Long Doggers, Class of…

So, if you’re anything like me, you enjoy the local food. It starts in your hometown, where you know the place like the back of your hand. You can tell someone, “Yeah, my house is right behind *insert name of local restaurant here*, the blue house,” and anyone can find your house. You don’t need to tell them the street or what the restaurant looks like because everyone knows it. It can even expand to outside your hometown. Whenever my family and I travel, even internationally, we always ask the locals, whether it be the owner of a gift shop, the taxi driver, or the random mother of three that we stopped on the street, where the best non-touristy restaurants are. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Iceland, where they mash an entire sentence into one giant Frankenword, everyone knows the signal for “good food near here.”

As previously mentioned, I was born and raised in Indian Harbour Beach, a little beach town on a barrier island only a mile wide. When I move out next week to go to college, it will be my first time living in another house, let alone another city. So, like any good little native, I know all the best hidden gems. From Sebastian Inlet to one of the many theaters in the area to a nice drive down Tropical Trail towards Dragon’s Point, I can tell you where to go based on what you’re looking for and who to say hello to when you get there.

Part of that involves where the best food places are. Many of the places in the area have come and gone (a moment of silence for Bunky’s Raw Bar and Doubles, where you always ran into someone you knew), but there’s usually something better right around the corner. Even if you really don’t want to go over to the mainland, I could tell you where to get what food. Looking for some awesome Oriental food? Nippon Thai. Best Italian? Pane e Vino on the mainland. Pizza? Cibelli’s, especially white pizza with basil and a side of garlic knots, my favorite. Ice cream? Surfin’ Turtle. Burritos? Da Kine Diego’s. Sub sandwich? Publix. Seafood? Yeah, you’re on your own for that one. I don’t eat seafood. Best home cooking? My mother!

Definitely my favorite place of all time is Long Doggers, a casual (and pretty inexpensive) local chain. As much as it sounds (and looks) like the biggest tourist trap in history, I can guarantee that it’s where all the locals hang. I’m not sure exactly where the name comes from, but I’m guessing it’s from the footlong hot dogs that they proudly serve. When you look at the menu, it still looks like a tourist trap, but if eating there is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right. They serve the best burgers I’ve ever eaten and their fries are the perfect balance of soft and crispy. My brother Ian (4 years younger) is also a huge fan and claims their fish and chips are only beat by the ones he ate in London. Whatever my family gets there, we’re always happy and feel welcome in their warm atmosphere.

Now, my mother takes her food very seriously. She’s a classy Italian woman who’ll eat anything that won’t eat her first. Like most self-respecting Italians, any celebration in life, from a wedding to finishing taxes to when I got my braces off, should be celebrated with food. You know how some people say “there’s an app for that”? For my mom, it’s “there’s a dish for that.” We usually go out to dinner after my performances and have dinner every week with my aunt and uncle, cousin and cousin-in-law, and their adorable two-year-old son, whom I call my nephew, the love of my life. When you consider that our last name is Cook (my aunt and uncle’s family spells it Cooke), it really makes sense that my family is obsessed with celebrating life through food.

Which brings me to today’s story. I’m the first child in my family, and therefore I was the first to graduate high school. What they thought was even more impressive was that I was in my school’s Fine Arts Academy, an accelerated learning program for kids planning to major in the arts, and the fact that this gave me a more advanced diploma and would go on my transcript for life. If there’s anything my family values more than food, it’s education and the arts. Since my family is basically the Italian version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this meant that the entire family came to all the things and went out to dinner.

So, about a month before My Big Fat Italian Graduation, my mom asked me where I wanted to go out to dinner. “You’ve worked so hard to get to this point, and you deserve to celebrate,” she said. “So, where do you want to go?”

I didn’t even hesitate. “I’d really like to go to Long Doggers.”

I watched my mom go from excited to surprised. “Chenna, this is your high school graduation! You only do this once, and you don’t get to go back like college!”

I had to give her a hard time. “Mom. Long Doggers.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go anywhere fancier? We could go to Chart House, we could go to Pane e Vino, we could go anywhere you want!”

“Mom. Long Doggers.”

Mom finally laughed at me. “Okay. It’s up to you, girl.”

We eventually agreed that we could do both. So, the night of my graduation, my entire family was there and thrilled for me and my accomplishments, and I was thrilled they could be there. It was the happiest night of my life. Afterwards, the entire family (except for my cousin and cousin-in-law, who had to put my then-four-month-old nephew to bed for the night) went out to dinner at Long Doggers with me still wearing my cap and gown before I went to an all-night party held by my school. The next day, we had a champagne toast at my aunt and uncle’s (read: roasting each other) and went to Chart House, a ritzy restaurant on the river. The entire graduation celebration was very exciting and I’m grateful to my parents and family for giving it to me.

I just finished my associate’s degree yesterday, and I’m so happy and relieved. My parents are over the moon, and even Ian, who loves to antagonize me, gave me a big hug and told me he was so proud of me. Of course, this milestone needs to be celebrated in my family, so my mom wanted to know where I wanted to go out for dinner.

I just smiled, looked over at her, and asked, “What do you think?”

All my love,

Chenna

Where’s Logic When you Need It?

Warning: This is just me ranting about something stupid and completely out of my control, so if you are one of those people who thinks I’m adorable when I’m pissed off (why though?), please keep reading. If not, maybe you’ll at least relate.

So, I was born in Melbourne and raised in Indian Harbour Beach. Not too far away from where I was born and grew up is the Melbourne International Airport. (Locals know where this is going.) This airport is kind of a joke because for the longest time, this “international” airport only serviced to Charlotte, NC, and Atlanta, GA. There were some charter flights to the Bahamas, which you could only afford if you owned Google or something like that, and there’s cruise ships not too far away that can take you to the Bahamas and a whole bunch of other places for only a fraction of the cost. Recently, they’ve expanded to direct flights to Toronto, but other than that, they’re relatively local, compared to Orlando or Miami Airports.

One of the colleges I was accepted into (but have yet to audition for) is the University of West Florida in Pensacola, which is a good seven and a half hour drive away from my little town on the beach. If I get a car between then and now, I’ll probably drive home for Christmas, Spring Break, and the summer. But the shorter trips, like Thanksgiving (which is less than a week away from my birthday), I’m thinking I can probably fly home from the Pensacola International Airport. Trips like those, I’m thinking I’ll probably stick closest to my parents and brother, who is still living at home.

Being the responsible young woman I am (ha ha), I decided that I would look into flights home from Pensacola. I typed in the Pensacola airport, the Melbourne airport, and the days I would like to leave and go back to college for Thanksgiving break and my birthday. I thought I’d read something about Melbourne accepting flights from within the state, so I thought I would be fine. I do a little digging and I see a flight that can take me from Pensacola to Melbourne. Awesome! I can go home for Thanksgiving and spend my birthday with my family. It’s a little pricey, but I’m new at this whole “booking flights” thing, so I start reading. That’s when I realized that the flight I thought was an answer to my prayers was actually one that would fly me from Pensacola to the Atlanta International Airport, have a two-and-a-half-hour layover in Georgia, and fly to Melbourne from there. I thought that was a little bizarre and kept reading about flights from Melbourne to see if there was anything closer to what I was looking for, maybe flying to Orlando and then Melbourne. That was when I saw that, for the same price, I could fly from Melbourne to Toronto.

*takes a deep breath to avoid cursing my computer out*

So, let me get this straight. I can’t fly from Pensacola to Melbourne, which is in the same state, but for the same price it takes to fly me directly from Melbourne to Toronto (yes, in Canada), I can take two flights and go to Atlanta, where I can hang out in an airport for a few hours, and go home. I can go three hundred miles out of my way and THEN go home for the same price I can visit my dear friend in Toronto if I left from home.

Now I crunched some numbers, and it would actually be much cheaper, if a bit longer, to drive home than it would be if I flew home from the Pensacola airport. And that’s counting gas on the way home, maybe getting a quick bite to eat at a fast-food place or gas station (or maybe visiting a friend on the way home. I have friends spread all over Florida), stopping for tolls, sitting in traffic because let’s be real here, traffic during the holidays is a nightmare, and any other expenses. Now, compare that to gas money to get from my dorm to the airport in Pensacola (which is only a blessed 15 minutes away), parking, checking my baggage, my airline ticket to Atlanta, getting a bite to eat in the airport there (airport food is expensive), my flight to Melbourne, and getting home from there. I would have to spend over a thousand dollars to visit my family for four days, only to fly my sorry butt home early because I have not one, but TWO airports to deal with. What’s the point of leaving the state just to get home from PENSA-F*CKING-COLA?!?!?!

And for those of you complaining that this is a first-world problem, yes, I realize that. I realize that this is probably a stupid thing to rant about and that there are people in the world who have worse problems than I do, but let me just explain. If I get into UWF’s music school, it’s very unlikely that I’ll be home until Thanksgiving/my birthday. That will have been a good four months since I saw my family and the town I grew up in. I get homesick very easily and I tend to panic when I don’t have my family’s opinion on something. I just wanna spend the holidays with my family without having to worry about paying rent.

Honestly, at this point in time, I might as well stay in Pensacola.

*Edit: Since I posted this, I have since been accepted to Florida Atlantic University’s music program. With that option, I decided not to audition at University of West Florida so I could stay closer to home (read: on the East Coast). I’m pretty happy with my decision. Looking back, looking at flights might have been arbitrary, but at least I got a good story out of it.

All my love,

Chenna

Godspell, 11 Years Later

Have you ever just been sitting at home on a rainy afternoon and seen or heard something that just triggers a whole bunch of memories? I’m not talking about running into your ex and remembering why you broke up with them, I’m talking about the happier side of things, where you remember some of the best times of your childhood in all the chaos of your adult life. Once that happens, you realize that you’d forgotten that time in your life and a whole host of memories start flooding back.

Okay, let me back up a little bit, say, 11 years? I was nine years old and in the third grade. I wouldn’t say I was shy, but I did try to hide behind other kids so you wouldn’t see me and talk to me. I had done a few dance recitals, Girl Scout campfire skits, and Christmas pageants, but I’d never even heard of a musical. My idea of a musical was all the Disney Princess movies where I forced my parents to tell the story while I acted them out. Looking back, that could have been a sign of my future. I’d seen Cinderella at the Cocoa Village Playhouse, but thought that was just a live-action Disney movie. Anyway, I was in the third grade and had joined the school/church choir when I heard about a musical the school was putting on. The play was being put on by the art teacher (Mrs. Finneran, who is still a good friend of mine) and the music teacher (Ms. Royhans). The play was Godspell, which was sort of a modernized, less-popular version of Jesus Christ Superstar.

I don’t really remember how I got involved in it. I’ve heard it was a game of Truth or Dare gone wrong (or right). I’ve heard I begged my mom to let me join. I’ve heard I only joined because my friends in my grade were joining. Either way, I signed up and marched into my first rehearsal. As soon as I got in there, I noticed a lot of the kids I sang with in choir. Most of them were in 6-8 grade, but they still took me under their wings and taught me how to read music. The one kid I really hung out with a lot was Danielle Bruchwalski, an eighth-grader who would sit next to me in choir, spend her five-minute recess with me at the corner of the basketball court, and helped explain the rehearsals for me. As time went on, I got to know a lot of the other middle-schoolers there who let me hang with them. (Let’s see if I remember them all-there was Danielle, obviously, Bri, Alex, Laurel, Mary, Kylie, Piper, Mack, Sherry, Kayla, I think Mirelle…)

Anyway, as the rehearsals went on, I discovered that I actually loved acting. I would try to find out everything I could about the other actors, what was going on behind the scenes, and the play itself. I’m pretty sure I got into trouble once for swiping someone’s script so I could read it and for digging through the props and putting them back in the wrong places (gasp!) another time. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only reason I know my parables is because about 90% of the play was telling and reenacting the parables of Jesus. I loved hanging with the actors, dressing up, putting on face paint, and essentially playing pretend.

When opening night finally happened, I was so late because I had my flying-up ceremony (where Brownie Girl Scouts become Juniors) and couldn’t get my face paint, so Danielle pretty much just rubbed her own face paint and spread it across mine. I just remembered-we didn’t have an auditorium at the time because the 2004 hurricanes destroyed our last one and the new one hadn’t been built yet, so we put the play on in the church. We had to run up the aisles for the opening scene and carry the lead down the aisle for the closing scene. I never really learned what the order of scenes were up until the Last Supper scene, but I knew what my cues and choreography for each song were (even though I had absolutely no idea what a cue was or what choreography was). Danielle would stick close to me for the duration of the show and help me figure out what was next in the play. Someone made the joke that she was a mother duck and I was her little duckling, following her around and learning from her. She was like my best friend on set.

After closing night, many of the middle-schoolers left my school and went to high school. I missed them all and still keep in touch with a few of them, but I really want to get in contact with Danielle and the others. For a while, I didn’t want to listen to the music from that play because of how much I missed the actors, but I finally was able to when I sang two songs from the show at the talent show four years later.

Fast-forward to this afternoon. I turned on the TV and started flipping through channels when I saw GODSPELL as one of the programs. When I selected that program, I suddenly remembered a whole bunch of anecdotes-things that sound stupid to everyone else, but were some of my favorite memories.

I remembered how we’d be rehearsing the scene where Jesus goes off to pray and the Apostles fall asleep, and all the girls would start whispering and giggling like we were at a slumber party. I remembered how one of my lines was “Yeah, yeah,” and how much joy I got out of saying that. I remembered all the middle-schoolers treating me like I was one of them, despite a 3-5 year age gap, and making me feel cool and like I belonged to something. I remembered all those silly memories where we’d be laughing at someone’s dumb line or how one of the boys had to cover for a girl in rehearsal, so he made his voice as high-pitched as possible to make us all laugh.

As soon as I sat down, I realized-that was eleven years ago! I’ve officially been acting for over ten years. It’s crazy to realize how time slips away and how quickly these things can fall out of your mind. As the program kept going on, I sang along and realized that I still remember all my lines and all of the songs. I don’t remember half of the stuff I learned in history class or science class from that age or who I sat next to, but I remember every word of every song from that play.

After Godspell, I just kept acting. I joined school plays, I did drama camps, and I even performed in my college’s musical. Even as an adult, if I don’t have a performance or rehearsal coming up, I start feeling restless and wondering what to do with myself. It’s crazy how a third-grade musical can have such an impact on a little girl.

All my love,

Chenna

Back in a 20-Year-Old’s Day

*Old writing*

Now, let me just begin this by saying that this story is a different kind of rant than the one I’m posting soon about airport logic. This one is just one that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Instead of a story about what pissed me off, I figured I’d tell a more lighthearted one, one that people actually might read. I love telling this story and kinda snicker a little whenever I think about it, so strap yourselves in for this crazy ride, because this story covers my early memories to how I freaked out a group of millennials and made their parents laugh in one move.

I was born in the late 90’s, when technology was still expanding-not as much as when Apple first came out, but still becoming more readily available, and definitely not as available as it is today. Statistically speaking, we were pretty “modern.” We had a home phone and I think my parents were just getting used to cell phones (nothing like today’s phones). I didn’t have a TV in my room, but we had a big one in the living room. My brother Ian and I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons and play with puzzles on the weekends (I’m lookin’ at you, Rolie Polie Olie and PB&J Otter. Those were the days), and my parents would watch the local news and weather channels. We had a computer that I would play educational games on, but my parents would limit my time. However, Steve Jobs was doing his thing and by the time I hit high school, everyone and their brother had a smart phone.

Most of my free time was spent outside. There was a family two doors down who had kids around Ian’s and my ages. We spent hours on end riding our bikes, playing tennis in the street, swimming in their pool or mine, and raking leaves in the fall. We had a big tree in our front yard, and one summer, my dad put up a swing from the tree. One day, I climbed that tree and it took me three hours to figure out how to get back down. After the 2004 hurricanes, my dad used the busted-up fence posts to build a pirate ship in the backyard. A few years later, he built a zip-line that went over the pool so we could drop in midway. We loved those things so much and usually ended up exhausted and sunburned. If it was raining, we would usually bake cookies or play in the puddles. When Tropical Storm Fay hit back in 2008, we went out into the middle of the street and played tennis in knee-deep water. Those are some of my favorite memories of my whole life, really, and something I hope to pass on to my kids.

Fast-forward about ten years. I had just turned twenty and was working in merchandise for The LimeyBirds (go check them out) at the 2018 Brevard Renaissance Fair. When I wasn’t working, I would sometimes hang out backstage with a bunch of the kids in Youth In Harmony, the group I sang with for two years, and their parents and other adults we shared a stage with. Some of these kids are younger than the iPhone, so they can’t imagine a life without their precious portable devices. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I spend too much time on my laptop, but I’ve got nothing on these kids. Their devices were running out of juice and they were starting to get restless and even panicky.

That was when I did something I’m really good at-not thinking before I make a move. I sat up straighter and said, “You know, back in my day, we didn’t have any of these crazy devices.”

The kids looked absolutely traumatized. By now, I’d finally thought about what I’d said and realized that it probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, even if I hadn’t fully thought it through. I looked over at another adult in the tent (an adultier adult, an adult who knows how to adult) and she just had this Look on her face that said, “Well, I can’t wait to see where this is going. This should be hilarious. How old is this chick, 15?”

I continued, not even thinking about what I was gonna say. “That’s right. We didn’t have iPhones or tablets or even texting. If you wanted to show someone a picture, you either brought a digital camera or printed it out. You know that picture you have on the home screens of your phones? We kept those in our wallets. We couldn’t take selfies or put a filter on it or make ourselves barf rainbows. If you wanted to talk to someone, you could either email them, call them, or talk to them face-to-face. We didn’t get phone calls on our watches. We got them on our phones and if we missed that call, we called them back if we were lucky enough to have caller ID. And we didn’t spend hours watching Netflix. If we wanted to get a movie, we either shuffled through our collection of VHS tapes and DVD’s or walked down to this magical store called Blockbuster and prayed we didn’t get lost in there. We barely even had social media. We had MySpace, but you couldn’t make your pictures disappear after five seconds. Trust me, you guys are living in a much more advanced world than the one I grew up in.”

By now, the lady in the background was dying of laughter, as were the adults backstage who could hear me. The kids just looked at me like I had just demonstrated how to murder someone. Then, out of nowhere, this little girl asks, “So, what did you do?”

“I went outside. I made friends in person. I played with the neighborhood kids. We made up this game where we would watch one person perform a sort of route in the cul-de-sac and tried to replicate it the best. We tried to have a lemonade stand, but we didn’t get much traffic. We climbed the trees in the neighborhood. We went swimming if there was any water deeper than a puddle. If we were really bored, we’d play with our dolls.”

By now, the kids looked like they were watching their first horror film. One of them looked up at me and said, “That must have sucked.”

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I busted out laughing, along with most of the adults.

Now, this story is not me shaming anyone who uses technology, even if it’s a bit excessive. This is about realizing that I live in a different world than the one I was born in. I’ve known this for years, having been born before the tech revolution and other recent historical moments (some good, some bad), but this always stuck with me.

I’m 20 years old. I am a full-time college student and lifelong performer. I am only about 8-12 years older than the kids I shared a stage with at RenFaire. While I was having the time of my life, playing outside and getting coated in dirt, these kids were just learning how to sit up. Now, while I’m trying to figure out college algebra, these kids are the same age I was when they were born and they have gadgets that we were still dreaming about when I was their age.

I agree that technology is developing and it has many positive aspects. But I also really wish today’s kids could have a childhood remotely similar to mine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go climb a tree now.

All my love,

Chenna

Who Am I? 24601

I’ve been asked that question all my life. Wherever I go, whoever I meet, they ask me who I am. I think it’s human nature to want to know who the people surrounding you are. Not necessarily their whole life story, but a thing or two about them so they’re not coexisting with a stranger. So, here’s my answer.

My name is Chenna. My parents named me Vicenza at the beginning, but no one could pronounce it, so they legally shortened it to Chenna. I’ve always just told people that it rhymes with “Jenna” with a “ch” like in “chocolate.”

I am 20 years old and a student. I am not currently working anywhere but hope to get a job soon. For now, I’m focusing on school. I finish my Associate’s in Arts this week before I move down to Boca Raton in a few weeks to study Music Education.

As the title of this blog suggests, I’m a proud ginger. And before you ask, I have no idea where it came from. I have it narrowed down to my father’s side of the family, since my mother’s side is mostly Italian with a dash of French, so they all have olive skin, dark brown hair, and brown eyes. However, that’s pretty much it for where I know my red hair and green eyes came from. My dad’s side of the family is all Scottish, Irish, English, Scandinavian…it could be anywhere. (You know how Ancestry has a DNA test that tells you what percentage of each country you are? I’d love to see a test for where each physical trait comes from.)

I know the URL states that this is a travel blog and that my, but I’m not sure how much of this is going to be a travel blog. I know my cousin Amanda has a travel blog that she updates pretty frequently, and my friend Shannyn also has one that pretty much consists of gardening, quilts, recipes, and her cats. As much as I love traveling, I don’t know how often I’ll be traveling, especially with the fact that I’m a full-time student with a course-heavy major. I haven’t quite decided what this is going to be yet. This will probably be more of a “student life” blog or a storytime blog of me trying to navigate young adulthood and the real world.

So, with that out of the way, why am I starting a blog? The real answer is, my family made me. My family has had a blog since before it was cool, but I was too young to really understand. I know my aunt Susan (Amanda’s mother) has a blog, and so does Amanda. For a long time, I didn’t really see the point since I have other social media (I still kinda don’t), but my mom suggested that I make one. She and her friend from work used to say that my Facebook posts were funny and that I should consider having a blog or a YouTube channel where I could share my wacky adventures. So, last night I was screwing around on Facebook when I found Amanda’s blog. That and my mom reminding me earlier that day that I needed a blog or something is what pushed me over the edge. So, here we are. But why now? Probably because I’m about to move out for the first time and I wanted something to document it.

At some point in time, I’ll figure out this blog thing and add pictures and things. For now, I’ll probably be posting writings, including some old writing.

If this blog thing doesn’t take off, you can find me on Instagram or Twitter: @chennajt. I also have Facebook and Snapchat, but I save that for my close friends and family.

I can’t wait to begin chronicling my life and adventures with you all!

All my love,

Chenna

PS: If you didn’t get the reference in the title, we can’t be friends.