When it's not a jungle...

It's a zoo!

And I wish I could be SUPER blog-witty with that caption and show you a photo, but, no, I left my camera at home when we left this morning...along with a few other small things like my sense of direction and my advanced pattern recognition brain.

I kid you not--I've been to the zoo between four and six times a year for the last fifteen years. This was the first time in fifteen years I've ever gotten lost. Twice. I mean, usually, it's a total no-brainer, but this one time, when I've got a friend and a friend of hers waiting for me, I take two wrong exits and the world's longest loop back...it's like my lizard brain had a giant gas bubble, and there I was, cruising down the freeway, flicking my tongue in the fetid air.

Oh yeah--about the fetid air. On Sunday, we had another 'Day'--it was a good day, but it was a day. It was a pick up Grandma in one part of town and drag her to the foothills kind of day, where my aunt had planned the world's COOLEST TREASURE HUNT across her 6-10 acres of land while the adults hauled the small children who couldn't make it on their own kind of day. It was a lot of fun, but there was one moment as I stood on top of a rise with a really steep trail, eyeballing the possible damage to my person should I misstep. A line from George of the Jungle occurred to me, and Chicken heard me say, "Fat woman rolls down hill--classic element of physical comedy." She thought it was funny. (None of my aunt's friends did, for some reason...it seriously felt like I was losing my mojo. Even the one ACTUALLY named Amy didn't seem to feel she had anything in common with me. It was weird.) Okay, getting back to the fetid air.

On the way home, one of my useless teenagers, I mean beloved older children, knocked over an old (I mean OLD) Jamba Juice on the floor. Since it was theirs in the first place and had never been cleaned up, I asked them (commanded them, begged them, whatever) to clean the damned thing up.

Two days later, (this morning!) I opened the car doors to the MOST APPALLING STENCH KNOWN TO MAN. It was wet dog and permed hair, it was nasty feet and spoiled fruit, it was duckshit in a pressure cooker with buffalo wing sauce, it was the wheels of the juggernaught, greased with burnt plastic and limburger cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was nothing a half a can of Febreze and some open windows couldn't beat into submission.

Anyway, I blame my getting lost on the way to the zoo on that. Seriously--are there carcinogens in Febreze? It must have been SOMETHING, because usually, my lizard brain takes over on these trips and, VOILA! I'm at the fucking zoo. This time, I ended up doing louies in some craptastic parts of town--it was bizarre. (Maybe it's been so cold for so long that my lizard brain is just super sluggish...It's not like I'm totally fond of lizards anyway.)

But once we got there, the parade of hyperactive preschoolers was pretty hilarious...Cave Troll saw all of his favorite animals to his heart's content, but I've got to say my favorites were the Snow Leopards. Very fuzzy, very beautiful--if they'd had stripes and really superlong ear tufts, they would have resembled a certain man-god who is currently not selling very well on amazon.com at all. (*mutter* freakin' book sales...it's a good book, I swear on Triane's chastity belt it is!!!)

And after the zoo, it was Fariytale town--not always my favorite place, maybe because we only go there after hauling exhausted children through the zoo, the duckpond, and half of William Land Park. The idea is, everything there is some sort of innocent play structure based on fairy tales. The reality is, I see pedophiles in every corner, (my imagination, not for real) and there are too many corners, and too many children, and when one goes forward and the other goes backwards, and one decides to take short cuts through the crooked mile...well, you can see the angst. Today, though, it wasn't so bad--perhaps because there were three mommies to five goombas--it always helps to have that smaller ratio when you're outnumbered. Perhaps it was because Arwyn was such her own littler person--she was a delight to watch... when I wasn't chasing after her older brother. Perhaps it was just because they were being really really good, and that always warms the heart. Whatever--they had a blast, and then came home and threw their "We're overtired but it's too late for a nap and too early for real bed" festival of misery and...

Well, really, that's where we are now. And it's good, in a "I may have to throttle my offspring now" sort of way. By the way? That sock contest? I'm SO getting into it. I've got socks planned for Cory and Bracken and Green and Nicky and Renny...and no time to knit them. But that's okay. I was afraid I'd have trouble getting back into the Coryverse after Bitter Moon I & II--but as it turns out, that foul mouthed teenybopper and her hunks of the month are a serious part of me. Thank Goddess--I'd hate to lose that!

*whew* I could write more, but I need to clear the sink to wash some very tired children. (Bathroom? We have another bathroom? With a bathtub? Really? Mate--is this true? Is that where that other door leads? It's... it's been so long... it must be a false memory, like in 1984 or something, right? Yeah. There's no such thing.)