You know when you see a really great movie and when it ends you feel a sense of loss because you really wanted there to be more? And then you hear about the sequel and you get all excited and then you bribe everyone you know to find someone who will watch your kids for 3 hours so you can actually leave the house and go see it and then you spend the 20 minute drive to the theater debating whether you should just head to Mexico instead because hey, three hour head start. But then you go to the theater anyways because you basically have Stockholm syndrome from your life and P.S you really do want to see the sequel and you figure it won’t be as good in Spanish.

And then the sequel sucks and you end up driving home with the sad peanuts song playing in your head and the babysitter is sitting at the end of the driveway glaring at you as you pull up and you can vaguely hear strains of Bohemian Rhapsody mixed with maniacal laughter emanating from the house and then the babysitter yells lose my number as she literally sprints for her car? And you think jokes on you I never had your number in the first place because you found her at the gas station?

Yeah, me neither. But I imagine that the level of sheer compounded disappointment that a theoretical situation like that would generate is similar to how this blog sequel is going to go because the rest of adventure day was equally soul-suckingly terrible but probably not as funny. For YOU. Nothing about the entire day was funny for me. I still get the shakes when someone mentions lemonade.

Once we cleared past the diesel spill the children were so relieved to be actually moving again that they were pleasant for approximately 37 seconds before they regained composure and remembered whining is always a good fallback when you are bored. Harmonized versions of “We’re huuuuuuuuuuungreeeeeeeeeeee….” then ensued until I agreed to stop for food. Normally I would employ the services of a drive-thru, which, little known fact, were actually created because NO ONE WANTS MY CHILDREN LOOSE IN THEIR RESTAURANT. I’m not kidding. There was a time machine involved. It’s all very scientific.

In this case, I needed out of that car, badly. So we stopped for food at a lovely, hip, taco place that solely employs trendy young staff who definitely spend all of their time being aggressive vegans on their social media pages and are already not impressed with me because I have contributed to world hunger by spawning two children that are not even going to grow up and be part of the solution. Trust me on this.

We ordered food and I amused myself while we waited by watching the lovely young couple sitting beside us and imagining what my life would be like if I could just go to restaurants with other grown ups and have entire conversations that actually made sense and didn’t use the words mom, why, butt, stupid or stop it.

As I watched, the waiter came by and brought the woman her food, which was the same as what I had ordered. This was extremely validating because hey, if this cool, lovely, sane young woman and I had the same tastes in anything it meant that some small part of myself might still be alive and able to rebuild once the children run away from home.

Turns out, not so much. They just accidentally served her my order, which they realized after she had squeezed the limes all over the meal but before she had touched it. Her kind, generous, helpful boyfriend (who loves her very much and probably spends his time writing songs about how beautiful she is and promising that he will love her forever and will only give her nice children that use manners and never need to relieve themselves in a mobile piece of car trash) immediately rushes to her aid and jumps up to get the waitress. She arrives, there is profuse apologizing and mutual admiration all around and she whisks my food away before it contaminates their experience.

Here’s what happens next. The waitress walks away from the table long enough to basically turn around and then comes back and places the exact same plate in front of me. Lime wedges still delicately squished out. Doesn’t say a word. Just, bam. Here is some almost used food.

Okay so look. As a mom, you are basically a human compost. Meals become a hodgepodge of what your children won’t eat and whatever requires the least amount of effort to put in your body after you have alternated cooking and yelling for 45 minutes and then cut a bunch of food into acceptably small bits and then gotten 12 glasses of water and then had an argument about why broccoli smelling like farts does not mean it will taste like them. Which means, I routinely eat a handful of chicken that has imperceptible levels of fat on it, (which we know because they already tried chewing it to check), broccoli and Advil for dinner.

In any case. This woman having squeezed limes on food that I didn’t have to prepare myself was already a step up from my entire life and we all knew it. But it was still not exactly restaurant quality service. Drive-thru. Maybe. 

I debated sending it back but then I’m probably actively contributing to world hunger and I figured they could probably do a lot worse to my food so I just ate it anyways. Then I cleaned up all our dishes into a nice stack, and wrote a thank you note explaining why I didn’t tip, while my children asked a million questions about what I was doing as I hissed shut up at them so they didn’t blow my cover.

We finally made it back to the car and made our way to the park. By now, it is almost 4pm. We pull up and the children are wildly excited and almost being nice to each other. We got out, grabbed our blanket and marched up over the hill to find that the new fancy park has a grand total of three pieces of equipment jammed into 34 square feet plus a zip line with a 20 person line up. Also, it is 40 degrees out. Also, there are 1200 other people there. Even the kids were able to identify at this point that the day was a complete disaster.

We agreed to sit under a tree on the hill for a bit and all collectively pretend that this wasn’t our life until we could stomach getting back in the car again. At this point I think my brain actually left my body for a time until it was abruptly jolted back by the sound of streaming water. I looked back and Escher has his pants down around his ankles and is peeing on the tree behind me. Which is actually the most acceptable part of this whole story because 1) it wasn’t a lemonade can and 2) by this point literally nothing mattered anymore. Public nudity? Fucking check. What else ya got?

At this point the kids decided they wanted to try the zip line, so we got up to go and stand in the line up (which was OBVIOUSLY in the blazing hot sun) and all of a sudden my sundress which had been so artfully laid out around me slapped down onto the back of the legs and I realized that Escher had pissed all over my dress because WHY NOT. And after I managed to count to ten and calmly say “Escher, darling, you peed all over mommy” (this is a bold faced lie, this is in no way what I actually said) He replied “No I didn’t, I peed on the tree. But it rolled.”

So now we are DEFINITELY going to go wait in line for the zip line because I need the 40 degree heat to dry my urine-soaked dress off so that I don’t get it all over my car, although at this point I am starting to realize that my life is basically a Final Destination movie except instead of the sweet sweet release of death chasing me down, Escher is getting piss in my car one way or another.

Cue two rounds of zip line in the sweltering heat while I tried to blend in with the other parents by mimicking their “what’s that smell face” and sympathetically nodding at people when it seemed appropriate until we finally made it out of there and managed to get back to the car.

I had unfortunately promised the children ice cream back in the deliriously optimistic planning phase so we headed there next. There is a fancy ice cream place that the kids love with 238 flavours (no word of a lie, there are flavours you haven’t even dreamt of like garlic and seaweed). And of course half the fun is trying samples of all the different flavours. You buy a token for a cone, and then you wander through the store trying teeny tiny spoons of flavours until you decide. So the kids and I bought our tokens and tried about 7 samples and then suddenly the girl behind the counter who is maybe 16 years old goes “I’m sorry but did you even pay?” To which I somewhat awkwardly held up my token the way you imagine you would when someone has basically accused you of stealing $1.43 worth of ice cream.

And she replied “Ok, sorry but I had to check” in a tone that implied that she neither had to check, NOR WAS SHE SORRY. And I just thought to myself, “Did you though?” Somewhere along the line did your crack ice cream employee training include how to identify would-be sample thieves and was that identification process solely based on whether or not they did in fact smell like urine? Because if so….godspeed, obviously.

By the time we got our ice cream and made it out of the shop it was closing in on 5:30. We climbed back into the car and started it up and just then, the traffic channel, which I had left on during the trip out, announced over the radio that there had been an accident on the highway headed eastbound (the way home, of course) and that neither the highway, nor any of the feeder routes were moving.

Cut to 2.5 hours of sneaky back roads and stop and go traffic featuring non-stop crying and sulking and whining. And the kids were shitty too.

By the time we made it home it was nearly 8 o’clock, none of us were speaking to each other and I was no longer capable of conscious thought. And normally that’s a state I welcome, but in this case I couldn’t even appreciate it.

I literally cannot make this stuff up people. I actually can’t be a person. I promise you this though, next time I go to a movie, I’m taking the head start.