On Monday, Brian and I headed over to his mom's house to spend some time with his little sister and her fiance before they left for their new home in North Carolina. We spent a couple of hours there and then headed over to Target to look for a new swimsuit for me. I'm trying to find ways to keep myself excited about the prospective Portland trip so that I don't end up chickening out and a new swimsuit seemed like a good incentive. However, we had no luck there. Bra tops are en vogue this year, and unfortunately those don't run small enough for me.
Monday night we got a call from my mom letting us know that my grammie was in the hospital. It wasn't anything too serious, at least not as far as I'm aware, but hospitals are no fun to be at, so we spent some time on Tuesday and Wednesday visiting with her, before she was discharged.
On Tuesday after our visit with grammie, Brian and I headed to a few more stores for swimsuits, but no luck. Tuesday night I found one at Forever 21's online store that looked perfect. It has sequins. They don't carry extra small swimwear, so I had to order a small. Fingers crossed that it fits.
The Old Town Carnival arrived on Thursday. Brian and I had been planning on going on Friday, but we started discussing the possibility of going on Thursday instead. I wasn't feeling too hot (my period tends to throw off my GI tract) and wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to give it a go, but I ended up not having to make the decision because my brother stopped by for a visit. Adam and I started talking about pancakes and Brian said that all this talk of pancakes made him want to make some. Adam said he'd eat some and I said I'd have a smaller one, since Brian and I had already had dinner about an hour prior.
After Adam finished his pancake, he asked for another. I was starting to get full, but Brian makes delicious pancakes, so I told him that if he made me a very small pancake, I'd eat it. This is what he came up with:
A few minutes later, Brian called me over to show me the even tinier pancakes he had made. Naturally I had to eat one of those as well.
Pancakes of various sizes.
One of Brian's teeny pancakes, pre-toppings. This one was about the size of a quarter.
Anyway, enough about pancakes. Friday rolls around and it's carnival day. Neither Brian nor I are really into carnivals, but sometimes it can be nice to step outside your comfort zone and try something new. However, some combination of the hot temperatures, overindulging in pancakes, and my usual GI tract maladies has left me feeling worse than I had on Thursday. Not awful, like I'm sure most people would be perfectly fine functioning under the level of sickness I was experiencing, but I'm a baby when it comes to stomach/GI tract issues. I didn't really want to go to the carnival anymore. I might not have gone at all, but I had mentioned my plan in this blog and I was going to have to report back to you all one way or the other, so I took the chance and went.
When I'm dealing with anxiety, I like to break whatever task I'm trying to accomplish into a series of smaller steps. That way it makes the task less intimidating and even if I can't get through the whole thing, I can tell myself that at least I achieved this step or that step. My goals for the carnival were first to get a bag of cotton candy and then to get a photo of me with said cotton candy near the carnival. That was what I had to do to consider the trip a success.
The first hurdle that came up was parking. Brian suggests parking at Rite Aid, which he estimates is about a five minute walk from the park where the carnival is being held. At that moment, five minutes seemed too long and I asked if we could try parking closer. We left pre-wristband time to try to beat the rush and we managed to snag a spot right in front of the carnival.
Brian and I stepped out of the car and immediately saw the cotton candy booth. We decided to walk around the carnival to see what there was before getting the food. The one ride I had wanted to do was bumper cars. I used to go to Santa's Village with my family when I was a kid and that was one of my favorite rides. However, as Brian and I approached, the thought of being shut into a ride and not being able to get out killed its appeal. There was also the factor of the cost. I did some quick mental math and realized that it would be more than $12 for Brian and me to do bumper cars once. That seemed rather excessive for what would be maybe a five minute ride. I'd like to believe that it was the cost that influenced me not to do it more than my anxiety, but I really can't say for sure.
Brian and I finished our walk around and, after getting yelled at by half a dozen carnival workers trying to convince us to play their games, we made it back to the cotton candy booth. We each got a bag of cotton candy, so step one accomplished. We wandered outside the carnival. Now I needed a picture with my food.
We had spent maybe a grand total of five minutes inside the carnival, so it seemed like a waste to just go home. Brian suggested walking around Old Town. I didn't want to travel too far from the car, but figured a short stroll might be nice. We were right beside the Penobscot River and I suggested walking over to get a closer look. We sat down at a bench for a cotton candy break and looked out at the river. The river level was really low, so when we finished our snacking, we were able to walk down onto a dried up portion of the riverbank.
Looking out at the river.
A view of the carnival from the riverbed.
Shells in the river.
Riverbed selfie.
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