Let’s look at a few darker moments of our trip:

#1

After our idyllic beach day, we ended up at a restaurant of Ethan-11yr’s choosing. BIG MISTAKE. Why pretend we are so cool that we let children choose such things? We’re not that cool. Maybe Mike is. But I’m not. Let’s never do that again. We ended up at T Rex Cafe. Also known as The Loudest Place on the Planet. There were moving animatronic dinosaurs and a woolly mammoth that flicked its eyeballs my way every 92 seconds or so in a highly unnerving manner. We were seated in a faux ice cave that changed colors a lot. Seth-5yr was scared. I was cold. I was not EVEN pretending to be functional or pleasant or even conscious. Sensory OVERLOAD. I had to close my eyes and shut out the insanity. So did my mother. And then she left early to escape the chaos of that place, and actually stopped managers on her way out in order to question if the conditions were in compliance with OSHA standards.

Ooooh, yes she did. But at least she did it when I wasn’t with her because that would have embarassed me SO much. She only embarrasses me now by accident, and i thoroughly appreciate that. Like at a flag football game when she turned to me and out of the TOTAL BLUE asks, “What does it mean to be JONESING for something? I mean, really. WHO ARE THE JONESES?”

“Mother! Shhhh!”

It reminded me of that time in Sydney in…. 1994, when she turned to LaLa and me and said, “HEY LOOK! THAT PERSON HAS A WEDGIE!” and there was a guy on a bike with butt floss spandex apparel and we were all, “NoooooOOOOOoooo!” and then she was all, “What? OH! OHHHH! I thought that was just ‘our’ word. You mean other people use the word, ‘wedgie’ too?” Totally accidental embarrassing mom incident.)

Here’s her video of me being a Totally Lame Half Dead Mother, Wishing She Were Still At The Beach Instead Of At a Dinosaur Restaurant. I had NO idea that big skeleton was behind me until I saw this video. Am so observant.

#2

Cockroach Story, The Second.

Featuring another odd video taken by my mother. Who is REALLY good at making weird short videos that have an unexpected, humorous viewpoint. This one is subtle, so I’ll spell it all out.

We’re at Disney. There’s a cockroach. Seth-5yr starts to squish it and I grab his arm and pull him away. Not because I care about the life of the cockroach (sorry, Kafka) but because I care about the guts of a cockroach on my child’s shoe.

Then we watch the cockroach. It starts to readjust its shell as if it might fly.

I tense. LEAN away just a bit. In case I need to run and take two small children with me.

Then I look to see if my mother has captured this cockroach drama on video.

I see that she is NOT recording the roach, but is making a short cinematography study into Female Body Language Around Cockroaches.

I do a doubletake. Or a triple take. And then object with lots of pointy fingers and frantic arm gestures when I realize she’s taping me instead and that’s the way a lot of her short weird videos end including this one.

(I really am that prissy. Sigh.)

#3

By the end of this trip, Seth-5yr had HAD it. He was tired of walking. He wasn’t complaining. He wasn’t whining. He was just done, and if you looked closely it was easy to see that this good natured child was nearing his breaking point. On our last night we took a privately hired bus to see Nemo, The Musical and then when we returned it was pretty late. Seth-5yr and Caden-7yr were seated across the bus aisle from me. I shouldn’t have let them sit together. Really. I knew better. It was around 10 pm, and they were exhausted and hyper. At one point, Caden-7yr leans over into Seth-5yr’s face and does something really obnoxious. I saw it, but I still don’t know what it was. What I DO know is that Seth-5yr reacted by punching Caden-7yr square in the nose.

And that’s not a normal Seth-5yr reaction.

I don’t know who was more shocked.  But I think it was probably Seth-5yr.

He instantly grabbed Caden-7yr in a hug, pulled him close, burst into tears, and said “I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY, I’M SOOOOO SORRY!”

He was horrified at his behavior. Caden-7yr was stunned, but not really hurt. I asked Mike to separate them because i wasn’t actually sure I could do it with a straight face. (Awful as that is.)

I kinda wish I had that one on video.

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those video things aren’t working, huh? that is SO obnoxious, to write  a post featuring clips that do not work and i have no idea how to fix that. SO sorry, y’all. Welcome to my total lack of technical expertise. Frustrating, right?

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My mom thinks I portray her here as pithy and slightly unsupportive. We were sitting on a park bench awaiting Epcot to open so we could go to ‘France’ for breakfast when she said this.  I made her define pithy just to be sure we were on the same page, and then I failed to see how that was a negative. I think I portray her as the pithy, funny, wise, and thoroughly supportive individual mother she is, and anything less is just a reflection on my inability as a communicator.

(She’s really the best. And she’s probably wishing I hadn’t said all that, but let’s just call it even for that whole jonesing convo.)

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