whined more, and played a little while longer.  I noticed that there was a motor blowing very hot air from under the tiny sink and asked da Sister if that had been doing that all the time.  She said it had, and that the whirlpool motor was loud and making strange sounds when it WAS working.

I figured I'd tell them when we checked out, and ate my room service supper which was marginal at best, and took an hour and three phone calls to get. and da Creature wandered around in a spa robe for a little while when all of a sudden,

out of nowhere,

.....the whirlpool tub leapt to life make loud grinding whining noises.  I called the desk in a panic while I had da Sister panic dress da Creature and get him outside because I KNEW something very bad was happening.  No one came... and still no one came.... we had time to completely get all of our things out of the room and be waiting outside while we tried to comfort da Creature who was hysterical.  I could smell the burning wires from outside the cabin.

Finally, a good three minutes later, a guy in a golf cart finally shows up and tells me, "it just needs water".  NO, I told him what had happened and INSISTED that he needed to find a way to shut it off NOW, and so he flipped circuit breakers which accomplished nothing (of course) and as the burning smell became unmistakeable, he called someone in a bit of a panic of his own, and finally found a way to get it turned off.

They decided to placate me by telling me they'd upgrade me, but that they were at capacity and it would take fifteen minutes.  I had HEARD him on the phone with them saying "we have plenty of rooms, let's just move them."  So, after sitting on the sidewalk for a half an hour with a hysterical child, we were moved to an "upgraded" room.

I wanted to get a shower so I could feel a little better after the ordeal, only to discover the shower did not work.  *sigh*  I again decided to just inform them at checkout and cut our losses.

So, at 3:00 in the morning, I awoke to violent gastrointestinal symptoms.  The only person in our group that had eaten anything different for two days was me.  I had eaten the chicken from room service.  So...it is MOST likely that the food poisoning was the chicken.  Thanks, incompetent hotel, for making a miserable experience actually dangerous.

By seven, I had really needed a shower (think about it for a minute, if you've ever had food poisoning) and we needed to drive to Salt Lake City, so I digged deep within myself and forced myself into the drivers' seat to get us out of the mountains.   It was about as awful a thing as you can imagine, but I got the job done.  Once we made it to relatively flat ground again, I let da Sister drive for a while so I could recover some.

By the time we made it to Salt Lake, I was weak and tired, but feeling much more human.  It was only then that I realized that I had put da Creature's Yellowstone Junior Ranger badge that he had worked so hard for the day before on an end table and we had forgotten it in the chaos.  :( :( :(

Fortunately, though, the Park Service is kind enough to send a replacement for him, and it is in the mail as we speak.  :) :) :)

Moral of this story is....not everything that looks nice and seems nice is...sometimes it's the frontal edifice of someone trying to fool you into thinking they are running a service-oriented high end establishment when they are really just jerks who can't run their hotel properly.

No one even apologized.  That just says it all.

12 Hours in Yellowstone...Blogging will be after sleeping

da Creature would like to thank everyone for coming along on his dream trip with him.  He got to see Old Faithful today which is the only thing he specifically said he wanted to do.

We are in Jackson Hole now (finally) and I'm going to go clunk.

The wifi is pretty strange, too, so I'll put all this together tomorrow at some point after we get to Salt Lake City. 

It was a truly long day for us, and it ended with an unexpected upgrade of our motel room through a series of frightening and unfortunate events that involved a possessed in-room jacuzzi tub, electrical near-fires, and a terrified little guy, so I'm gonna go snuggle cuddle with my little guy to help him get over being so very very scared instead of writing our blog post tonight in our upgraded fancy cabin.

See you guys from Salt Lake!

da Mama

Terror on Trail Ridge, Sweeping Beauty, Elk, Alluvial Fun, and MORE

Whinging da Creature says "My butt hurts"  Um, you might want to look behind you kid :-o

Our day began in Denver very very early.  After a drive through Boulder, and up the canyon, we arrived in Estes and went to the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center to pick up the Jr. Ranger things.  Now, some back story on da Mama....every year of my young life (even the year before I was born), until I was about 14, my family went to the Rocky Mountain National Park to hike, and do amazing things.  Most of the time when we went, we took the lovely drive up Trail Ridge Road, so I know it kind of by heart.

FROM THE PASSENGER SEAT.

This is important.  As I drove up the winding familiar road, I began to realize something...I am TERRIFIED of driving on edges of roads with 2000 foot drops and no guard rails or trees or anything between you and DEATH for you and everyone you love most in the world.  Terrified.

I had three massive crying panic attacks which I could not control and had to pull off onto the side "overlook" pullouts.  It was just unbelievably awful for me, and I was trying desperately to put a brave face on it, but couldn't.  So, when we finally made it to the Alpine Visitor's Center, I had to explain to da Creature that sometimes Mommies get scared, really scared, and cry, but you have to be brave and go on, because that's just what you have to do at that moment.

I asked the Rangers what do they do if someone just panics and refuses to go back down the road.  They told me they could call me a tow truck and a cab and for several hundred dollars I did not ever have to drive on that damnable road again.  OR, I could drive around through Grand Junction (four hours).  I knew all of that, and wasn't seriously considering any of those options (right?), especially since we had an appointment at Cheley Colorado Camps at 2:00 PM.

So, da Mama got back in da car and hugged the yellow line like a maniac and downshifted like you do, and drove 20 MPH on the parts where I was on the oustide of the road with the big 'ole drop just a couple of feet away.

We made it, obviously, and went over to the Alluvial Fan to take a small hike (which he whined about mightily while "hiking" but enjoyed of course) to a lovely waterfall.  I was there in the park the season after the lake came crashing through the mountain and made that alluvial fan, and getting to see it all gussied up as an attraction was really amazing for me.

He had fun, duh,, he just didn't believe he would.

Then, we went to Cheley and wandered around to give him a chance to start to visualize himself at Cheley someday and it went really well, even though he was pretty grouchy and tired.

We went to our Motel, and because the dumb travelocity had not really done what I wanted, the lady at the desk (who had an autistic grandson AND nephew) gave us the very best of her cabins so we wouldn't have to walk up stairs.  So, we had a screened porch, and two beds and a sofa bed, and a kitchen...it was WONDERFUL.

We went to dinner in town at a lovely Italian restaurant called Mama Rose's, and then we went to Stanley Park to let him play on the playground.  While he was there, a moment built of God's blessed angels happened...he was trying to climb up a difficult part of the play set, a really tall, open netting kind of thing and he got scared.  She told him he had to go up, and normally in these situations there is a bit of drama and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but he said the following:

"I'm gonna be brave like Mama.  Because sometimes, you just have to be brave and go on.

After that, we went back to the cabin.   Another miracle happened....da Creature sat on the porch for hours, just watching the river and looking at the mountains.  He and da Sister sat side by side and watched the sun sink slowly below the mountains and she told him stories from her two summers at Cheley and it was so special for both of them.

It was an incredibly special day.

The video from his interview is a couple of posts down.  Just click on the header and scroll down to find it.

Here's the highlights:

Yesterday's Interview

Maybe I can make the phone upload yesterday's interview.   The Gollum moment is pretty funny... "What has it got in its pocketses?"
Watch "Interview from highest Visitor Center in America" on YouTube