Wet & Wild

I had been in the office talking to a buddy, checking email, and surfing the net to figure out where I knew Paula Marshall from (Spin City, as it turns out). These are the kinds of things I do when I'm not up for poker, A is out of the house, and the kids are down. So after the phone conversation ends, I walk out to notice that A's Tivo request has taken over my television.

It's Morgan Spurlock (he of the Lorne Green-ish facial hair) and his new TV show '30 days.' In this undoubtedly enthralling episode, a mother drinks a lot to see the dangers of drinking. I sit through 30 seconds before a commercial comes on. It's for an herbal supplement that supposedly cures hangovers. I take that as a sign, so I grabbed a Sam Adams, and came in to post.

My day began when A brought W in to the bed for his morning feeding. I woke up half way through. I could tell because after he's got some food in his belly he becomes distracted, and tends to play more than eat. I peeked one eye open and saw W sitting up between A and I, grinning a huge grin. He was more weeble than baby, almost always on the verge of falling over, but never quite doing it. I pulled the pillow over my head, and then peeked out. W got one of those all face baby grins. It was the kind of grin that only a baby could have. 100% complete joy.

I took the day off, and A let me sleep in - yay! When I dragged my ass out of bed, we fairly quickly went into packing mode for our trip to Great America and Hurricane Harbor. A was very organized, and we were ready to go in a scant 60 minutes. A near record. Upon arrival at GA we went to wait in line to get into the water park part. This meant a 30 minute wait.

Being slightly claustrophobic, and very impatient, this was not going to be my favorite part of the day. It does have it's upsides though. A is nothing if not a traffic cop. All kids try to walk through the line so they can get into the water park 10 minutes early. A will have none of that.

"But my mom is up there."
"Your mom can go back and get you."

The two times we've been to the Hurricane Harbor together, she's had that conversation about 8 times. Today there was a group of about 6 or 7 early teen boys in line, bristling with energy and impatience. After sitting behind us in line for 15 minutes, one suddenly says "Hey, Steve, your sister is up there, we need to go meet her."

I glanced A's way to see if she would pull out her badge and stop them, but she didn't hear. Instead, one of the kids said "Dude, there's no way they're here yet, they live 20 minutes farther away than we do."

"No, she's up there."
"No way, she's not, I"m telling you she's not up there."

I couldn't help but identifying with the clueless one, and let out a chuckle. The instigator told his pal that we was the dumbest kid, and that stopped their advances.

Once in, we headed to young-mother-with-2-kids-in-tow-wearing-a-too-small-bikini central, otherwise known as the wading pool and skull island area. C had a decent time walking around Skull Island, but still has a problem with actually getting his head wet from above. And he was TIRED. So I basically carried him around for an hour.

We headed back to our cots, and I laid back, and C just laid on me for a long time. C decided that he wanted to ride the train. We decided that we'd eat, head to the train and then home. While we were eating, the guy came on the speaker system, seemingly repeating himself every 10 seconds that there was a severe thunderstorm watch. Yeah, sure whatever.

Once we were done eating, we packed up (still no rain), and started to head towards the train. Except, before we were out of HH, it started to sprinkle. So A and I glanced at each other and silently changed plans to just head out.

By the time we got out of the HH area, it was full on raining. I took control of the unweildy stroller and picked up the pace. With each yard the rain was coming down harder and harder. I was dodging, I was weaving. Before we got out of the park, it was pouring like a bad Christian Slater movie.

I was more amused than anything until it got windy and there were lighting strikes seemingly nearby. Next thing I know, both kids were crying uncontrollably. We had just gotten them in the car when it really poured down. After putting the stroller away, I was so wet that I could have just walked out of the pool.

A nursed W to calm him down, and we explained to C that the train wasn't running because of the rain. For the next 30 minutes he told us about "It rained hard. Train couldn't go. People sad. So wet."

We got home, put the kids down, and I basically passed out for two hours. For the next week, I'll be waiting on a call from Nurse Ratchet on whether I'm a good enough match to proceed with testing. I think it's gonna be a long week...probably a long few months.