My wife has some important work to do at a Beamline (don't know, don't ask) in another state this week, so she is not home. In fact, she left earlier today, and has been in airports or on planes ever since. It is now my job to distract Addy from the fact that mommy is MIA.
Today, after she took a nap, I decided we would spend the afternoon at the zoo, using our membership there one last time before it expires. I have a couple of guest tickets to hand out as well. This quickly escalated into a major trip to Greenville, but that's alright. Greenville is not exactly a stone's throw away, so if I'm going to go, I'd rather make it worth the time and effort.
Addy got up at around 3, but we didn't get out of the house until closer to 3:30. So by the time we got down into Greenville, I realized that I would have to go to the zoo first and run the other errands later. But when we get there, the gates are shut and there is a note that looks like they printed it in a hurry saying "The Zoo is closed today." No explanation given. Determined to make this a good day, I instead take ADdy to the park next door to the zoo. She had a blast, but seemed drawn to dangerous things like a moth to a flamethrower. I turn around and... how did she get up there? No Addy, you can't climb the rope course, please don't try. That's a big kid bike. Why haven't you developed a fear of sheer drops twice your height? Although, I did manage to give away the two guest tickets that our membership provided (we used the others, but they go bad at the end of the month), I also had to run myself ragged trying to do that and keep an eye on her.
Does God think it's funny to leave out the self-preservation instinct until they're too old to really need it?
After that, we went to the local brew supply store. We've made a few brews, but Amy's favorite was the first one, a Full Sail Amber Ale clone. I called it Dirty Red B@$t@rd. It's technically a Red Ale... and it had bits of carbon in the bottom from our water filter, plus it was unfiltered, so it looked dirty... and I named it before Addy was imitating everything I said so... maybe I'll think of a new name.
It took a while to get the ingredients. I dropped by at the same time all of his other customers apparently decided to... all of them middle-aged working white men on their ways home. But Addy certainly had fun trying to rearrange the magazine rack and touch everything. EVERYTHING. It's like she had a bet with the cats that she could mark more territory than they could.
After that.. dinner! We went to a Mediterranean place I love, Pita House. May be our last time there before we move, unfortunately. I wasn't sure what Addy would eat, so I decided to give her a taste of my gyro meat, falafel, pita, tahini salad, etc, and see if she'd eat any of it. When the food arrived, they made her a grilled cheese sandwich for free! Awesome! And she ate it! Double awesome! Plus it urns out she thinks falafel are alright and gyro is apparently worthy of deception and bargaining to get more of. On her part, too.
On the way back, we went to Radio Shack. I like Guitar Hero. I'm good at it. And when Rock Band and Guitar Hero started offering drums, I had to get in on that action. My sister got one for me! Nearly two years ago, a few months after Addy was born, we hosted a play date for a bunch of really young kids while I wasn't home. In that play date, one of the children managed to pull a cord that I had taped up specifically to make it invisible to our cord-chewing cats, and yanked the wire out of the little plug violently. The entire wire came out, fraying it and preventing me from being able to repair it. The poor thing never even got played more than once. Well, it had been stashed away in the office and I recently decided that it was time to fix and use the darn thing. I got what I needed a Radio Shack, a new jack with spliceable cord attached... I spliced the parts together and wrapped them in electrical tape. I don't know if it worked, though... as I'm too scared to try it out. Perhaps I will tomorrow? Anyway, the only thing that allowed me to get this cord was the fact that they have little phones on display, and one of those phones was a smart phone that ACTUALLY WORKED and was within grabbing distance of Addy's little fingers. That little thing kept her occupied for half an hour without me having to do a darn thing. Let's just hope the next person to look at that phone doesn't find a trail of incriminating evidence that leads to her arrest. <.<
After that, Addy decided it was time to cry on the way home. She refused all attempts to appease her, so I was left with only one option: deal with it. For some reason, just her crying in the backseat feels like running a marathon. I'm sweaty, my knuckles are white, when I get out of the car I'm shaking, and I once I get home my body just collapses from fatigue.
So, yes, I survived the first day (I won't count the fact that it was little more than half a day technically). Let's see how Day 2 fares.
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