Ah, Ouch, Ah...

Happy Sunday morning, gang.

***

It's a fine morning here. THEBOY had a sleepover at a buddy's house last night. Between Kelli and THEGIRL's late-sleepin' ways and the dose of night-time cold relief stuff I took, shoot, we've been awfully slow to get moving today. Kelli's still out.

I slept too long though, and jacked up my lower back.

***

Scored some free tix to Six Flags for Friday evening. I hadn't been since I was five. I took THEBOY, and you know... I thought I was prepared, but I wasn't. Just... wasn't.

For starters, it's $15 to park, and that's the "general" parking. You can pay up to twice that much for decent or valet parking. Crap.

So I paid to park and we caught the tram for the mile-long ride back to the main gate. Nuts.

Now, some crazy wind storm had just blown in around 6pm. As I left work I could see this massive dust cloud blowing in. It was an eery damn sight.

This meant that as we arrived at Six Flags the temperature was dropping. THEBOY was in shorts, but I did at least think to bring a couple jackets for us.

So we got to the park. Yeah.

I don't know if the whole park is this way or if it's just the direction we picked, but there were arcades everywhere. Lots of $3 a pop games that THEBOY was lured into. Fork over $3 and the kid squirts a clown's mouth with a water pistol for 10 seconds. Someone else wins the prize, we're done, my cash is gone and he wants to do it again.

You just BLEED money at Six Flags, even if you do snag free admission.

I steered him away from those as much as I could, but we did end up in a video game arcade. Two things I spent money on all evening were worth the price. The first was the Marvel superheroes game he played in the arcade. For 50 cents he got to play for quite a long time.

He wouldn't stop down long enough for us to eat, so I grabbed a couple pretzels and a lemonade which he grumbled about sharing.

I don't even like pretzels, but the line was short and I had to get some calories in me.

It was dark by this point. I didn't give THEBOY any attitude about what a ripoff the whole place is. I largely let him dictate where we went and what we did. Now, he DID want to ride some water-based ride where you get soaked at the end. Had to put the kibosh on that.

This indulgence, though, meant that he might spend five minutes at a drink stand in awe of the artwork on some souvenir drink cup. Or zip into another arcade just to horse around with machines we had no tokens for.

It was getting dark, and often we'd see these rides zipping by for which we simply couldn't find an origin. He'd ask where we should go to get on, and I'd have no idea. We'd make a stab at finding it and get sidetracked by something else.

We did eventually get on a train, which was a fine little ride. It went here and there, and it seems we ended up someplace different from where we started. Ah, now I was REALLY lost.

We found a funhouse, though, which was promising. Short line, kid-friendly...

Inside one of those crooked floor setups, they lined the kids/short folks up near the rail to watch a presentation with a bunch of anti-gravity looking tricks. THEBOY lined up, and apparently in the .05 seconds that I looked away a grownup behind him bumped into his head, which was against the rail. I looked down and he was crying with a bloody, split lip. My voice was nearly gone from the cold as I barked at the woman, "WHAT JUST HAPPENED??" I picked up THEBOY and she managed to spit out a "sorry" between giggles (no idea what she found so @#$%ing funny). The show came to a complete halt as performers came to our aid, asking if they should call park first aid. I wanted to tear that woman a new orifice, but I knew better. I had to attend to THEBOY anyway.

His injury wasn't that bad, and after a few deep breaths he told us all that he'd like to stay and watch the show.

Onward.

It was fairly entertaining, and I thanked a performer for his attention afterwards.

***

From there we hit a gift shop, where the cash outpouring would continue. I was just glad it was warm in there. In fact, we found a $12.99 Batman toy that was the second thing we spent money on that was actually worth it. It's a cool little race car thing with smashup finale.

At that point THEBOY said he wanted to go home--hurrah!

The monetary bloodletting wasn't over, however, as a merchant selling glowing THINGS near the exit caught his eye as I was asking whether he'd like to ride the carousel before we left. He didn't answer me, fixated on a glowing sword. Okay, $7 more, fine. He started zipping it around, fighting imaginary bad guys as we left and... asked to ride the carousel.

I explained that we'd just exited the park, and he looked CRUSHED.

So I took him to the gate to ask if we could go back in.

First person said no way, she'd gotten in trouble for doing that before. But she called over a security guard, who looked at us and asked me, "Are you season ticket holders?"

I just said no, even as my mind was tallying the cash I'd dumped into that place since our arrival.

He conferred with another security guard, ran us through the metal detector and let us in.

***

It had been 32 years since I'd been to Six Flags. I hope it'll be 32 more.

***

THEBOY had a good time, and that's what really counts.

The tally:

Two rides

Two toys

One funhouse

One split lip

One lost voice

One brush with security

***

Yesterday I felt like fertilizer in class, and between the cold, the cold medicine and my fatigue I TANKED on a stats quiz. Ouch. But it's my first non-A grade of the semester, so I can live with it. I'm not even sure I passed.

***

Krav Maga went well though. It was the first time I lost track of time. When we wrapped up I was surprised, as I'd just been wrapped up in the workout. Cool.

***

We had a fine meal at Red Hot and Blue last night, then came home for a quiet evening as Kelli worked on a paper and I watched UFC stuff and surfed.

Almost noon. I'd better go wake Kelli. Have a good Sunday, ya'll.