#68 Emily Adventure Day #1: Oddly Scary Experiences

When your badass daughter comes to town, there's only one thing to do.....ADVENTURE IT UP!

I love this girl so much. It feels like I am complete when she is home.

Late last night, after we had polished off multiple bottles of wine (more to come on THAT), I tried convincing her, for some reason, that I didn't actually give birth to her, but that I found her in a back alley, picked her up, and took her home.

She looked me in the eye and said, "So we are basically twins. We look the same. We act the same. We have the same weird quirks. Yeah...I'm sure that totally happened. By the way, did you know that if Oliver and I faceswap, we look exactly the same?"

(She's right. I've seen it! Now I can never un-see it.)

But the point of telling you about this is that she is right. We are basically twins, spaced 28 years apart. And because of that, we have similar badass interests.

So our adventure started yesterday afternoon, and it was a day full of "Oddly Scary Experiences".

First of all, my poor sweet car was displaying an alarmingly bright warning signal. It was oddly scary to me.

After momentarily panicking and mentally figuring out whether we should Uber or Turo our adventures this weekend while my car was in the hospital, I decided to take out my trusty owners manual to see what might be the problem.

Here's why I need to re-train myself to not constantly jump to worst-case scenarios....one of my tires has low pressure.

That's it.

yay.

So before we could adventure, I made Emily help me learn how to check and fill my tires. Thankfully, my dad had told me about checking my door for tire pressures, so remembering his advice, we headed to our friendly neighborhood Wawa to see what we could do.

I'm not sure why we both felt like the automatic tire pressure machine was an incredibly difficult tool to use, but we celebrated like heck when we filled our low tire.

Emily was rewarded with the best Wawa coffee money can buy.

And we were off to adventure!

We stopped for a quick Culver's Diet Root Beer, and had an oddly scary experience when an older woman, who was gripping a cigarette in her lips and sporting a "baby yoda" t-shirt, yelled at us, in a quite pleasant way tho, for getting in the way of her crossing path. We over-apologized, and then to make amends, I complimented her Baby Yoda t-shirt. She barked, "Have you seen the Mandalorian?". When I said no, she then barked, "Have you seen Game of Thrones?". Again, no. Her displeasure radiated from her and Emily quitely explained to me that I should not call Baby Yoda Baby Yoda. Then why the heck did they make it look so much like Yoda? And what does Game of Thrones have to do with anything???

But, lesson learned. I should have complimented her on her talent of being able to puff on her cigarette while it was hanging from her bottom lip, and should have avoided all mention of pop culture references. I'll know better in the future.

Anyways, we got to our first adventure -- The Exit Games in Clearwater.

This was my 5th Escape Room, and it was Emily's 4th.

BY FAR, THE BEST ESCAPE ROOM I HAVE DONE TO DATE!

We signed waivers saying we won't share what the experience was about. But here are some cryptic things that were part of the experience...use your imagination and guess:

• Oddly scary times when Emily and I both screamed at the top of our lungs out of pure terror-- on three separate occasions.

• Various sized bunnies -- some cute and some evil

• Bursts of adrenaline when we solved a puzzle that was so creatively done that we laughed with glee when we figured it out

• Visual, tactile and auditory clues

• Dress-up

• Magically intricate treasure hunts

If you are in the Clearwater area, you HAVE to check this out. It's a full 90 minutes, and every second was riveting and exciting. Go.

Next, we made a quick stop for some healthy eats and Connect Four at Fresca Vida. Nothing oddly scary about this place -- just pure deliciousness.

However, across the street was the "Oddities and Antiques" store. We had to check it out.

Talk about oddly scary -- immediately walking into the store, I felt like I was going into a serial killer's lair and wondered if we would ever find our way out. The store was packed from wall to wall, ceiling to floor with skeletons, dismembered baby dolls, books about serial killers, preserved specimens in mason jars, and a vibe of lurking evil.

We propelled through the store rather quickly, and on our way out, we encountered the owner. As per usual, I couldn't just say hi and walk out the door. I had to chirp up, "Wow. You own this place? It's really something!", where he responded, "It's growing bigger and bigger every day" which what I might have imagined to be a leer indicating that Emily and / or I might be added to his collection if we didn't yeet on out of there. I said, "Well, neat!" and then we hustled out by way of the filled body bag on the front porch and the artifical brains lining the stairs.

To recover, we took a delightful float in the gulf followed by our favorite Hawaiian Shave Ice at Vampire Penguin. Light, fluffy ... delightful!

Emily had told me about the wine tours she did when living in Ithaca and about how she was interested in Ice Wine. I thought she was talking about wine slushies, but no. Here's what I learned:

When you hear ‘Ice Wine,’ or see the German spelling ‘Eiswein,’ think dessert wine. Most famously produced in Canada, Ice wine is just about as sweet as wine will get. That’s because it’s produced from grapes that were at one point naturally frozen while still on the grapevine.

So we decided to stop by ABC Wine and Liquors to see if they had it in stock. The fellow working the wine section gleefully showed us their selection, but then visibly cringed when we asked him what temperature we should drink it as. He explained, "Cold. Very cold. It's so sweet it will hurt your teeth. So the cold takes the edge off of it. Kind of like a candy bar. You wouldn't eat it when it's warm."

He obviously doesn't appreciate candy bars that have been resting in a hot Florida car for a few minutes. But anyways....

We almost left with just that, but then all the fancy wine labels caught our attention, and we started walking the store.

And then we started picking up bottles that caught our interest.

And then we realized that neither one of us has seen the other one tipsy in all of our 24 years together. (Yeah, Emily...I know you are 23, but you lived in me for 9 months, and as far as I remember, you were never tipsy during that time. I certainly wasn't. So that counts).

Our criteria? It had to be super sweet. Or have a fun label. Or look like something unusual that must be tried.

Let's just say that we walked away with a box full of goodies.

It is oddly scary thinking about getting tipsy with your daughter. The last time I came close to feeling buzzed was, as far as I remember, Paris 10 years ago (except for New Years Eve, which doesn't count). Readers, correct me if I'm wrong! Maybe I blacked out the memories.

So it's weird to make a conscious decision to let loose. And in front of my daughter! As a control-freak, this was Oddly scary for sure, but definitely badass.

Drinking games were played. We had a grand time with The New Girl game, which mean that anytime a character said "Jess" or broke into song, we had to drink. All it took was one episode to get the buzz started!

Then we moved on to Drunken Sorry -- anytime you took a piece out of home, into safety, played a Sorry Card, or bumped someone back home -- drink!

Then Emily taught me Pizza Box, which included such fun side games like Never Have I Ever, Truth or Date, and Show Me the Last Three Texts You Sent.

During this time, we sampled all our purchases, some with surprising success and others with dismal failure.

The Ice Wine was DELICIOUS!!!! That's the super skinny bottle to the right. (The bottle to the left is one I bought to use as decoration in my home -- look at the gorgeous label and color of the wine -- plus it is OLIVER vineyard xoxoxo)

It probably goes without saying, but y'all...Cotton Candy wine is NOT a stellar choice. Highly unrecommended. We put it back in the fridge thinking it might taste better as the night goes on and our taste buds deadened. (Spoiler alert...nah. It didn't).

Em is all about Pina Colada, so she got some of those. Took a few sips and moved onto wine. So either she did a moment of "Oh look a squirrel" and forgot about her Pina, or it wasn't living up to her expectations. Can is still almost full this morning.

Emily loved the Strawberry Lemonade Rose so much that I didn't even get a sip. I'm guessing it was mostly juice, but it sure did make her happy.

The Moscato to the right was a product of Walmart.

But boy -- Walmart sure does super sweet wine right. It was delightful!

We decided in the liquor store that we both wanted a tiny bottle of something, and surprisingly both selected Jaegermeister. I LOVED Jaeger back in the day. So we cracked them open and took a sip.

Dang it all. Now I know why people cringe when they drink it. We both did full-body shudders, rescrewed on the cap, and silently put them back in the freezer where they belong. Maybe they'll come out another day.

And we needed to follow up with tastings from some Aldi cheap wine I keep around the house. Winky Owl (at a hefty $2.99/bottle) is my drink of choice when I think I want a glass of wine but it turns out all I want is a sip. And Watermelon Wine was purchased for the same reasons.

But last night, they were the perfect blend of watered down sweet goodness that paired nicely with our edemame and chicken wings.

So how did it go getting tipsy with Em? It was absolutely delightful!!! I must admit (Emily, close your ears...), I didn't actully get tipsy. Maybe a buzz but that's it. I don't know about Emily for sure.

But what the wine did was loosen us up and relax us. And we proceded to have an incredibly complex and extended discussion about politics that sounds oddly scary but was actually super powerful and stimulating. I got to see my girl at work and hear all about what her plans are for the future, what she is trying to accomplish now, and what she has already done in her new job as Campaign Organizer.

I absolutely loved hearing about it, and she has inspired me to re-look and re-think my viewpoints in new and different ways.

Em....you are going to create huge change in this world. I can't wait to see it happen!

So day 1, though oddly scary, was incredibly delightful! I can't wait for days 2, 3, and 4. Stay tuned for more!