Mother's Day

Been a while. Lot of stuff I never got around to posting about. Maybe I will, maybe not.

But I had a really nice Mother's Day. (Much better than the year we ended up in the ER.) Chuckro and ARR woke me up with a card (still dripping glitter glue) and homemade scones.

ARR and I went into the city to check out the Color Factory. Is it worth the exorbitant price ($38)? ...maybe? I mean, you do get a mochi ice cream, a regular scoop of ice cream, some candy, a macaron, a shot of raspberry soda, and a tchotchke of your choice, along with the experience (I'd guess an hour and a half for normal adults. An hour and 15 when rushed through by an impatient kindergartner (who had promised at the beginning that he'd do everything but sometimes was jumping out of his skin to get to the next thing and apparently had failed to process when I told him when I bought the tickets that we were only going to do this once ever and that once you left a room you could never go back), plus 45 minutes in the ball pit, which probably made the day.

I get ahead of myself.

The Color Factory is an interactive art installation thing, by which we actually mean an Instagrammer trap. It's made 100% with the photo ops in mind. (There was one lady walking through with a professional DSLR including handheld gimbal. They knew their audience.) 16 rooms, each with a different activity. Several of them, as I mentioned, involved food. (And they're ridiculous food, like butterfly pea flower ice cream, so figure it's probably at least $10-15 worth of trendy hipster food. Half of which ARR couldn't eat, but Mama ain't no fool and brought him Skittles. He was perfectly satisfied.) They're all quite clever and fun to play with, and really good at supplying fabulous photos if you're better with selfie mode than I am and also perhaps not frizzled and windblown by dragging said kindergartner through a torrential downpour to get there. The climax is the absolutely enormous, and I mean enormous, ball pit. Which, I have to say, was really, really fun to play in. Usually they aren't big enough for adults to play in without feeling guilty, and this one was huge. More than enough room. ARR and I had a wonderful time.

On the way there, I tricked him into letting me read him Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now, you have to understand. We've been having issues with chapter books. Not that he doesn't like them, he's mowing through the Magic Treehouse series with a speed that has to be seen to be believed. But he's the freaking Rum Tum Tugger. He does NOT take recommendations. "He only likes what he finds for himself." Grr. Doesn't matter if it's crafts or activities or books or movies or songs or what. If you suggest it, he may agree it sounds interesting, maybe, but he never ever actually wants to do it. So all the beloved books I've just been waiting for him to age into? No interest whatsoever. This compounded with his declaration a week or two ago that now that he can read for himself, he doesn't see any point to my reading to him. Stabbed through the heart. Nooooooooooooo.

Anyway, I had back-up Highlights in the backpack, but I didn't tell him that. (He later discovered them, and gave me a betrayed look, but was at that point too addicted to switch.) I just told him this was the book we had and that was all. He wasn't interested. I read the back cover copy - we'll just read the cover. That's all. Did it in my absolute best drama voice. He was mildly intrigued. Started in. By the time the train got there, he was thoroughly hooked. To the point that we spent the solid hour after dinner sitting on the couch reading. (I have no voice left.) He was wiggling out of his skin, because he can't actually sit still that long, but desperate for me to keep reading anyway. Just ignore the wiggles. Keep reading.

We've still got a third of the book to go but he can't wait for tomorrow.

I win!

So random stuff

- Spring break was lovely, and forever ago.

- Went to Virginia to visit Chuckro's sister. Hit Yorktown and Jamestown. Yorktown was not a success--I thought Mr. I-talk-about-Minecraft-weaponry-non-stop would find the (really cool) new interactive museum about the battlefield intriguing. No. The intro video COMPLETELY freaked him out and he refused to stay in the museum at all. Was briefly intrigued by the campfire and some chickens, then wanted to leave. Jamestown was slightly more successful, since it was about settlers instead of warfare, but still not great. We did not bother taking him to Colonial Williamsburg (Chuckro and I wandered around for 15 minutes in between stuff at one point.) The Chef's Table was amazing, and we ate and drank far too much. ARR did like Busch Gardens, except for the first 45 minutes where it wouldn't stop raining. The weather report had predicted partly cloudy. It was not raining when we left the hotel, or when we parked the car. As soon as we got in, complete downpour. All the parents were complaining about the inaccuracy. (One guy's looking at his phone - "According to my weather app, it's not raining now!" This was said as I held a map over ARR's head, water running off both sides.) We bought umbrellas. ARR and Chuckro jumped in line for an indoor ride...and disappeared for over an hour. On the plus side, because of the lousy weather, there were NO lines for roller coasters. Even after it cleared up. I spent longer waiting for the bumper cars. I literally would stick ARR and Chuckro, stroll over to a coaster, jump aboard, and be back in less than 15 minutes.

- Went to PA to visit my folks. Between the two trips, ARR hit two historic reenactment sites, three hands-on museums, three botanic gardens with children's sections, and an amusement park. And got two afternoons in the hotel pool, and colored eggs, and did an egg hunt. He had a good spring break.

- Oh, we also did a time-share presentation (which got us most of our hotel stay free). We...are not their target demographic. At one point, they had us do a visualization exercise, where we had to (separately) enter our dream vacation and then the vacation we were likely to take. The idea was that they took the numbers we supplied earlier, and showed how if we got their timeshare/points-applied-to-international-resorts deal, we could afford to actually take the dream vacation. The problem was, well, I put in Thailand as a dream vacation, and Chuckro put in Singapore because I'd been talking about it, but then I pointed out that I've got a reasonably good chance of going to Singapore later this year for work. And he agreed that we'd do Thailand in a couple years, because we'd both put in Bali as the vacation we were actually taking, since I'd already put the deposit down on that. And the sales guy's eyes are bugging out of his head, and he asks how much we were paying for it, and I start explaining what I'd set up. And he couldn't believe how cheap it was (relatively, you'd probably pay more to go to Disney World) and started to ask me how I'd done it and had to visibly make himself stop because it was definitely against his pitch to ask me for vacation-booking advice. The other part that didn't really work for them is they took us on the tour of the timeshare. And here's the thing - it's lovely. It's actually significantly nicer than our house. About as big as 2/3 our house, actually, and much more expensive counters and furniture and stuff. And here's the thing. Their pitch is obviously to people who want to stay in luxurious accommodations but think international travel is hard. Last year, I went to Australia and Prague on my own (the first for work, but I went to Cairns by myself), but stayed in one-step-above hostel places and was perfectly happy with that. (I want clean and secure. I do not care, at all, about luxury.) My travel philosophy more often is to stay in cheap accommodations and spend the money on actually going somewhere amazing and doing stuff that's awesome. This...was kind of the opposite. It was a hilarious mis-match. They didn't know what to do with us.

Other stuff:
- Went on the Fairy Trail hike in Rahway with V, M, and their daughter E. They have all these little fairy houses made out of natural materials along the trail. It's the kind of stuff I used to love making as a kid. It was delightful. It's also super adorable how sweet ARR is with E, who's two years younger than him.

- We've had a series of playdates with various levels of success.

- The group of moms from ARR's class is increasingly turning into some kind of Mean Girls drama, and I hate that I'm somehow in middle school again. That I have to deal with because they're ARR's friends' moms.

- Saw Hadestown yesterday, which is generally delightful. Orpheus, who's supposed to be the hero, is a completely unlikable ass. I'm not sure that was not deliberate. I also kind of hate his song that's the big climatic song. It's a falsetto nightmare. (Hilarious aside - the actor playing him originated Spider-Man in Turn Off the Dark. Talk about typecasting.) But Hades and Persephone are so damn delightful, and their depth makes his shallowness stand out all the more. (Which again - I think perhaps this is not by accident.) Drunk Persephone is AMAZING and I want to invite her to parties.