A Day At the Fair

*  Note to folks who read my blog on GoodReads.  The feed screws up the picture size and word ratio EVERY TIME.  I guarantee, this post will make MUCH MORE SENSE on my regular blog page.  Saying.

So…

 We went to the State Fair today, because it was Zoomboy’s day to dance.

Next week it will be Squish’s day to dance, but Mate and I are going to San Francisco so he can run instead.  My parents will take her.  (Do we like Squish’s socks?  Julianne gave her two socks that make one alpaca.  I adore them.  Mate seemed to think they were just eyeballs.

Anyway–

So today, we were going to the Fair.

Normally I loathe the State Fair, especially when I’m there escorting the kids alone.

It is loud.  It is hot.  It is sweaty.  It costs too much.  The kids want things we can’t afford.  I don’t like getting on the rides.  We never win the games.  By the time we get there, the animals are all gone, even the ones having babies.  Nobody wants to look at the art.

But today was different.

Today I was there by myself, and my foot hurt, and the Goddess responded by giving me a perfect day at the fair.


Today, the kids were old enough to ride the rides by themselves.  See Squish?  See her look skeptical?  Trust me, she was smiling at the end.

Today, nobody was on the midway, so it was easy for them to win something.  Even if Zoomboy won twice, it was pretty obvious he was giving the second one to Squish.


And that was all it took.  Four rides a piece, and four rounds of games, and I could say, “We are done, we have spent plenty of money in this concrete death trap of lies, let’s go look at livestock!”

And they did!

After a stop in the giant human bubble pit, of course, because seriously– what’s a trip to the fair without being in one of the bubbles in the giant human bubble pit?  Sayin’.

But after that, there were… well, mammals.  Mammalling.

See the pregnant goats?  See them ignore me?  That is the hallmark of a mammal, mammalling.

 Even the kids do it.

(I COMMAND you all to forgive me for that terrible, terrible pun.)

See this cow?  She is due tomorrow.  Yeah, sure, it was only 94 degrees today, but I have to tell you, I remember being pregnant in July.

And August.

And September.

One of my clearest memories when I found out I was pregnant with Squish (in August) was the thought, “Oh holy Goddess, I shall NEVER be pregnant in the summertime AGAIN!

Well, the cows and the goats and the Jacob Sheep (as opposed to the Orson sheep or the Matthew sheep or the Gilbert sheep, I guess)  are pregnant now.  Or recuperating with babies.  And, in case you were wondering?  I think they loathe all living creatures forever right now.  Just saying.  Wasn’t getting a lot of love in the nursery, you know what I mean.
However, this display in the children’s craft section got a lot of love– at least from my kids.

It’s Intel (where Mate works) made out of Legos.  Seriously.  Check it out.  I looked at it, said, “Oh, hey– your dad works at that building right there.  (Third from the right.  No lie.)  So this was charming, and the kids thought it was timely.  Go us.  Mate didn’t get there until right before Zoomboy danced.  We asked him if he wanted to see it, but he was not particularly impressed.  Said he saw it every day.  Go figure.

But at last…

Zoomoby finally got to dance.  He is the turquoise shirt in the middle, dancing to “Fly”, but I have to tell you, his best moment was not captured well on film.  It was when I taped him dancing in a toga to “Go the Distance” and realized that underneath the toga he was wearing gym shorts and tube socks.  Mate and I looked at each other and said, “Now that’s classy!” because hey!  The footies I’d put in his backpack got nothing on his father’s tube socks scrunched down his leg.

But he danced, and it was awesome, and after that, we went to eat. I ate fried catfish for dinner.  It’s something I ate in New Orleans, and no, nothing beats it in NOLA, but hey.  I was having withdrawals, because it was nummy.

But afterwards, we went into the Undersea expo–
see?  It’s right by the twin bears, and Zoomboy had to pose, for hambone reasons.

Anyway, so we ate, went to see the display, watched the kids salute an eagle, checked out the frisky otters (sounds like a ska band, doesn’t it– Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Frisky Otters!) and then went to eat funnel cake, for my arteries are still not clogged from catfish reasons.

 And after the funnel cake, there was a display where you dug in a sand pit and PG&E flashed red lights and a siren at you.  Zoomboy thought this right here was worth the price of admission, and his father and I thought that was high comedy.

But you can see that it’s getting to be twilight by now and although we didn’t see everything at the fair, well, the kids are going next week with grandma and grandpa, so we didn’t feel bad.  We’d been there for seven hours, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts were playing in the background, and we took one monorail ride in the lowering twilight, walked through the midway, checked out the new soccer stadium, and called it a day.

It was, in fact, a very good day.

And perhaps, now that there are no more diapers, and no more emergency trips to the potty, and no more of me having to ride the rides, and no more strollers or carrying kids, or crying, or those other things that happen when you drag young children to the fair to dance in the elventy-twelve degree weather…

Perhaps, the fair can stop being a source of anxiety to me.

Because today we went to the fair, and we had an awful lot of fun.