(That’s da-dum, da-dum, da-dum as in B-flat B, B-flat, B, B-flat, B. Recognize it? No? It’s the theme from Jaws!)
That’s how my weekend went. It was one thing after another, as most vacations are, but each “one thing” exhausted me, beginning with Ben’s company picnic.
It was a fun picnic! It reminded me of the lab picnics we attended when I was little, the ones at which I won the Best Hula Hooper contest. I am going to defer to Jake’s recollection of this event, however.
Jake’s report: I attended the picnic with Mom and Dad! However, one item was missing from their smorgashboard, one that Daddy promised me would be there: banana pie. They only had ONE pie, and it was apple. Yuck-o! I don’t like apples, Dad! I like BANANAS!!! And they didn’t have any. =( That kinda spoiled the food aspect of the picnic for me.
Nevertheless, I was a good sport for the rest of the picnic. (Have you EVER known me not to be a good sport? Come on!) I held the picnic tablecloth down while Mommy and Daddy played frisbee. Then I complained about holding the picnic tablecloth down because (1) I don’t like to be plopped on the table like a stuffed animal while everybody else runs around having fun!, and (2) our picnic table had no bananas on it. (I mentioned this again this morning and Daddy asked if I had pooped yet. “No?” he asked me innocently. “Well, I’ll give you a banana when you poop.” Daddy, I am not Zamboni! I deserve to be treated better than that! Have I pooped yet is SUCH a stupid question.)
I sat on the bouncy castle a little bit, which was kind of fun except I was very hungry and couldn’t think about anything else but bananas. Then I played bingo. Excellent, I thought, maybe it’s a bit like slot machines and I’ll get lucky! But the DJ-man didn’t call the right numbers and I lost. Then we came home. Sans bananas. =(
KJ again: The picnic went pretty well. I was still alive at the end of it, at least. We came home and took a nap before heading over to Ben’s boss Eileen’s house that evening. “Dinner’s at seven; we’ll get there early and leave early,” Ben had told me. I had no idea what I was getting in to.
Before we arrived, we stopped at In N Out. My goodness, am I glad that we did. If I’d known what was in store, I’d have had more than an order of fries and a chocolate milkshake.
I’ve met Eileen before; she’s really nice. We arrived at her house early to “help prepare”. She was in the shower. No problem; we can work with that. Fifteen minutes later, she appeared, but she wasn’t doing any food preparation. She did present us with a tray of appetizers, however, for which I was extremely grateful. (Cheese and crackers, which I ate some of and then ate some MORE of when I discovered there wasn’t any more food coming our way anytime soon.) Then more people started arriving. They joined us in the living room. Soon, there were circa 30 people in there. It was VERY noisy. This was not turning out the way I’d planned for it to when I’d agreed to come. In fact, it was about the worst case scenario: no food and CROWDS of people, Ben’s co-workers, whom I wanted to be polite to.
At 8:30, Eileen brought out … popcorn. Truffle-oil popcorn. Now, it was good popcorn, just … popcorn isn’t gonna cut it! I need MEAT!!! Like, 90 minutes ago! I’m going to pass out here! *
When dinner was finally served at ***9:30 pm***, I was first in line. I think it may have been rude to be in front, but I was STARVING. I helped myself to some salmon (wonderfully cooked, by the way!), some (ok, maybe more than a few) shrimp, and homemade macaroni and cheese, then made my way back into the living room, where I began chowing down on the loot. OMG, it was so GOOD! I think I finished it in about five minutes.
Afterwards, I headed over to Ben, who’d sat down on the other side of the room, due to the seating shortage near me. I hung on his arm long enough to convey the message that “I got my food and now I need to go to bed,” so he began to make his exit, which required saying goodbye to a lot of people. Matt and his fiancee Ryan — check! Corbett and his fiancee Jen — check! Finally, we went into the kitchen and found Eileen.
“Would you like to take some cookies?” she asked sweetly. We declined politely. “Are you sure? Have you seen the cookies? Here, take one of these chocolate ones.” She handed me the most delicious cookie EVER. It consisted of chocolate dough and had chunks of fudge and walnuts in it. I love Eileen.
When we got in the car, I reached across the front console and turned the radio on. “Are you done talking to me?” Ben asked, faking offense.
“No, sorry, but I am exhausted. Do you mind?”
“Yes, I do. Let’s talk.”
I think I’ve said before that when I get THAT tired, I lose my ability to argue — right when it makes the most sense to. I should’ve just said “No” and conked out right there in the front seat. Instead, I gave Ben my opinion of the party.
“Your coworkers are very nice. However, I would prefer seeing them one or two at a time; thirty people, in that apartment, is too many. The noise was unbelieveable. Also, I needed food about two hours sooner than it actually arrived.” I then went on to ask Ben if he minded that I’d gotten quiet as the night wore on.
“No, I think you did admirably! Good job!” He held out his hand for a high five. Bless his heart.
When we got home, we fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up at six in the morning the following day — not depressed (which is a concern when you wake up at the butt crack of dawn for no apparant reason) but CERTAINLY not ready to be up for the day — and then fell back to sleep and managed to squeeze another three + hours out of my tired eyes. When we were finally *UP*, we hurried to get ready for our Big Day at the Museum. Ben had purchased Platinum Passes (which included a tour!) to the California Academy of Science.
We began our day with a stop at In N Out, of course. This time, I purchased the Whole Shebang — shake (chocolate), hamburger (animal style, ketchup instead, no pickles), and fries (crunchy). It not only provided much needed sustainance, it was all *very* tasty. I love In N Out!
CalAcadmey has a reputation for being VERY crowded, and this Saturday was absolutely no exception. We waded through stop and go traffic to get to the parking garage, which, according to the website, still contained empty spaces. However, when we reached the entrance, we were turned away — no room at the inn! Ben was understandably upset. What good is the website if it doesn’t work? He called the Academy on his cell and talked to them (very nicely!) while he drove around the loop to get out of the park. “Oh, it’s not a problem,” the man on the phone told him. “There are still a couple spaces in [this other garage].”
So we drove around another couple of blocks to reach the alternate parking garage. By this point, Ben was a most decidedly UNhappy camper. He kept muttering about CalAcademy’s “stupid website”; I didn’t say anything. Finally, Ben turned to me and said, “Why don’t you say anything? Don’t you care that we’re going to miss our opportunity to visit this fantastic museum?”
I took a couple seconds to collect my thoughts. Finally, I responded, “Yes, I do care. However, I’m exhausted. I hadn’t counted on last night’s debacle when I was budgeting my energy for today; I’m sorry.”
Ben was quiet for a minute. Then, he said, “Well, that’s too bad! You’re going to have to suck it up and act normal for today. We don’t have the option of postponing our visit. We’re meeting [my co-worker] Danielle and her sister and they’re expecting two very nice, very normal people to join them on the tour.”
“Maybe they should be expecting someone else,” I muttered, looking out the window and cursing my initial enthuasism for this trip.
“Pardon me?” Ben asked.
“Nothing.” Inside my head, I was fighting a battle between, “Why doesn’t he get it? My fatigue isn’t all that complicated! He’s seen it before! I get very quiet and have a very hard time acting ‘normal’. Crowds and sun bother me more. I tend to [literally] lean on him. Why did he have to take me to that stupid party last night?” and, “What’s the matter with me? Why can’t I just switch this tiredness off? There’s got to be a way. Am I really so stupid that I can’t figure it out?” We got to the parking garage before one of the voices overpowered the other.
We parked, ascended the stairs, got to the entryway, and realized that we’d forgotten our tickets. Ben trudged back down the stairs to retrieve them while I waited among the throngs of people at the entrance. I had a couple of thoughts: (1) gosh, it’s noisy, (2) it’s an interesting building, and (3) goshdarnit, these people need to hush it. If it was going to be like this the entire time, Ben was kidding himself if he thought he was getting a ‘normal’ wife for the day.
He returned with our tickets shortly and we discovered what a pleasure it is to have platinum priority. “Follow me!” a lady directed, and we chased her as she wound adeptly through the crowds to the platinum tour table, which was … separate from the rest of the museum! I mean, it was open air and in the same building, but we passed through a gate that kept the riff-raff out, and that admittedly small distinction made a fabulous difference in my state of mind. I stopped panicking.
“Would you like to look around with me before our tour starts?” Ben invited me. I nodded.
Directly in front of the platinum booth sat Clyde the crocodile, who’s albino. He sat on his heated rock and didn’t move. “He looks dead!” I whispered to Ben, who nodded his agreement. We moved on to the left (which I *think* is the west wing of the museum), where there was an exhibit about global warming. Apparantly, since the Academy reopened, they’ve been taking heat from right-wing folk who think that global warming is unrelated to our contribution of carbon to the atmosphere. It was a rather boring exhibit. Finally, it was one o’clock, so we joined our platinum group behind the acrylic barrier again. Our guide, Scott, ushered us into a very quiet =), very clean, very pleasant room.
“Greetings! Welcome to our brand-new museum! I’m Scott, and I’ll be your tour guide. Let’s be on our way! First stop: the aquarium!” he said jovially. We followed him down to a GIANT reef tank. “This is the world’s deepest reef tank,” he explained. “We’ve got many species living in here, like …” He droned on while I gaped at the tank. It was ENORMOUS. It had 17-inch acrylic lining it. All of a sudden, my eye caught a blue trigger fish — not a blue-billed trigger (I can’t remember the name; da*n aphasia!) , just a blue trigger — swimming by.
“Uh, Ben,” I whispered uneasily, “Those aren’t reef safe, are they?”
“No, they most certainly aren’t. Maybe they figure that with such a large tank they can get away with it? I dunno.”
Eventually, we walked into the behind-the-scenes portion of the tank, the Academy’s “fish room.” OMG, it was ENORMOUS! This is why we’d gotten the platinum tour tickets; the general public doesn’t have access to this room. The thing that caught my eye was the bags of salt. We’ve got lots of salt, too: ten fifty-pound buckets of it sitting on our porch, to be exact. The salt THEY had was the same brand — Instant Ocean — in two thousand pound bags. Fifteen or so of them. Goodness gracious.
We eventually had to leave the six-inch-PVC pipes and calcium canisters and head back into the noisy museum, but on our way we stopped in the quarantine tank room. We were looking at the pretty fish –
“Ding! Ding! Ding! Please evacuate the building. Ding ding ding!” It was a fire alarm. Despite my nursery school experience, I’m not scared of fire drills, and this one was quiet — it was a ding ding ding alarm, not a BRRAAGH! BRAAGH! BRRAAGH! Get out before you’re burned alive! alarm — but when we made it out of our quiet hallway into the main aquarium again, it was as if all hell broke loose. Everybody and their brother was trying to exit out the same door that we were. They were all screaming to each other over my head; I guess losing your kid is considered uncool even in a fire drill, but dear God, I was terrified. Ben held my hand until we got outside. I was practically in tears at that point; I was exhausted when we arrived, but nothing — nothing — tires me out like crowds do. Why oh why did the fire alarm go off during OUR tour?
Scott explained that somebody had inadvertantly triggered the alarm by standing up into “Fire — Pull Here” tab. I don’t understand that, though; how do you push UP on the button and trigger an alarm when you have to pull DOWN on it to do so? “We get a lot of these sort of things happening in this building. It’s such a new structure that we have to test it out to make sure it’s safe,” Scott reasoned. Whatever. It just sucked.
We were allowed back in fifteen minutes later. I’ll spare you the rest of the tour; it mostly contained many, many requests from Scott to be environmentally conscious and many, many “scientific” claims that I don’t think were true. Such as, “Anyone can build a living roof like ours! It’s energy-saving! And you can grow tasty fruits and vegetables up here!” (I don’t think that would work in Nederland; we’ve got snow on our roof seven months out of the year!)
Scott dropped us off in the rainforest, which was pretty cool. It’s four stories of canopy with a walkway spiraling through it, and we got to cut in line, which was a big win. But next up was the “World’s Largest Digital Planetarium” … SCORE!!! We got priority seating, which was important because apparantly seating is difficult to come by, period. It was dark, as are most planetariums, which felt good on my poor eyes. Ten minutes into the show, I conked out. When I awoke at the end, I felt MUCH better. =)
On the ride home, Ben asked me what I thought of the museum. “I’m sure it’s fantastic,” I told him cautiously, “but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good idea to go on a Saturday after spending the previous night at a noisy party.” Despite my nap, I was still wiped out.
“What would you like to do now?” Ben asked me.
“I think I need some food,” I answered honestly.
“Oh, you’re hungry? You wouldn’t like to take a nap first?”
“No, I don’t really feel hungry, but I’m very tired, and in my experience that MEANS I’m hungry.” It does, and while it is very strange, it is also very true. We decided that hibachi would fit the bill — this was the day we were celebrating our anniversary, after all.
We sat down and ordered, and I began to feel better after my first bowl of soup. After finishing the entire meal, I felt relatively awake and amazing. It’s amazing what a little food can do!
I invited Ben to walk along the shore with me after our meal, and he accepted eagerly. He said some things (for my ears only) that had me crying tears of joy … I love you, Ben! After that, we drove back to the hotel, Ben opened up some gifts from yours truly, and we went to bed early.
There’s nothing like a 10pm bedtime on your anniversary to remind you that you’re married to a wimp, but there’s nothing like spending the weekend with your husband in a crowded, noisy location and having him to rely on and leave parties early with and nearly cry during fire drills to remind you that you picked a good one. I love you, Ben! =)
* A little explanation of my Extreme Reaction to the noisy party with no food until 9:30pm: when you have a stroke, food takes on a whole new meaning. I’ve heard pregnant people say if they don’t eat every ten minutes, they puke; my reaction is similar, but instead of puking, I get tired. It’s frustrating. And, as illustrated by my performance at Eileen’s, it can be rather embarrassing, too. I would like to thank Eileen for hosting us and reiterate that it was nothing you did; it’s simply my reaction to a lack of food combined with my aversion to crowds that made it difficult for me.