Sorry to leave you hanging like that. So much going on and no time to write.

(not really, but that makes me feel important to say things like that, so let me have my illusion, ok?)

Let’s see. I’ll tell you about the other night. After a challenging day (to put it mildly) that will have to have it’s own post, we decided – against our better judgement – to take the kids to Rain Forest Cafe (motto: “We make Disneyland look cheap. And quick.”)

The first thing that happened was somebody was leaving their parking spot just as we arrived. We should have known then and there to pack it in, but no, hope springs eternal and we pressed on.

Did I mention it was raining buckets? Oh, yes, it was. The whole time my kids were asking just how big was a tsunami wave.

It took us five minutes just to get past the door, because it was full of folks that were waiting for someboy to fetch their car so they wouldn’t get soaked. But, again, we pressed on.

I went and checked in for our little party of five (which sounds like a good name for a TV show. I’ll have to look into that). “It’ll be two hours,” said the helpful person, as she handed me a slip of paper with the wrong time printed on it, which helpfully suggested I return at the wrong time two hours later.

This is where we made a Grievous Error: my wife and I looked at each other and said “the kids seem fine, let’s wait.”

(stop laughing, you. And you. And especially you, I’m pretty sure you’ve done this before).

What to do for two hours? Why, shop of course! They have conveniently provided a retail store full of cheezy Rain-Forest Related Crap made in China (where, I understand, they couldn’t care less about the rain forests). Thinks like plastic snakes and frogs and t-shirts that said things like “It’s all about ME.”

So, we looked, and I got to fight off a barrage of “I want” and “Can I” and “look, how COOL” types of comments, at roughly two-hundred times a minute. Times three kids.

They also have a river ride (only six bucks or so, per person, under two is free!) that I got to say “no” to a couple hundred times.

(you wanna hear about the peeing, don’t you? Well, I’m making you wait. So there)

An hour or so into our particular adventure they called for a table of 26. And they called them again, and again, and again. And, being a math whiz, I figured out that if these 26 people weren’t there, then the rest of us fun people waiting around saying “no” to our kids might move up the list a little. So, I went and asked the Helpful Person to check our name.

“We told you two hours, and it has been an hour.” She said this with a straight face, no doubt from repeated practice. The lady next to me, who had reservations, was being told that she would only have to wait an hour past her reserved time! Aren’t we nice, it could be two hours. The guy behind me was told three hours for his party of four. He left.

They would let us into the bar, to you know, do flaming shots or something, but I knew that if I had anything to drink at this point that I might become a little surly. So we waited.

(“NO. You do not need a stuffed python. And NO you do not need a glow in the dark bow and arrow set.”)

Then my son comes running over. “N peed on the floor!” I look past the shoppers and see my wife looking at me, her eyes pleading. So I find an employee (not hard to do, they are everywhere) who acted like she had never had a child pee before on their floor. Finally I convinced them to send somebody with a mop (said child apparently has a bladder as big as her head), then we found a $12 pair of shorts (on sale!) in her size and all was well.

For about thirty seven seconds.

Word got back to me that my son had been seen shoplifting. I drag his butt to a mostly-quiet corner “I heard you stole some candy.”

“No,” he lied, staring me in the eye.

“Can I check your pockets?”

Out of his pocket came a bag of candy. Shit. I knew this would happen, someday, but did it have to happen tonite?

We had a talk. He was repentant. I made him take the candy to the counter, where they would not let us pay for it. “We don’t even know what the price is, that came out of a big bag of candy.”

Soon, but not soon enough, our two hour sentence was up and they promptly called our name. We were marched past numerous empty tables to our spot in the back, so that we could eat overpriced food and listed to my kids ask for a Volcano, which is ice cream and cake with a sparkler on top. Food was served quickly (fast as McDonalds, I think) so of course the two hour wait made even more sense. We wound up buying a $13 Volcano.

After we left, we found that it quit raining. It had been five hours since we decided “Hey, let’s go to Rain Forest Cafe!” Lucky for me, I never have to go again.