Day 86 (Recall) Fake Family Fun

Written 2/22/11

A few years ago, my Trinity trekked to our joint university along with quite a few other classmates from our high school. Among those who joined us on our 6-hour pilgrimage was Susie, who kind of became the fourth point to our Trinity, especially when Shay found the love of her life and went AWOL for a while. True love supposedly does that to you…or so I’ve heard.

At some point, much like the creation of the “Trinity” it became accepted that Nicky, Susie, and I had become a funky little “family.” Nicky was the “mother” who expected the “father”, me, to get her shiny things and kalbi, and together, we consistently expressed our disappointment in Susie, our “daughter” for her semi-hilarious inability to hold hands with another human being for longer than ten seconds without squirming.

…I take this as a sign that we might have a few family and intimacy issues but that’s for another day.

While I was admiring some prints at the arts festival last month, the seller mentioned that there was going to be another fair in February. Turns out that it was the Coconut Grove Arts festival and so my pseudo-family embarked on a little field trip of our own.

I picked up mi esposa mas hermosa  and our loving daughter before I simultaneously scared Susie and exasperated Nicky with my driving “skills.” Along the way, Nicky played our favorite musical songs from The Lion King, Rent, Anastasia and Swan Lake (both of which, contrary to popular belief, were not made by Disney), and Avenue Q.

Susie stared at us blankly at the Broadway songs and we coerced her into singing with the Disney films. She actually glared at me when I wanted to put Kiss the Girl on pause to clarify directions.

One of the first things to greet us was a set of wire-mesh “sculptures” of dancers that Susie gushed over.

As for Nicky, the first thing to catch her eye was unsurprisingly a print of shoes that were bedazzled. 

The rest of the day was spent looking at a variety of funky displays including faces and figurines made out of tech, 

birds made out of gilded rulers and old protractors,

hilarious Humpty Dumpty figurines that all three of us laughed over,

Oh noes Ted! You're dead!

It says "Ohmmmlete". I giggled. A lot

and a sculpture zoo on the field that I spent far too much time on. 

Itsa bear!! AND penguins. Eek!!

I tink I thaw a pussycat!!!

 We also made regular commentary over how idiotic it was that, for the first time in four years we all managed to step outside of the house without bags the size of a pregnant woman’s belly. We took a lot of cards and pamphlets from a lot of booths with prints, kinetic energy…uh... sculptures (I guess?) 

 and so many photos of Asia, Africa, and Europe that made us all want to hop onto the next plane to go on an overseas vacation.

We took a break a couple of hours later, reveling in some of the…interesting food stands available (although $3 for water?? Are you shitting me??) 

I pointed and laughed and insisted on taking a picture

Guy in booth: The legs are so big that we couldn't fit the entire "Turkey in the title"

It was ridiculously hot and we arranged our chairs around a palm tree in a futile attempt to not die of dehydration. Nicky indulged in a gyros wrap the size of a premature fetus while Susie and I scarfed down some delicious crepes.

We finished up our round of the walks until we hit the outskirts of the festival where Susie found the same earring shop I did when I went to the last art festival with Mina

and Nicky purchased a few wraps from a very eclectic booth.

We left hours later, exhausted and sweaty, with a day’s worth of sweat, dirt and uneven tans gracing our skins. I tore off my pants before I climbed into Stuart (who officially goes by “Spike” when the sun goes down) and Susie raved about the shower that she just couldn’t wait to take.