the underwear drawer

you're the birthday boy or girl

Fine, endlessly gestating gigantic fetus. Just stay up in there. Just stay up in there FOREVER.

(Reverse psychology, see.)



Today, lacking anything else entertaining to do (the weather outside was sunny, but a bit cold to stay at the playground for anything more than half an hour or so), we decided to take a family trip to Chuck E. Cheese. That's right, Chuck E. Cheese. Remember when we used to live in Manhattan and, like, went to museums and street fairs and crap? THOSE DAYS ARE OVER. Now we go to the equivalent of a kiddie casino and eat pizza while watching animatronic mice sing cover versions of 80's pop standards. Stay classy, Atlanta!



Cal was excited to go initially, but as many of you know, three year-olds are not quite sane, and because we offended him in some way (I believe it had to do with the fact that we insisted that his carseat harness did in fact have to be buckled while the car was moving) he screamed that he WANTED TO GO HOME! WANT TO GO HOME! DON'T DRIVE THE CAR! STOP! DON'T WANT TO GO HAVE FUN! the entire ride there, and once we had finally arrived, refused to get out of the car. Oh, this poor kid, whose cruel, heartless parents wanted to take him to Chuck E. Cheese to play Skee-ball and eat pizza. Clearly abusive, authorities should be alerted immediately.



Luckily (for all) he warmed up once he actually allowed himself to be physically dragged into the place and saw all the rides and video games and balls and (best of all) "money" that he was allowed to put inside the coin slots to participate in each activity. We gave him a little cup of those play tokens to run around with, and I think that may have been the highlight of his day, because he was guarding those slugs like Gollum. (Tip for those interested in going to Chuck E. Cheese with their own thankless children: go register at the Chuck E. Cheese site online and you will be e-mailed some coupons for tokens and food that will actually save you a ton of cash. No, I do not work for Chuck E. Cheese Corporate, but dude, it was like free money!)

(Oh lord, first Chuck E. Cheese, now excitedly discussing the merits of coupons. Next up, high-waisted mom jeans and Sunny Delight. "Sunny D? Hey, your mom's cool!")



Anyway, it was fun is all I'm saying. We even accrued enough tickets by the end of the afternoon to cash in for one of those big, novelty rainbow lollipops at the prize desk, which was listed for the price of 200 tickets--a ridiculous-sounding number of tickets, until you realize that the cash value of each ticket was, like, a penny. And yes, we did play Skee-ball, though Cal had some questionable gamesmanship and insisted on not only standing on the Skee-ball ramp, but winging the ball overhand like a baseball. (Luckily there were not that many people there, so the only head trauma sustained was his own.)



So anyway, Happy New Year! Hope everyone is starting off the year right, and I for one am so glad not to have to be giving birth or taking care of a newborn right now, because the dizzying ease of having only one child to care for is just so freeing.