Disney Inferno
Estimated Days Until Blogger... ah, who cares anymore?

The wavering back and forth between exhilaration and revulsion with this thing is wearing me out, frankly.  I've just about had it.  Had it.

I'm sorry.  Don't be mad.  Come back.  Please?  I'm sorry.  Look, I didn't know what I was saying.  I'm just tired, OK?  Please?  I'm so sorry.  Come on.  I didn't mean it.  I didn't mean it.  Come on.  I'm tired.  It's been a long weekend and... come on.  Please?

Phew.  That was close.

Yours Truly had the bright idea to drag the three boys and the wife off to Disneyland on Saturday.  We have annual passes we bought with last year's Bush Checks (if you have kids, you remember the official bribe we all got last year from Uncle George) and they expire the first week of August (passes, not the checks).  So I says to Mrs. Pops: "Oy!  Let's us go to Disneyland Saturday seein' as it wasn't quite so hot as to catch the atmosphere on fire on Friday."

She says fine, but I have to stop talking like that.

OK good, let's us go.

It's Saturday morning at about 7:45 and there's traffic on the 91.  Did I mention it was Saturday morning at 7:45?  Yes?  OK, because after I typed it, I still didn't believe it.

Anyway, some poor bastard's car flipped over near the median.  Nobody dead, at least not in any obvious way (most of them were standing as we drove slowly by).  But as omens go, this is slightly more onerous than birds flying off to the left.

We get there at about 8:15 (usually a 20-25 minute drive total ended up more than twice that), pack up the kids in the convenient-in-theory-only double stroller and set off for the trams.  No parking and walking up to Disneyland anymore, no sir.  All off-site parking just to torture those of us with small children.

We get to the park, stash away our contraband provisions (PB&J for everyone in a locker outside the main gate.  I know, it sounds very Leave it to Beaver, but it's that or pay $40 for burgers inside... I wish I were kidding).

Round about 10 am the middle child (he's three) has refused to go on just about everything.  The castle (including the essential pathway through the center of the park) is closed for renovation, so whatever the crowd number was, we were all shunted on to side paths which is less fun than it sounds.

Oh, and through no fault of my own, my hair has burst into flames.  It was just that hot.  OK, it probably wasn't that hot, but with all the stroller-pushing and kid-carrying, it felt it.

We limp back to the "picnic area", the leper colony where one must eat non-Disney food and we have a very slow, weary lunch.  Meanwhile the youngest (he's 14 months) is discovered to be cutting four new teeth simultaneously.  Fan-mega-tastic.

One more push into the park to try to make it all worthwhile washes out when Mrs. Pops and I, stuck in another non-moving crowd of very sweaty foreign people, look at each other, read our collective minds and point the stroller back toward the exit.  The oldest boy (he's 5) clomps along, crying because he died of heat exhaustion twenty minutes earlier, so Pops gets to carry him all the way down Main Street US-motherfucking-A, kicking and screaming.

But you know why it was a good day?  Because on the way back, there was a brush fire off the side of the freeway.  The 91 eastbound was dead stopped.

Ah but we were in the toll-lanes, unecumbered, unfettered, 80 mph, home by 3 pm.  So really, it could have been worse.

Yeah, I could have been one of the several dozen firemen I saw in their full fire gear (rubber suits, for God's sake) dragging a firehose in line up a 60-degree incline in triple-digit heat while a helicopter makes water drops way more closely than safety should allow.

But since I'm not them, someone else has to be.  Here's me being glad I don't and equally glad that they are.  Nice work, fellas.  And ladies probably.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 5.3

 
Pops


- posted by Pops @ 2:18 PM