A day in Liverpool

I have been off on my blogging of late (sorry I missed flashback Friday) and I cannot even claim that it was because I was to busy. I have mostly been being LAZY. I have been enjoying myself, simply taking care of things around the house and doing a whole lot of nothing. This week however has been pretty busy, and today will be the only day (although I may still go to Ithaca for the monthly Pure Romance meeting, I have not decided yet if I am going), that I am not scheduled for something. I did get a chance to take a small trip to the village of Liverpool on Sunday with my youngest and had a nice dinner at Destiny Mall on Saturday with my family. My husband has purchased boxing gloves for my son and they have started boxing as a means of exercise. I think it is a great idea and it is something my youngest enjoys. We had a nice dinner at TGI Fridays at the insistence of my 10 year old, and I enjoyed the pecan crusted salad. (NO I skipped the burger). After dinner and the mall we stayed home and watched some movies. Nothing to exciting, but enjoyable.
Sunday was earmarked to get on board with the outdoors exercise thing, so my son and I took a walk with the dog around the neighborhood and deciding that we really couldn't starve ourselves headed to the village of Liverpool to have cheese fries and a dog at Heid's of Liverpool.

Heid's is actually pretty infamous around the area and even the guy from the travel channel has made a visit to Heids for a hot dog and Cooney. The business has been around since sometime in the 30's and is right across the street from Onondaga Lake Park.  The dogs are pretty good, but my son loves the cheese fries the best. These were slathered in cheese, so I was not as excited to eat them as I may usually be. Good thing for me, my families means to loose some weight and exercise has been an inspiration and I am taking this to heart to work on getting healthy myself.

 

 

 After lunch my son and I took a trip to Onondaga Lake Park. This park is actually a pretty neat little part of the community and hosts a multitude of events throughout the year. There have been several marathons, a ton of healthy Saturday mornings of Zumba on the grass, volleyball games, baseball, rollerblading, walks, biking and in the summers they open the road up for even more miles of movement. It is also host to the yearly lights on the lake event, summer concerts, a yacht club, boating, some fishing, archery, team events, picnics, playgrounds, a tram, dog walking trails, a skate park, bike rentals, but NO swimming.The lake itself has been considered as one of the most polluted lakes in the country. Central NY has been making big strides at cleaning the lake and making it more accessible for the community. I am not sure if it will ever be clean enough to swim in, but it is a pretty lake just the same. Years ago the park was home to an amusement park(Long Branch Amusement Park) and boosted a multitude of tourist attractions that attracted people as far away as NY city. The invention of the automobile as well as pollution of the lake decreased the popularity and the park fell to ruins.The actually carousal from the once popular amusement park has been restored an now  delights children and adults alike at Destiny Mall. (Once called Carousal Mall). I just love history around these old parks and took a little bing trip to some of the parks located in the CNY area of the past. I knew there was also a park called Suburban Park. It was located in Manillus NY and long gone. I never had the opportunity to view either Suburban or Long Branch Park as they were just a memory when I came around, but when I was a child I do remember going to Roseland Amusement park very vividly. It was closed for many years and no longer is an amusement park, but is home to a waterpark. So where was I, apparently I took a long side bar. Anyways, I have always loved to learn about the history of these things and I think it is pretty neat. It would be pretty cool to have them around today. The large playground has been our most favorite part of the park, and my youngest was not going to let the opportunity pass him by.

He did the slide!

 

The new fangled teeter-totter.

He climbed into the "green sausage shaped prison". His words not mine.

Did some swinging on the tires.

He rounded out playtime with a little swinging on the actual swings and did some climbing before we decided to make some tracks and walk around the park. Below is a picture of the Lake.

We hopped the tram and rode through the park. The only place the tram does not run through is Long Branch and the Good Dog Park. Below is the old bridge. This part of the lake is were several of the SU crew team (and other schools) get in their practices. It's really neat to see these teams glide across the water. Row row row. One time Mary and I actually took the kayaks out on the lake and listened to a concert held on the shore. I got grossed out when we saw what looked like poop on the surface of the lake. Still not sure what that was. Historically jumping off this bridge is a right of passage...what passage I am not sure.

Caught some Geese and their young as we rode by. There was a guy and his SO on the ride with us, that were truly making me and my son a little CRAZY. He talked the entire ride and kept saying...why don't you get a picture of that, and calling his SO grumpy. I kept kind, but had to laugh when he suggested that the kids behind him encourage their father to take them for ice cream. I thought for sure the dad was gonna knock the guy out. The Geese picture is for the oddball guy and his girlfriend on the tram that insisted that I get a shot of these guys marching into the lake.

Riding the tram. It's an enjoyable ride and if you have had your share of walking or skating, it's a nice relief to see him coming. In total down and back with a 10 minute stop in between, and a few drop off/pick up points, it was about a 45 minute ride. The breeze was perfect coming off the lake.

Located within the park is a museum holding tribute to the regions best know resource. SALT!  I attempted to encourage my son to take a quick peek in the museum, but he was ready to end the trip and head to our next Liverpool destination. Syracuse is know as the Salt City due to this resource. For a while last summer when the head shops were stocked with the "legal" drug called bath salts, our lovely city of Syracuse became the Bath Salt city. What an awful mess that was.  

We discussed the idea of sometime coming back and renting a family bike and riding down the parkway. They have this really cool bike called a quadricycle that seats four or a conference bike that seats 7 and is circular. It's really neat. I have plans to return to the Salt Museum myself.

After leaving the park we headed just up a block or two to the Liverpool Library. I just love this library and my son checked out the movie Shiloh as he had just finished reading the book in school. We lucked out and both the first and the second movie were available. Ready to end the day we headed home, watched Shiloh and had a nice low fat dinner.

 The Liverpool library has a GREAT children's room. I love the trains that hover over your head and Gavin has always had a good time with the train cars you can actually play with.

The Liverpool fun does not stop here. Yesterday I worked at Vera House and as it so happens I met yet another employee. Her name is Rosanne. She just graduated with a Masters degree in Leadership counseling and has her own private practice. She endured my life story and where I am in my life right now and showed some great support. She invited me to attend her place called Metamorphosis and suggested that I might be interested in attending a meditation ceremony that was being held that evening. I am a FAILURE at meditation, but was intrigued, especially when she reported that the price is FREE, that the monthly telecast speaker would actually be present for the meditation that evening and it was located right in Liverpool. The center for this special medication series is called The  Liverpool Art Center and I had never heard of it. It is an art studio where one can take classes, but it also offers meditation classes, therapeutic art and drum sessions. (Not sure what the drumming is all about.) The whole thing sounded cool, and different, so I thanked Rosanne, took her business card and figured if my hubby didn't work I might check it out. Well I decided to go, and I had an enjoyable time. Below are pictures of the art center building. I wished I had gotten a picture of the Buddhist Monk who lead the meditation, but I felt funny asking. Maybe there is some weird thing about pictures like the Amish, what do I know.  I met the art center's owner and she reported that she is getting married on Sunday and the presenter was doing the ceremony. The presenter's name is John Bruna and he is the director of Way of Compassion Foundation. (going to google/bing it) WOW way cool. He has another workshop tomorrow. Very stoked! Also very cool and why some of what he might have said resonated with me is he is in recovery. How very awesome. He held a weekend retreat last weekend, would have like to have attended. PS. He apparently is okay with pictures as there is one on his website. Google The way of compassion foundation and it should take you there.

 Anyways, I totally suck at meditation. The entire 25 minutes or so of meditating I was thinking about chocking because I couldn't seem to swallow and when I did it was so loud, then I was thinking I might cough really loud as a result. Once I got past that I found myself peeking, drumming my hands, or thinking about everything else in the world except for what I was suppose to be doing. I finally resorted to saying over and over inside my head. "focus on your breathing" .  I thought that was what is called a mantra. I guess it isn't, but it did keep me somewhat focused and I did not chock. When the mediation was done and everyone else was all relaxed, I was still unsettled, but ready to listen. He explained several Buddhist beliefs such as the steps towards relationships. Consider a few things; step one is actually step zero. (I will not try to explain). But this step has to do with acceptance, he had another word but I can't remember. The basic premise is the people in our lives are either friends or foes. In otherwords people we like, and the people we don't like. Of course there are people we don't know so we have no value or opinion placed upon them. We naturally judge people based upon our world views and perception. Biases if you will. After recognition of this within ourselves, we can start to change these perceptions by identify that all people are people. The Buddhist believe expands into thoughts around re-incarnation and that we have all been each  others mother at some time in our past lives and we should treat all people as such. To make it simpler, all people are a friend/mother/child/brother to someone who loves them, so there must be some redeeming qualities of that person and we should seek these traits out. I know I am probably messing it all up, but it was all very interesting and what I enjoyed the most was how these beliefs play into not only my own life, but in counseling. It was totally cool. I might even check out tomorrow's lecture.
WOW. Long blog and I need to examine other parts of my life so I guess I will leave it with that.