I was labeled a “responsible person” yesterday. As in “People under 42 inches tall may ride this ride only with a responsible person.”

There was a small carnival set up at a local mall. The SO and I took Z there. She and I got unlimited ride passes. This freed her father to keep us supplied with cotton candy, watch the bizarre people in that town, and continuously calculate how many more rides we each had to go on to make our unlimited passes cost-effective. It was fun.

I’ve always had this theory that handling kids would be a lot like handling horses. I think I proved that to myself yesterday. I took Z in the bathroom. When we were done we were waiting in the hall for her dad to be done. She decided to run off. I called her back and she ignored me. I instinctively responded by calling her name in the tone that is usually reserved only for Spirit’s more obnoxious moments. I gave her the look that I usually use on him to let him know that he’s gone too far and I combined it a hand signal that I learned for recalling my dog in obedience class. She came back immediately. It cracked me up!

After that we drove to a very cool playground. On the way she was saying that she wanted to go home and have dinner. We told her that since she didn’t have a driver’s license that she’d have to do what we wanted which was to eat cotton candy and play on the playground. She objected and again wanted dinner and to go home. I don’t know where he has failed in raising this child and teaching her priorities…. (She got dinner later – don’t call children’s services.)

He and I had a vicious game of tetherball. I got smashed in the face with the ball. That made me even more determined to beat him. We ended up laughing so hard that we could hardly hit the ball. It was a very good way of stress relief. I’m thinking that we need to install a tetherball pole here and whenever we annoy each other we should go take out our frustrations on the ball. (I ended up losing. There has to be a rematch.)