The Ritual

"Are you ready?" the P-Dawg inquires every night at eleven.

"No! I'm still brushing my teeth!" I tell him through a mouthful of foam. He stops in the doorway, adjusts the drawstring on an ancient pair of hospital issue scrubs-turned-pajamas, and waits.

When we have both completed our nightly hygiene routines, activated the security system, and dimmed the lights, it is finally time. Hand-in-hand, we make our way down the upstairs hallway to perform the ritual that has been bookending our days for the past six and a half years . . .

The Checking of the Kids.

We enter the V-meister's lair first. She is nearly always lying flat on her back and so still that I'm compelled to lean in close enough to let our molecules mingle. A pink flashlight and a copy of The Grapes of Math rest on her warm, narrow chest. For kicks, the P-Dawg takes one gravid little hand by the wrist and lifts it high into the air, then lets it drop like a weight onto the mattress. V-meister could sleep through the apocalypse. I brush tendrils of sweaty hair away from her forehead as I kiss it.

We close the door and cross the hall.

Some nights we find J-dog slumbering on the floor, some nights on his mattress with derrier in the air. And sometimes he's kneeling at the side of the bed with his face planted in Dr. Seuss's Dictionary. There is a never ending procession of items to be removed from underneath his sheets: a Twilight Turtle, a walkie-talkie, a city of Legos, an armada of matchbox cars. The P-Dawg whispers subliminal messages into his ear. "You will poop on the potty . . . you will not wake up before seven o'clock." I kiss his forehead and he flinches, swatting at my greedy love.

We close the door gently and pad off to bed. At least for one more night, everyone is safe and accounted for. Our day's work is done.

******************************************************************************************

When my brothers and I would return home from college for the holidays, our mother never failed to state how good it was having us all together under one roof. I could never understand this. What difference did it make where we were sleeping?

Oh, I get it now. And even though I still think it's creepy, Lord help me I am starting to identify with the old lady in the childrens' book Love You Forever.

You know, the one who would sneak into her grown son's house at night to watch him sleep?


The V-meister, three months old. We could
not figure out why, the first night we brought
her home from the hospital, stuck a pacifier in
her mouth, swaddled her burritolike and set
her down in the middle of a vast expanse of crib,
she would not fall asleep.

Perspective

We had decided to meet at a restaurant - one of their favorites. Having arrived before they did, I stood by the front window and waited.

From there I watched as my husband pulled into the parking lot, stepped out into the snizzle, and gently unbuckled my son from his car seat.

I observed my daughter climb slowly - so very, very slowly - out through her side of the Jeep, dropping something on the pavement as she did. It went unnoticed, except by me. Under normal circumstances, I would have been impatient. I might have snapped at her to hurry up. But I today I had the luxury of standing dry and removed to see her enact the careful ritual that drives me batty every single day. And suddenly it dawned on me. She doesn't want to fall. The ground is far away.

I saw him take them both, my little daughter and my little son, softly by the hands and guide them through the parking lot towards the restaurant's front door.

I took tender note of my daughter's black Mary Janes, her brown pants, her green shirt, her red headband and the wisps of baby fine flyaways poking out here and there. I remembered the text message I had received from my husband as I sat in a conference session two hundred miles away the day before. "Which way do you part V-meister's hair? On the side or down the middle?" I had pictured then my husband standing with her in front of the bathroom mirror and tenderly, awkwardly, brushing her hair.

As they approached, I saw my children's guileless faces, one looking this way, the other that, and taking in the world around them - a flat, gray parking lot - as though it had infinite possibilities on offer. They hadn't yet noticed me and I wasn't sure if they knew that I was waiting within, just fifty feet and still a world away.

And after having been away for a mere handful of days, watching through that window I saw them, my husband and my children, for the exquisite, the ethereal, the good, the trusting souls they are.

And I was glad, so glad, to be home.

*******************************************************************************************

I attended the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop in Dayton, Ohio this past weekend. I have much to tell you about this experience, but I'm still sorting through my impressions, so it will have to wait for another day.

Sweet/Tart

I have two lucid memories from my First Communion day.

The first is the lemon meringue bars, a favorite dessert my mother had made especially for the occasion. I had ferreted away five or six of them while my parents were busy with their hosting responsibilities, and, basking in First Communion Day glory, ate piece after piece of sweet and tangy goodness by myself down in our cool, damp basement.

The second is getting stone cold busted by my mom for planting myself on the goldenrod yellow carpet in our living room, and, with the crisp white skirt of my dress billowing around me, loudly tallying up my communion cash in front of all the assembled guests. (ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.)

But here is what I don't remember, because I hadn't noticed it until I came across this old photo:



The look on my mother's face earlier, as I made my first careful, deliberate way down the aisle.

And that's the thing about mothers - one minute they're reading you the Riot Act in front of all your cousins, and the next, they're gazing upon you with a look of infinite love.

I Am a (Very Sensitive) Home Economist

Yesterday afternoon, J-dog and V-meister kidnapped me and the P-Dawg by gunpoint and forced us to drive them to Red Robin for lunch. As we were waiting for our food to arrive, I noticed my husband eyeing me with a look of concern.

P-Dawg: "So, I've been thinking about what you might want to do when you eventually re-enter the workforce."

Rima: "Are you calling me lazy?"

P-Dawg: "No, no, it's just that-"

Rima: "I'm very busy, you know. Very busy. It's not like I'm running around getting pedicures."

P-Dawg: "No, of course not. But I've been thinking that-"

Rima: "I have too much time on my hands? Because let me tell you something, mister . . ."

P-Dawg: "No, it's not that. It's-"

Rima: "I spend a lot of time on laundry and general home economics. And tidying up. Do you think our family's shoes line themselves up from smallest to largest in the entryway all by themselves?"

P-Dawg: "Thank you. Listen, I'm not saying right away, but hear me out for a minute-"

Rima: "Not to mention menu planning and food preparation. These things don't come easily to me, but I do them out of love."

P-Dawg: "I know you do, and I appreciate it, I really do. But I know you want to eventually get back to work and I've been thinking about some options you may want to consider."

Rima: "Plus there's violin practice, and my charities . . . "*

P-Dawg: "For example, I think you might really enjoy starting your own business. You could do something you love, make your own hours, and not be confined to a cubicle."

Rima: "ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT?"

********************************************************************************************

While I do plan to go back to some form of work eventually, I apparently don't want to talk about it yet.

(And for the record, what P-Dawg had in mind was for us to start our own day trading business. Which I think has something to do with the stock market and is the OBVIOUS CHOICE for a person with degrees in French, English, and Edumacation who has no idea what's even in her 401k plan, regardless of the fact that she is routinely quizzed about it at the dinner table.)

On the other hand, it's heartening to know that the P-Dawg was merely projecting his own career aspirations onto his wife, and not trying to prematurely foist her on corporate America in curlers and a bathrobe.


*There are no charities

Remembered

Yesterday I was slicing a loaf of bakery bread and something about the way I did it - the tilt of my head, maybe, or the way the tip of my tongue curled slightly over my lip in concentration - made me think of my grandmother.

Having spent several years of her life literally living on bread and tea alone, Močiutė never took nourishment for granted. She used to bake her own European style rye and every last bit of it would be used, whether it was made into crumbs, incorporated into a soup, or turned into slop for the dog.

She always handled bread so lovingly, as though it were the most precious commodity in the world. I have a vivid image of her in my mind's eye, cutting into a loaf pulled fresh from the oven, carefully, gently, a half smile playing across her lips. I sometimes (but not often enough) think of this when I discard the crusty end of a loaf, or remove weeks old leftovers from the fridge and toss them directly into the garbage.

My grandmother died two years ago today, and I miss her.

The Power of Lounge

It's January in Cleveland.

We have snow up to our eyeballs. (Figuratively speaking, of course, unless you're thirty inches tall.)

The rum balls and Christmas cookies have been eaten, the fat jeans have been reluctantly marshalled, and the fridge has been enthusiastically stocked full of lean meats, fruits, veggies, tofu, and Weight Watcher's yogurt.

The J-dog and V-meister are back in school (fingers crossed for no snow day tomorrow), the Christmas toys have blended into the periphery, and life begins again in ordinary time.

I've really enjoyed myself for these past two weeks I've been AWOL. Christmas was a little less hectic than it's been in past years - the P-Dawg took a week off work, we entertained, visited with family and friends we don't often get to see, and spent our mornings in pajamas playing with toys and tech gadgets.

There are many tidbits I could write about, but none of them seem to warrant an entire blog entry. Either that, or I don't have it in me to try and craft wry posts around the minutiae of our everyday lives just now. Strange, because I tend to get writer's block when I'm feeling low, not happy and content, as I've been.

I've been reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and Eckhart has given me permission to "just be." In my case this apparently does not involve writing blog entries. One thing Tolle writes about which really struck me is the idea that industriousness and creativity go in cycles and that it's perfectly normal to want - and need - to "rest."

And so I'm resting. Not for long, mind you. I find that whenever I write a post about being creatively blocked, the muse does not waste much time in popping in again, the little tease.


J-Dog knows all about the Power of Now.

Plant Whisperer

I inherited a mess of plants from the former owners of our house. My family scrambled to place bets on how long they would survive.

When the P-Dawg and I did a final walk-through before receiving the keys just over one year ago, the former lady of the house lovingly introduced me to each plant by name and gave me explicit instructions for its care and nurturing. I followed her around, scribbling in a spiral notebook which I promptly lost.

A few months ago, the family had gathered for a cookout at our place, and while the rest of us were chillin' on the patio, my mom and mother-in-law stepped into the sun room to inspect my plants, as is their custom.

I could see them through the windows, making their rounds.

After visiting the Hawaiian ginger and the cymbidium orchid, they lingered in front of my Christmas cactus with bent heads a-murmuring. There was some sad nodding and hand gesticulation, and then the two of them emerged with long faces.

"I hate to tell you this, Rima," my mother said with a glint in her eye, "But your Christmas cactus is dying, if not already dead."

"Yep, it's a goner!" my MIL gleefully interjected. "There will be no reviving that one. Have you ever watered it?"

"You guys!" I rolled my eyes. "It's a cactus! It will bounce back."

The mothers exchanged knowing looks.

"It's a succulent," my MIL corrected. "It does need water from time to time."

"You said succulent!" I snickered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

I continued to water the Christmas cactus whenever it occurred to me, which is to say almost never.

And last week, this happened:



It bloomed.

The next time they came over, I flaunted my cactus and taunted the mothers with my stoopid-fresh plant cultivating skillz.

"Have you noticed how beautifully my Christmas cactus is blooming?" I asked. "And a full month ahead of schedule, no less?"

The mothers circled my plant with arched eyebrows.

"Well if you want to know the truth" my MIL said, "Even a rock could thrive in this sun room of yours."

"Dumb luck" said my mother.

Then they sauntered off arm-in-arm to identify hidden safety hazards in the basement.


Plants-a-plenty

A Fairytale

Once upon a time, in a kingdom called, "Ohio," there lived a little girl named V-meister who wanted nothing so much as a goldfish and for all girls to dress up as princesses on her sixth birthday.

On the birthday morning, she woke up and . . . there was an empty aquarium on her dresser.

Later, her mama took her to Petc0, where she picked out two fish:


"Valentine and Clementine" (Someone is going to have to remind us to change that filter in a couple of weeks.)

The princess's second wish came true the next day, when her grandparents, two uncles, brother, cousin and closest friends gathered for a birthday feast at Chateau Rama.



It was the V-meister's heart's desire that her mother, Queen Rima de la Rama, wear her wedding gown to the ball.

The Queen negotiated down to an old bridesmaid's dress and a tiara:


Princess V-Meister and Queen Rima de la Rama

Queen Rima de la Rama was a "beta mom" who normally snubbed themed birthday parties that would require her to lift a finger and only spoil the children more, but the idea of a princess party was somehow appealing.

Even Grandma M. and Uncle M. came in all their finery:



While there were no bouncy castles, red carpets, or hired court jesters, the princesses did do a craft and played several party games.


It was a foam craft.


(Some princess identities have been protected.)

Queen Rima de la Rama's friend, the Duchess of V, (wearing a black turtleneck and jeans) regaled the assembled princesses with super scary L1thuanian fairy tales featuring nine-headed fire breathing dragons and an assortment of cats, foxes, and roosters:


She was the hit of the party.

Afterwards, it was time for refreshments. Some princesses announced that they do not like pizza, turkey roll-ups, hummus, carrots, grapes, pretzels, or chocolate cake with ice cream.

Queen Rima de la Rama suggested that those princesses drink water. Does she look like the sort of queen who makes grilled cheese sandwiches on demand?

Then there was much present opening, wand waving, shrieking, and prancing throughout the kingdom as the princesses oohhed and ahhhed over gifts and began burning off their sugar highs.





Throughout the proceedings, the little Prince J-Dog (who refused to wear his knightly helmet for any length of time), was quite a trooper.

. . .Until the assembled princesses began chasing him all over the kingdom and calling him names, at which point he flipped out and had to be redirected.

He cannot be held accountable for his actions.



After the princesses partook of a delicious C0stc0 cake and some ice cream, they beat the living crap out of a pinata and stuffed their little pink polyester princess purses full of party spoils.

And they lived happily ever after, forever and ever,

THE END.

Blessed

The P-Dawg turned another year older yesterday. It was the coldest and most overcast August 30th either of us can remember.



But it was very good.

It's Not a Cult

I have been to L1thuan1an camp and back!

There is no air conditioning at L1thuan1an camp. There is no Internet and no cell phone service. You share a bathroom with ten other families, you sleep in a bunk bed, and you let your children run rampant sporting Kool-Aid mustaches. All in all, it's a jolly good time.

I've told you a little bit about my family's cultural background, yes? But I can't recall whether I mentioned that V-meister and J-dog are bilingual. I've been speaking L1thuan1an with them since they were babies, so they are both fluent. And, see, there's this total immersion sleepaway camp in Michigan that I used to attend as a child where we conversed in our mother tongue, drank Tang, sang ballads, folk danced, and occasionally re-enacted ancient pagan solstice rituals. It was always the highlight of my year.

I loved it so much that I used to be inconsolable for weeks after returning home. When I became too old to attend as a camper, I signed up to be a counselor. So, when the opportunity presented itself to attend a weeklong family camp, the Ramas were among the first in line to attend - even the P-Dawg who has not a lick of L1thuan1an in him, went with us.

He was quite a trooper, eating cold beet soup and kugelis (potato and egg casserole) with the best of them, teaching a childrens' juggling class, participating in a campfire skit, and learning a few choice L1thuan1an phrases ("Let us drink ale.")

Now we're back, fighting off a summer sickness and digging out from underneath a mountain of laundry. But it was definitely worth it.


Me, running an obstacle course - and moving very quickly, I might add.


Obstacle course, leg two: pile diving off a picnic table


The V-meister and I performing in front of the campfire.


The V-meister and her cousin dressed up for L1thuan1a's one thousandth birthday party. (Can I get a what? what!) It is actually older than that, but was first mentioned by name in the annals of history about a thousand years ago.

So we had a birthday party. The kids dressed up all medieval-like, ate pizza and cake, and later watched Shrek II dubbed over in L1thuan1an. And while they did, we adults drank mead and ate whole chickens with our bare hands in the next room over.

Okay, not really, but we had a beer pairing dinner featuring everything from maple cured ham, to Lithuanian garlic bread with Havarti dip, to cured salmon finger sandwiches, to shrimp gumbo, split pea soup, black bean chili, and sour cherry pie. It was a pretty sweet birthday party.











Some other scenes from our trip:


The P-Dawg posing in front of some nature and a couple of SUVs.


The P-Dawg, preparing to juggle raw eggs over my mother's head as part of a campfire stunt.


Thorn Lake ("Spyglys")


The beach at dusk.


A cross. L1thuan1ans were one of the last in Europe to convert, but now they're as Catholic as they get.


That's all for now. I hope to be back on a fairly regular posting schedule soon!

I Took a Vacation

I've been on vacation, my peeps. As you may have surmised, I went AWOL on the blog, but I also took a couple of trips, including one with family and a group of good friends on Lake Michigan:


The blue house is where we stayed.


V-meister on the beach where we played.


J-dog reveling in the feeling of wet sand between his toes.


Rima and P-Dawg Jolie-Pitt-Rama


Rima "Baywatch" Rama.



My friend Vida at the dinner table, eagerly anticipating the evening's repas of wagyu steaks, lemon chive smashed potatoes and fresh greens. Her husband, Chef V, cooked our fabulous dinners. While the men gathered 'round the kitchen island to keep him company, we ladies sipped adult beverages out on the deck:


"We don't cook, but we do chill."

One day we went cherry picking, and V baked this pie:

It was the best pie I ever put in my pie hole.

Evenings, we'd sing by the fire pit while Derek played guitar:





We made wreaths out of wildflowers.


And danced ancient Lithuanian folk dances by twilight.

It was the kind of vacation I've wanted to take ever since V-meister and J-dog were born: a large house, a beach, good friends, good food, good drink, and sunkissed children scampering about. Bliss!

In short, I've simply been enjoying myself and seeing to it that my kids have the lazy, unregimented kind of summer I remember from my own childhood - full of slow as molasses mornings, picnics, sprinklers, sandboxes, sidewalk chalk, afternoons at the pool, ice cream, and morning cartoons.

It's been good. But I've been thinking . . .

"Perhaps I should dust off the old blog."

Some photos in this post were unabashedly pilfered from the Facebook pages of my friends.

Memory Lane: Busier Than It Used to Be

With a little time to kill on our way to a christening, we took the kids for a drive along the lake shore yesterday and passed the spot where P-Dawg proposed to me almost ten years ago. With a captive audience buckled up in the backseat, I started waxing nostalgic about the glory days.

"Hey, V-meister, see that field over there by the water? A long time ago before you and J-dog were born, Daddy and I went for a walk here, and he got down on his knee, gave me this ring, and asked me if I would marry him!"

"Mama, J-dog is looking at me. Tell him to stop."

"There's no law against looking, V-meister. On the day Daddy asked me to marry him-"

"And he keeps talking! The J-dog is talking when I'm talking!"

"Just ignore him. Anyway, when your father proposed-"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaa! He KICKED me!"

"No! V-meister kick ME, Mama! She kick me!"

(commence stereophonic wailing)

P-Dawg: "Don't make me stop this car, kids. And quit kicking my seat back, J-dog, I mean it."

"Daddy, I can't stop crying."

"Why don't you take a deep breath and count to ten?"

"One, two, three, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! I just can't stop!!!"

"Hey, kids, look at the lake. Isn't it nice? We used to hang out here all the time and-"

J-dog: "We go swimming, Daddy?"

V-meister: "Daddy, J-dog wants to go swimming in the ocean."

Daddy: "It's not an ocean, it's a lake. And no swimming! Church. We're going to church."

V-meister: "Daddy said no swimming in the ocean, J-dog. Maybe tomorrow."

Daddy: "J-DOG! I told you to stop kicking the seat back. You do that one more time, and I'm pressing the EJECT button. You got that? The EJECT BUTTON!!!"

J-dog: "I see funpark. We go funpark, Daddy?"

V-meister: "Daddy, J-dog wants to go to the funpark."

Daddy: "What are you talking about, "funpark?" There is no funpark. Church! WE. GO. CHURCH."

J-dog: We go church, Daddy? Is funchurch, Daddy? Is funchurch?"

Daddy: "YES! FUNCHURCH! WE GO FUNCHURCH AND WE LIKE IT!!!"


And so we did. Ah, how times have changed . . .

Mission

It was on the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated that I took the pregnancy test.

We had decided just a few weeks before that the time was as ripe as it ever would be for babymaking and I, with a green light from my psyche, the P-Dawg, and the ob/gyn, made it my personal mission to beat the estimated odds of conceiving in “six months to one year.”

P-Dawg’s input and DNA would be required, naturally, for implementation, but I took greedy ownership of the planning and strategy phases with the same singularity of purpose I had once dedicated to making the Dean’s List, getting the scholarship, scoring the interview, landing the job.

To this end, babymaking books were purchased and studied religiously. Google searches employing phrases like, “How to get pregnant super fast” were performed, and morning temperatures were charted. I was tuned into my body’s every twitch and secretion in the way that only a woman meticulously planning conception can be.

One afternoon just days after our first scheduled attempt, I was driving home from work when I noticed how uncomfortable the tug of the seat belt across my chest had become. My ta-tas, as it happened, were sore in a whole new way, and they heralded a light bulb moment the likes of which I hadn't experienced to date.

I began groping myself right there in the driver's seat of my blue Saturn sedan, cautiously at first, then with no holds barred. Does it hurt when I press here? Yes! What about here? Yes! If I mash them together? By, God, it does! And if I press myself full tilt into the steering wheel? I just might be pregnant.

It was too early to take a test, yet impossible, from that point on, to ignore the goings on: continued soreness, strange, cramplike twitches in the nether regions, and a sharp, stabbing pain that woke me up in the middle of one night to be followed by unmistakably rosier than usual cheeks the very next morning.

I endured the requisite number of days before an early pregnancy test could be taken. On the morning of that day, with the P-Dawg still on his overnight call shift at the hospital, I planned a deliberate trip to the drugstore. As I prepared to leave, the cable channels were playing and replaying the same few clips of space shuttle Columbia breaking up in blue skies over Texas.

And in the car on the way to the pharmacy, listening to a DJ announce news of the tragedy with thinly veiled excitement, before the pregnancy test had even been purchased or peed on, I knew with certainty that a catastrophic space mission would always be entwined in my memory with the day I learned that my first baby would come to be.

The test, of course, was positive: my dear little V-meister in her earliest iteration, as evidenced by a blurry pink line. Yet I was surprised at how closely my initial joy was followed by a pang of fear and the very first inkling of the buzzing, baseline anxiety that comes part and parcel with the act of bringing a child into this world.

And I've been living with the uneasy knowledge that ecstasy and despair are never more than a heartbeat away, one from the other, ever since that day when my fervent hope was confirmed as inky smoke trails, obvious evidence of human frailty and ultimate demise, arched across a Texas sky.

My Babylust is Fun Size

Do you know how cute a shoeless two-year old attempting a headstand looks?

Cute enough to cause a shriveled up 35 year-old mother of two who has sworn off having more children almost seriously reconsider her decision in a fit of babylust, that's what.

I've had minor ovarian twitches in the past, upon oogling other people's newborns and such, but never to the point where I was doing actual math in my head, like today during the little J-dog's Gymboree class. (July is a top-notch month, though, don't you think?)

Apparently, twenty adorable and exceptionally well-behaved two year olds toddling around barefoot and losing their shit for pure joy over a roomful of mechanically generated bubbles can totally do that to a person who may or may not be in the middle of her moon cycle, if you're picking up what I'm laying down.

But as strong as the urge was today, I know it is not a good idea for me to have more children. And I probably won't. Even though I'm pretty sure I could. I mean, I know how to do it, is what I'm saying.

I'm wondering, though: is there anyone out there reading who thought her family was complete and then decided to have a third child? Anyone, say, who had a VERY difficult time of it when her kids were babies and couldn't wait for the day when she finally had two hands free? And when that day was finally on the horizon, maybe found herself thinking that two hands aren't really all that and a bag of chips? Anyone out there who regrets a decision to have only two children? Found that the third time was the absolute charm? I await your wisdom.

Really, what I need is a mother of two teenagers, preferably one boy and one girl, to talk me off the ledge.

Rimarama, this is your Head Voice speaking. I can talk you off the ledge. How about: You're a b1tch on wheels when pregnant! And you're really not that good with teensie-weensie bobbly-headed wittle babies. You are prone to post-partum depression. And you have renegade boobies that routinely malfunction when called upon to act as vessels of infant nourishment. You should go back to work when the J-Dog starts school. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure you'll have a mid-life crisis and you totally suck at scrapbooking. Was there anything else?

Rimarama: Well, there is the almost ten pounds of baby weight I finally wrested off.

Head Voice: Word.

So then I came home with an enormous hankering for smoked oysters. Which I ate for lunch, atop two slices of gag-a-licious weight watchers bread (not recommended). Afterwards, I absolutely had to have a Fun Size Snicker's bar, but found that there was not much "fun" about it until I chased it up with three or four more, at which point it became a veritable Festival of Fun. For about ten seconds, and then it turned into a Guilt Garden.

But, it helped get my mind off babies.

This pikchur was taken when I was eight months along with the V-Meister:

"Are You Freakin' Kidding Me, Rimarama?"


P.S. Don't anybody go reading anything into this post. I am absolutely, unequivocally, hands-down, NOT pregnant.

Accidental Fun

Our visit to the pumpkin patch yesterday coincided with their Annual Family Fun Festival, which caught us a little off gourd guard.

It's not that we don't love Families OR Fun, but when we decided to go it was getting close to nap time and what we'd had in mind was a peaceful half hour or so of letting the J-dog and V-meister frolic in the sun before picking a couple of pumpkins and heading right back home.

As opposed to, for example, spending a whole afternoon among teeming masses of sticky, cider fueled children in a place where the toddler-to-port-a-potty ratio is three hundred to one.

As the P-Dawg and I were mouthing, "I don't know - should we go?" back and forth to each other at the main gate, the V-meister piped up from the backseat in a small, hopeful voice.

"Mama? Daddy? What are you saying? Is there a FESTIVAL OF FUN happening here? ARE WE GOING TO THE FESTIVAL OF FUN??????

So it was a done deal. Five minutes and twenty-four dollars later, the family Rama was bouncing on the back of a tractor bed, headed for Fun's epicenter.













Totally worth it.