Today was Boyfriend's birthday. Happy birthday, Boyfriend! Since I'm about to receive public aid (more on this later) my budget for Boyfriend's birthday was a little tight. But there are lots of fun things you can do for very little money, especially when you go to the Brookfield Zoo expecting to pay $26 for two adult tickets (plus $9 parking) and some lady walks up to you and says, "Hey, you two going to the zoo?" and you say, "Yes!" and she says, "Here are two free tickets - we have four of them and we only need two." And then you go to the zoo and see the wonderful sights.
Going to the zoo, you never know what kind of "wildlife" you are actually going to encounter. The Brookfield Zoo has a lot of nice exhibits, like its current "Great Bear Wilderness" and the giant primate house. But since it was a beautiful fall Saturday, there were also a lot of animals running free throughout the zoo. It seemed that most of them migrated from the nearby habitat of Indiana and brought with them their packs of screeching young. Some of the creatures appeared as though they could weigh upwards of 500 lbs, and they covered their flesh with Colts and Chicago Bears t-shirts giant enough to fit their massive frames.
After the zoo, Boyfriend and I went back home to have dinner and enjoy the ice cream cake that I made for him. In terms of presentation, the outside of the cake (frosted in whipped vanilla ice cream) could have been a little nicer, but in terms of taste, I think it was tasty. It was a devil's food chocolate cake with cookies 'n' cream ice cream filling, frosted with vanilla ice cream. And now there is a ton of it, even though Boyfriend and I ate lots of it already.
The zoo and cake weren't Boyfriend's only presents, though. After cake and some Louis C.K. on Netflix, we got back in the car and I had Boyfriend follow the GPS without knowing where we were going to end up. There was one more surprise in store, and it was southwest of the city in some place called Alsip. I did not know anything about Alsip when I found "Fun Time Family Square" but according to the Wikipedia page, Alsip is a village in Cook County, Illinois and "is known as the home of Swap-O-Rama, Shelly 'Cankle Donuts' and the Mullet." This would have been good information to have before showing up at Fun Time Family Square, where I planned to surprise Boyfriend with go-kart racing. We arrived at FTFS and immediately realized that it was some sort of pre-teen white trash watering hole. I bet if we had come on a different day we could have seen MTV execs scouting for the next cycle of "16 and Pregnant." The go-karts were fun (I went one time! Boyfriend went twice.) but when I researched the place online, there was nothing indicating that we would be subjected to harassment by a gang of terror-mongers wielding fake guns and knives, wearing orange jumpsuits and clown masks, and sneaking up on us when we were just trying to ride the go-karts and get the hell out of Alsip, Illinois. I hate creepy things like that so I was not too thrilled about the haunted house creatures, but after a while it got old and I was more concerned about the little boy waiting in line for go-karts next to boyfriend wearing the "I Heart Boobies" t-shirt. Thankfully, Boyfriend schooled him in go-karts.
I had a three-day weekend this weekend because I took Friday off to go to the DHS and get my food stamps. If you're ever having a really great day, like too great of a day, go to the DHS and you will get instantly depressed, guaranteed! I thought things were going to go okay because I only had to wait about 15 minutes, and then a lady came out and called my name. I went into the office part with her and sat down in her cubicle, and it looked just like all the scenes in "Precious" with Mariah Carey! And it seemed she hated her job about as much as Mariah Carey did, too. So she started asking me the basic questions for the application or what not, even though I already answered most of them online, and then another employee started shouting/laughing about diapers. From what I could tell, someone had visited a home to make sure the parent situation was acceptable, and they found that a baby was being diapered in wipes, instead of actual diapers, which is not okay. And so the person who conducted this visit was telling the whole office about this sad excuse for a parent, and she called my interviewer over to hear it. And so two minutes after I sat down for my appointment, the lady got up and walked over to her coworkers - right in front of me - and stood there making fun of a client, for five minutes. While I waited. And then it was 15 minutes more of stupid questions before I was told that since I don't have a social security card and I didn't bring two forms of ID (apparently my driver's license, proof of insurance, title of my car, health insurance card, credit card, rent receipts, bank statement, and letter from my job were not enough documents to prove that I am me) I will not be getting any food stamps until I can come back to the DHS with those things. And this means I will have to take another day off work, or at least leave early, and go back and be depressed again, after I somehow get a social security card. Awesome awesome.
Friday got better, though, because Boyfriend came home from work early and then we went downtown to have drinks at the Wit. I realized later that it is a little strange to spend the afternoon at the public aid office and the evening at one of the nicer bars in Chicago. But that's life - strange!
Now it's late and sleep is in order, because BLOG FAN NUMERO UNO and her beau are coming down to Hyde Park tomorrow for some lunch and cake. And I can't wait!
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