Soft Hum

Sent the nephew packin' this morning and the dust has begun to settle. The hum of the freezer and the computer's power supply fan can actually be heard now. CP's adjusting to the new quiet and getting back to being the star of our little show. I can only imagine what my folks went through with my brother and I when they were 30 or so. A 10 year old and a 7 year old...I guess that an ATV was the only sensible answer, leaving the alternative of sending us out into rush-hour traffic as a backup. Here I thought for all of these years that they were just joking when they told us to go play in traffic. Nope.

Yesterday was my first visit to that place where a kid can supposedly be a kid. Sheesh! We walked in on rainy day and it was pure bedlam. I really liked their idea of marking the hands with the black light ink as we entered. From the front gate, we made our way through a large pizza as the nephew made his way through 129 tokens (one was given to CP for the teletubby ride). CP had all of this stuff around - games, kids, a scary band of moving furry critters on stage..... and all that she wanted to do was move the chairs in the big open portion of the dining room. Not just one either...she wanted to move all of them. After the pizza was gone, the nephew and I discussed the economics of $13 worth of tokens (to be raced through as fast as possible, of course) which turned into tickets, which in turn were exchanged for two small rubbery squishy toys and a big rainbow lollipop. The lesson seemed to sink in, but who knows. He was indeed being a kid.

He said that going to the pizza place was one of the best days of his trip here which also included:
- a week-long skateboard camp at a park Skateboarding magazine rated 9/10
- purchasing a new skateboard at a real skate store
- leaning how to help raise poultry, harvest eggs, then cook them
- a good lesson in how not to call mommy 20 times a day
- a visit to the International Wildlife Museum
- dropping my Sonicare toothbrush in the toilet
- seeing the Simpsons movie
- a rained out camping trip to Mt Lemmon
- his aunt buying him some really amazing comic books
- getting some business advice and a great brochure
- a good lesson in how to manually do the dishes