A few weeks ago my non-vag. daughter asked if I would like to go with her to the ballpark for her work party.  She was planning to take The Precious and it’s always easier to have someone with you than it is to carry him all day by yourself and you never know what might happen.  Of course I said yes.  Then I promptly forgot about it until she called me last week to remind me.  So Sunday afternoon we went to the ballpark.  Now this is the same ballpark that traumatized The Precious this summer when we took him to watch a baseball game.  You see, the mascot of the Arkansas Naturals is a huge sasquatch named Strike.  He is truly hideous and the thing he does best is go up to children and try to shake their hands.  After our first trip there, The Precious spent weeks asking about Strike.  He wanted to be sure he was not coming to his house.  We  think he may have had nightmares.  We aren’t sure.

Well, I went to pick them up on Sunday and he was super psyched.  He loves, loves, loves for people to come visit.  When I asked him if he was ready to go bye-bye with me he jumped into my arms, turned and looked at his mother and said, “you stay here mommy.”   Needless to say mom felt the love, but went anyway (since it was her place of employment that was hosting).  The trip to the ballpark was uneventful.  We spent the better part of the ride noticing all the things along the wayside.  Horseys were especially interesting on Sunday.  Then we arrived at the ballpark.  We pulled into the parking lot and the backseat got really quiet.  I turned down one of the rows of parked cars and a timid little voice from the backseat said, “ballgame?”  We said no, no ballgame  It was just going to be fun.  We mentioned all of the neat things at the ballpark play ground.  We mentioned the concession stand.  We tried to convince him that there would be other children there but we couldn’t get past one question…”Strike?”  We tried deflecting with all types of asides, but nothing was taking his attention away from his concern about Strike.  And then he saw him…a tremor began in his little body.  “I want to go bye-bye.” He didn’t say it once or twice he chanted it like it was his personal mantra.  The only other phrase he could eek out was “I don’t want it, Strike!”  Mostly these two phrases were muttered over and over without a break, sounding like a recording on a loop.  “I want to go bye-bye I don’t want it Strike I want to go bye-bye I don’t want it Strike.  He was still shaking, and since we aren’t made of steel, after about 2 minutes we took him out of the park.  While he was in the car he kept repeating his loop.  He seemed convinced that Strike had a GPS system to tell him exactly where we were going.  He was going to jump in his jet and get there before we did and scare the hell out of The Precious.  We kept promising him that wouldn’t occur.  We took him to the McDonald’s Playland.  I so wanted him to have a good time that I actually crawled up inside the stinking thing and slid down the slide with him…once.  He wanted more, but I sent his mother in as my replacement.  She lasted once as well.

We went to a punkin patch after that.  An acre of punkins of all sizes.  Our boy was in heaven.  He ran all over the patch.  He put up with getting his picture taken.  He found a red wagon and pulled it for awhile.  Then he put his favorite punkin and himself in the wagon and I pulled.  He found a disagreeable bug on one of the picture spots.  So for him. there would not be a picture taken there.  We even tried to put him on his mommy’s lap, but it just wasn’t worth it.  We didn’t push.  Lord knows he had been traumatized enough for one day.  After an afternoon of mauling punkins, he was ready to go to Emmy’s house.  We took a walk.  We looked at all the scary things in the yard.  We hit all the candy dishes for a quick sugar fix, and then we went upstairs to Emmy’s office to watch Aladdin.  It was a pretty full day.  He fell asleep on the drive home, but woke up as soon as the car stopped.  I went in for a bit (just to settle him down) and of course he was upset when I said I was leaving without him.  His mom finally suggested that he could go out and wave goodbye to me and that was okay.  It was raining, and running in the rain is second only to splashing in puddles as far as fun goes.  I came home and took a nap…for three hours.  I woke up about the time that other people are going to bed, and a scant four hours later I was back in bed.  I awoke this afternoon at 12:45.

I still have to go and get my pumpkins to carve.  I still have to buy cobwebs and a few lightbulbs.  Today I spent my time doing laundry and cleaning house.  Tomorrow I may sleep some more.  There is a reason God saw fit to give me children in my late teens and early twenties.  He knew I would be crippled.  I barely have the energy to keep up, and then there is the pain to deal with after the fact.  After he leaves, I load up on pain medication, put heat (or ice) packs on everything I have and snooze for anywhere from three hours to three days.  Then I am ready to see him and start all over again.  Trust me, the pain is totally worth it!

 

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