Skipping weekends

This weekend wasn't all that busy but wasn't very self-reflective per se.

The party on Saturday went well, although was Cosmic Adventures ever loud. It's a warehouse full of habitrail for kids, with other rooms like the under-3 area, the parent's "cone of silence," the cafeteria, and the arcade (no video games, mostly things like ski-ball). It was Saturday and so there were tons of birthday parties and tons of "regular guests." Many of the guests' parents were sitting around with their laptops while their kids burned off steam in the habitrail.

I'm not sure what I think of that. Indoor playgrounds seem a little bit like some kind of travesty, until one considers bitter cold winter days with kids who need to burn energy off. It's just that you pay for it, and it comes with soda pop, you know?

I couldn't quite help visualizing what it might have been like to have Emily in the baby-play area or to nurse her in the nursing room and at the same time I was being a little hopeful about witch baby perhaps making it to an age of play sometime. Neither a huge high or low, just sort of considering. Many of the guests in our group (plus many of the women there, generally) were in some stage of pregnancy.

And once again I was struck by the birthday ritual. Most of the kids there were under 4, but most of them had it down already - run around like mad, then come in the room and have the "Cosmeteers" serve pizza (NO hot dogs!) and fruit flavoured drinks and then sing happy birthday and then have the cake. And face painting last.

I still feel myself observing children rituals instead of really participating in them; I'm still holding that piece of my heart back in some way. I think that's all right. The freest time we had was playing ski-ball I think; it's a favourite of our system kids and we hit a quiet time with no kids waiting in line and just racked up the tickets. I gave them to my nephew and he turned them in for a - whoopie cushion. Hee.

It was okay overall, anyway. Perhaps I'd had my real moment of grief earlier in the day, and for the strangest reason: I was at the mall shopping for the birthday gift, and I went into the food court to have a yummy cream of carrot soup, and some kids were sitting next to me discussing someone's first. date. ever. And I was hit in that weird way that Emily will never ever get to have that. Kind of a strange scope-of-loss moment.

All the walking and standing and crawling about in habitrail did take its toll though and I woke up Sunday morning at about 3 am with leg cramps - obviously I need to get more minerals as well as try to start swimming again. I couldn't get back to sleep, but then I took a 5 hour nap yesterday afternoon, and as a result my day was all discombobulated. I also skipped lunch due to sleeping, and that led to nausea in the evening. So today I promise to eat all my meals.

I feel a bit like it was a lost weekend - had some good times online, did some socializing, cleaned, etc., but I didn't really get any writing done or end up feeling especially relaxed. Of course this week I'm staring down at Emily's birthday on Saturday, and I think that probably is coming into play. We'll leave Friday; everything's booked.

Shandra