Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

Before you read this - I suggest if you're not into kid stories, you hop ahead to Day 2. Because Day 2 is really a story about how I'm an idiot, making it that much more interesting to most folks. Yes, it's still about Daddy-Eryn Weekend, but it's chock full of information about how not to have a Daddy-daughter day.

Day 1 of Daddy-Daughter Friday/Saturday Weekend
Pooteewheet went off to her hypnosis/lap dancing conference and I took the day off to hang with Eryn as she doesn't usually have daycare on Fridays. From the volume of email in my corporate account and page on my cell, I couldn't have picked a better day. Perhaps you saw our National Doughnut day picture? That was followed by a very full day of garage sales (book shopping), playing at the park, screaming and running across the bridge at Blackhawk Lake (way more fun that it sounds, and a very funny video), a tour of the rides at Como Town (we went for the carousel as Boppa said it was open - but he fibbed, so we made due with other rides) including bumping into a coworker from Eagan that I occassionally see at the aforementioned park, and finally up to Spring Lake Park for Artie's Party. Heck, we even got in a nap!

Artie is my youngest nephew and just turned one. I don't have a picture of him eating his cake - but he was very happy strapped into his booster seat on a big tarp in the middle of the park. Eryn used her cake, actually a couple of cupcakes, to fish in the stocked lake, tossing it over the rail in order to watch several hundred fish compete for the bits. Don't worry, she removed the frosting first - you don't want the fish getting fat - it's safest to lick it off.

This is a picture of my niece at Artie's Party doing her on-demand ostrich impression at the Spring Lake Park park.
[Image]

Day 2 of Daddy-Daughter Friday/Saturday Weekend
On the face of it, it was a wonderful plan. We were going to hit a few garage sales and get a burrito. But while we were on the road I thought, "Hey, there was that (Schultz) lake near here that had a beach - I bet they're open and Eryn hasn't been near a lake since last year - she'd probably love it." And she did, she had a great time bobbing in the water, dancing in the water and sitting in the water and chasing fish.

[Image]

However, in the middle of our lake excursion, we went back to the car and swapped out of clothes into her swimsuit (she was originally in shorts and a t-shirt while I was looking for her complete ensemble - we were actually getting ready to leave when I found everything), and that's when things began to go horribly, terribly wrong. Not that we knew it until after we were done swapping into her swimsuit and spending another hour and a half at the beach. Because it was when we were all done that I found out there was poop in the swim diaper. In and of itself, not so bad - fixable. Except I couldn't find my keys. Maybe they were in the car? Maybe they were in the lake, seeing as I distinctly remembered they'd been next to the camera I'd been taking in and out of my pocket while up to my knees in the lake. If they were at the bottom of the lake, there was no accounting for it. But I also couldn't check if they were in the back of my car, because during our change-over, I'd actually left the diaper bag in the trunk for some reason. End result...I'd actually locked my car for the first time in over a year. So...no diaper bag, no key, and no phone (in the diaper bag)... Fortunately I did have a change of clothes on me (for Eryn as we'd changed into her swimsuit on the grass, but no shoes for the hot pavement) and a spare diaper - so we wiped down as well as we could, put on the clothes, and went in search of a phone. The first one ate my only two quarters that weren't in the diaper bag.

Fortunately, the nature center was open and had a free phone! But wait...Pooteewheet was in a conference. Who to call? Dan'l and Cookie Queen? Long ways away and Dan'l was working - probably no good. In the meantime, back to the car with a pilfered coat hanger to see if that would work as well as it did when I was a teenager. Not a chance - damn watertight sealing - and I'm sure I'm who the cops were looking for fifteen minutes later as they cruised the lot looking suspicious.

Back to the nature center as I'd had time to think while poking Eryn in the top of the head with the other end of the coat hanger wire - phone book! Call a lock service? No credit card - everything was in the car. Call my aunt and uncle in law for a ride? Probably not home - they always seem to be out and about on the weekends. Call my project lead for a ride? Not home. Call a coworker for a ride - embarassing - you don't want them to know you're an idiot of that magnitude, but on the other hand, one lives like 1/10 of a mile from the beach. His phone cut to the answering machine at the same time he picked up. So that's how we got home.

But Pooteewheet still had to leave her conference a bit early (no loss of CEUs) to come home and find out I don't have a spare key and Eryn was sleeping. So she went to the beach with the only possible key and three pages from the Yellow Pages with the names of 24/7 on-site keying services. The lock service guy drove around in circles for a while as he was looking for a beach at the end of a long curvy road in a neighborhood where half the parks are named the same, but finally found her and opened the car. My key was sitting in the trunk under Eryn's shoes. So, overall, only a $65 stupidity fee, and you have to subtract the cost of the backup key I still haven't had to buy. But, you probably have to add the suntan lotion and paperback library book I can't seem to find now, that are probably in the nature center. I think I'll be back there asking after those tomorrow.

As for Pooteewheet, after she was done there, she went to urgent care to get her throat looked at. That's right - she's done being allergic to things, and now she's got a bright white tongue and bright red tonsils indicating a case of thrush. And a new pane of cracked glass on her car, come to think of it.

I did get the pantry cleaned today without breaking anything, losing anything, or having a reaction/illness - I'm going to have to settle for that as the silver lining.