The Story of a Quicky

We took a little family trip over the past two days.  It was spring break and I thought it sounded like fun to get away for a couple of days.

While we did have fun touring a city we don't get to visit often, there were some low points in the trip.

For example, you can't really yell at a child and give them the perfect swat while in a hotel room.  Every threat I made came out through clenched teeth in a deadly whisper.  For some reason, my children did not respond optimally to this.

And while riding in the car, you cannot look threatening enough when you yell to the way back seats of your minivan.

I had thought getting the bribery of shopping for Legos out of the way early would help keep the whining to a minimum.  But then the whining to build the dang Legos was more than I could bear.

And, just so everyone is aware, Holiday Inn beds suck.  The hubbins booked the room and when we got into the room (that he had checked into hours earlier) there were two DOUBLE beds.  My hubster and I have been sleeping in a queen bed for a majority of our marriage.  And splitting up the kids, two on the floor and two in the bed, made the two in the bed contractually required to bicker.

There were fun times.  Like when the daughter was complaining about allllllll the waaaaaaaaallllllking!!!  Then we jumped over to a fabulous hotel with amazing atriums filled with lush plants and gurgling waterfalls.  Suddenly, this was the best vacation ever!

We also visited a zoo where it seemed all the truly exciting animals were not on exhibit at the moment.  And then we discovered the huge (free!) play area that we thought was also closed and the kids disappeared for 20 minutes and we had time to talk about something besides the closest bathroom, could we have a snack nooooowwww???, or can we go hooooommme noooooooow?

The last little road trip that we did was not all that stellar either.  I think it may be another two years before we attempt a quicky trip.

Last time, we visited The Magic House in St. Louis.  It is an astounding children's museum with loads of interactive and fun exhibits.  Really really fun.  But it is set up with all these little small rooms and was filled with, what seemed like, thousands of people.  So the hubba-hubba and I spent the whole 4 hours communicating like traders on the NYSE floor pointing at the other and flashing finger signs to say how many kids we were watching at that moment.

"Two?" Point to myself "One!"  Point to Hubster "Three?"  Shake head.  "No??"  "Yes??"  Over and over.  For 4 hours.  It was exhausting.

So then we went to dinner and the hotel for some before-bed-swimming.  Our 4th son jumped in and promptly forgot that 6 months before he had been a swimming fool.  No joke.  He almost drowned.  It was one of those slow motion moments when you realize what is happening but haven't moved yet and you feel like the air has suddenly become molasses.  My SO got to him a second later.  The whole incident took no more than 4 seconds but it has been burned into my memory.  The feeling of helplessness and the abject terror.  I was kind of pumped afterwards for a bit from the adrenaline.

So after our near death experience we headed up to our suite (cause 4 kids, two adults, and we were going high style at the Drury.)  We tucked everyone in and settled into bed.  We were probably snoozing by 9.  We know how to party.

Then at about 11, Son #4 started moaning and whining.  His ear hurt.  Ahh.  Yeah.  That would be because he has tubes in his ears and got pool water in them.  For two hours, while the great hub-o-rama slept, I cajoled and comforted the little guy.  I had finally had my fill of it at about 1ish and shook the hub-a-lub-a-ding-dong's shoulder and drove to the nearest Walmart for some children's Tylenol.

Everyone knows your story at 1 AM when you buy children's Tylenol.

The medicine finally did it's job at about 2:30.  And then the next day we went to the St. Louis Zoo.

We don't go anywhere without excitement.  And the St. Louis Zoo did not disappoint.  It was a lovely, unseasonably warm day in March.  We got hot.  So we bought frozen treats.  Son #2 got one of those rocket pops.

I watched the gal go into the deep, deep freeze to bring it out.  And even after waiting a minute or two to eat it, as soon as #2 kid puts  his tongue on it, it stuck fast.

Picture the scene from The Christmas Story where the kid licks the lamp post??  Yeah.  That was him only with a rocket pop.  It was a 5 minute endeavor to get it unstuck.  We tried water from the water bottles.  And pulling.  It was not cool.  It did include some pointing and laughing at first.  And possibly some picture taking.  Because that shit is funny.  But it was pretty traumatic for my boy.  He wouldn't eat a popsicle for about a year afterwards.

This is what I will reread the next time I think an overnight trip to a nearby city is a good idea.

This is NOT a begging post.  Promise.

But nobody is following me.  A few folks have found me probably by looking for the keyword "Zombie" but they probably weren't looking for a mommy blog when they punched that in.

And I think the real reason is that I won't link this on facebook or tell all my friends about it.  Kind of counter-intuitive, huh?

And here is why I won't be self-promoting anytime soon.  Some of these thoughts are about people I know.  Heh.  I might, eventually, talk about my family.  They might not want to know what I am thinking about them.  Specifically, my mother.  

I really have no idea how anyone else does this humor blog stuff without revealing their inner-family-dynamics.  And without hurting their feelings.  My very best stories all circle around family because those are the folks with whom I spend a majority of my time.  For instance, if I tell you about the 3 foot fake Barbie angel Christmas, my mother-in-law might take offense.  Or if I tell you about the time my mom said, "I can see I made a lot of mistakes raising you," there could be very real repercussions.

And I want to tell you those stories.  They are gooooood!  (Or at least in the case of my mother, cathartic.)

Now I do know that a few relatively famous bloggers have actually taken down posts that referred to their religion and/or family ties.  I don't expect to ever be relatively famous so I don't think this will be my problem, but just in case, no mentions of my very permanent and personal diary will happen anywhere else.