Stuff Besides Moving OR Back to Other Stuff

Okay, I won't blog about 1) doctors (evil sadistic bastards who harp on and on and on and on about weight) 2) my sister's cat, Mellow (evil sadistic cat who hissed on me once for thirty minutes straight), 3) dentists (evil sadistic bastards who like to play with tools too much, although that might also apply to car repairmen) 4) contractors (evil sadistic bastards who invade my house with calculators in one hand with an avaricious eye for gauging) 5) moving (evil sadistic practice of leaving one domicile for another), OR 6) HIM, the man to whom I'm married (evil sadistic husband who's making me move in the middle of writing a novella).

Instead I will talk about my beautiful daughter, Cressy, and our recent trip to Chuck E. Cheese.  (Sometimes Chuck E. Cheese is referred to That-Place-With-the-Giant-Rat or Chuck E. Effing Cheese.)  I have discussed the Chuck E. locale before.  While the food is not bad and the prices for the food economical, it is a haven for screaming, rampaging rug rats and the parents who do not care to watch over their hell spawn.  (It's like clubbing on December 31st at 11:30 PM and all they have left is Red Bull and vodka, except I never did that.)

Anyway, the school had a fund raiser.  Go to Chuck E.'s, spend your cash, and Chuck E. will give some percentage back to the school.  (Generosity abounds, I wrote sarcastically.  I think I'd rather just write the check to the school, but NO-OOOO, the school makes sure that our offspring knows all about the Chuck E. Cheese event ahead of time and even provides stickers to slap on their shirts to help them remember to prompt us.  I was at the school one afternoon when they riled up the children five minutes before dismissal about their academic carnival and it was an ugly event.  "Don't forget to tell your parents!  Oh, yes, don't forget to tell your parents!  And also, don't forget to tell your parents!  You're a poo-poo head if you don't tell your parents!  Your parents are poo-poo heads if they don't bring you!"  I'm telling you, fund raising in schools has descended into the ninth level of hell.)

You can't tell me that doesn't look
like a giant frickin' rat.

So we went.  I cleverly invited a mommy friend with whom to share the agony.  We brought coupons and split up all the coin booty.  The three children pretty much lost their little freaking minds.  Cressy kills herself trying to do every machine in the place.  Sometimes she misses one, and she talks to it.  "I'll get you next time, my pretty," she says and she sounds just like the Wicked Witch of the West.  "And your little dog, too."

Sharing the arcade like madness with other children is like crack to Cressy.  Her pupils dilated.  Her adrenal gland activated.  She sent off invisible signals to the other children.  (These signals say, "PLAY NOW OR DIE!" or something equally sinister.)  She did stop to eat one piece of pizza but otherwise she spent the next two hours in computer animated/arcade bliss.  When I finally gave her the five minute warning, she was like, "Sure, Ma," because she was crashing fast.  She had come.  She had conquered.  She was going home to write her memoirs.

(My favorite moment: My mommy friend's three year old son ran back to us.  He sort of charges everywhere at breakneck speed.  His head is down, his little arms are pumping, he's going for the gusto.  Then he bellows, "I MET CHUCK E.!" because it was the best thing that had ever happened to him as of that very moment.  It wasn't a, "Oh, by the by, Mother dearest, whilst I was playing of the arcade games at the club, I ran into Charles E. Cheese and was most enamored."  No, it was, "I MET CHUCK E. CHEESE!"  Like "OMFG, Chuck E. Cheese is like God, except I met him!"  It was totally awesome to the kid.  Oh, for simpler times.  I think the only time I would charge back to my parents and scream I met someone was if I met Stephen King or James Lee Burke.  I'd probably embarrass myself by drooling on them, but hey, they're probably used to it.)

But wait, Chuck E. Cheese has the insidious additional feature.  Playing all the arcade games provides tickets.  (OMG, TICKETS!)  The kids raced back to give us the tickets.  Then at the end we feed the tickets into a machine that makes munching noises as it counts them.  (I'm not making that up.  Ask any mother in your vicinity.  They know.  Really, they know.)  They get to print out a final ticket that says how many tickets they got and then they can go to the reward counter and get a prize.  Most of these prizes are cheap things made in third world countries by starving children but does Cressy care about that?  Hell, no.  She wants that prize.  This time she got two little prizes.  One was an eraser in the shape of a heart.  (Does this say something about her school work?)  The other was a pair of glow-in-the-dark fangs.

Yes, this looks exactly like my Ford.

On the drive home, my daughter became the vampire of the Ford Explorer.  Several times she leaned out the window to menace other drivers with her glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth.  Although it was daytime, she was not deterred by the lack of glow-in-the-dark-edness.  She was having a whole vampire moment.  And it didn't stop when we got home.

No, Cressy the Vampire had a new victim.  Megaroy, her moron cat, was sleeping on top of his kitty condo, resting from the aftereffects of too much catnip, when suddenly, Cressy the Vampire crept toward him.  I mean, I think he noticed her but he's used to her creeping toward him.  Neither was he impressed by the glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth.  (Cressy the Vampire had to pause mid-creep because the glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth were making her drool down the side of her face.  So she wiped with her sleeve.  Do we do manners in this house?  Oh, yes, she could have just spit, like most vampires do.)

Slowly, Cressy the Vampire approached her prey.  She got up next to him and took his large, gray fuzzy tail in both hands and prepared to bite him in order to suck all his moron blood out.  (Not sure if the cat would actually act any different without moron blood in him.  Possibly he would become smarter.)

Standing nearby I thought, She won't really bite him,right?

But Cressy the Vampire actually bit the moron cat's big, fat furry tail.  Megaroy made a kind of "Mrrrp?" noise that I took to mean, "What the frak are you doing, you little yellow haired monster child?"  Then he pulled his tail away and sat on it, with an indignant glare at Cressy the Vampire.

I can't decide if this photo was taken before or after his
moron blood was sucked out.  I think before.

Meanwhile Cressy the Vampire had learned that biting Megaroy the Moron's massively puffball tail meant that she got a mouthful of fur and spent the next five minutes wiping her mouth out with a napkin.  Hairy cat tail leaves its mark on the vampire's mouth, doncha know?

I suppose I shouldn't have let her do it, but I couldn't help myself.  Cressy the Vampire, zip.  Megaroy the Moronator Cat, one.