I attended a rave for kids over the weekend!

But, first let’s recount another epic restaurant failure.

We took the kids to Lee Roy Selmon’s for lunch.

Huck was asleep when we arrived. I wish he had stayed that way.

As soon as the food arrives, he wakes up pissed off and starts crying. My husband tells him to stop crying or he will get time out. So, he starts WAILING.

Then, my daughter starts crying because I told her she can’t have any birthday cake at my niece’s birthday party because she’s refusing to eat anything but Mac ‘N Cheese.

Can 3 year olds get scurvy? I bet mine can.

I have literally eaten a few bites of food before my husband is trying to hail down the waitress to get the check and I’m shuttling two screaming kids out of the restaurant.

Outside, in the blistering heat, I use distraction techniques to shut them up.

“Do you hear a plane?”

“Look, a lizard!”

It works until we get to the car, when my daughter starts being a giant Jackass. Every 2 seconds, she’s saying “mommy.”

“Mommy, get my Cinderella dress off the floor.”

“Mommy, I want juice.”

“Mommy, I’m being good now so I can have birthday cake.” (Oh, hell no you can’t.)

“Mommy, I want a snack.” (Go, F-yourself you little meatless, veggieless, fruitless monster.)

We took my food to go so I could eat it in the car, but my blood pressure is soaring and I know if I eat I am going to be trapped in a bathroom, destroying the toilet at the bowling alley for my niece’s party.

Which brings me to the rave.

We arrive earlier than anticipated since lunch was cut so short. We take them to the arcade area and try to show how them how to play Skee Ball.

They suck.

We take a shot at air hockey.

Alma refuses to play.

Huck sits on the table and my husband accuses me of trying to injure our son because I hit the puck too hard.

We walk over to the party once it’s started. Seconds after the obligatory round of cheek-kissing, they shut off the lights.

I am blinded by neon and can no longer see my children.

The theme is candy.

Tweens are running around sucking on ring candy and I’m having a flashback to the time I ended up at a rave, sitting miserably against the wall with some douche bag spinning glow sticks in front of my face saying, “Are you rolling? You’re so rolling. Are you rolling?” (For the record, I was NOT.) (That same night I ended up in the women’s bathroom with some chick who asked if I was having fun. I told her, “Not at all.” She offered me cocaine.)

So, now I am desperately trying to herd my children around the table where I’m sitting on one of the most uncomfortable, perpetually swiveling chairs.

I am envisioning their melon heads being shattered by some pre-adolescent boy wildly swinging a bowling ball.

My daughter is repeatedly refusing to drink fruit punch because she wants juice. Abuela offers her the same drink and calls it juice. Alma drinks it and loves it. (Then snidely says, “Mommy, it’s not fruit punch. It’s juice, see?”)

I’m digging apart pieces of crappy, overpriced pizza for my son, the tomato sauce burning through my hangnail. (Pizza that I cannot eat because I am lactose intolerant.)

There’s some pizza-faced, “slow” girl who works for the bowling alley lurking around to make sure the correct number of adults are bowling at each lane. I resist the urge to trip her. I mean, it’s dark. No one will see, right?

I love bowling and I’m pretty darn good at it. Doing it basically blindfolded while trying to keep my toddlers from being abducted by potential pervs?

Not fun.

I buy a pitcher of shitty beer. It does not make me feel better.

My son has been given a little birthday balloon on a plastic stick. He proceeds to hit himself in the eyeball with the stick. (2 days later and it’s still red)

Awesome, now I’ve blinded my son for the sake of a little kid rave.

My daughter is hopped up on candy (Candy is not birthday cake, she has informed me.) and I am still STARVING.

In the car, my spoiled leftovers smell like cheesy, unclean, fat person butt. (Which surprisingly does not keep me from being HUNGRY.)

We have no food at home. I get groceries. I cook. I hate everything.

The next day, my husband needs to get some work done so I end up taking the kids to see the new Planes movie.

I’m down with talking dogs. I can even chill out with phallic-looking Muno and his genital warts.

They lose me at communicating planes, helicopter and tractors.

My son is demanding to “walk around” during the movie.

My daughter drops her smuggled banana bread onto the floor.

At one point, she’s sitting on the floor, sticky with God knows what and I DON’T CARE.

I come home to find my husband still working and I die a little inside.

We manage to wrest him away from the computer long enough to hit up the mall park.

It smells rancid, like hot, unwashed hair.

Big kids are trying to jump from a giant fake hotdog to a giant fake Coke cup, threatening to squash my tiny tots running in between. My husband yells at them to stop and other parents are looking at his NRA hat suspiciously.

My son poops and I take him to the family restroom and discover we don’t have any wipes in the diaper bag. I am wiping him with Starbucks napkins, hoping other parents don’t notice. Within minutes of being back inside the park, he poops again.

We have to leave because there are no more Starbucks napkins.

Now, Alma starts screaming because we didn’t take them on the cars outside the park. (The little motorized cars that we refuse to pay for so they can jiggle from side to side. I always tell them to just get inside and enjoy their Goddamned imaginations.)

At home, Alma wants to blow bubbles outside even though it’s blazing hot.

I suffer for ten minutes, drenched in sweat. Then, I take her to look at animals at the pet store and buy a coloring book at the craft store. We emerge into a torrential downpour.

My husband works through the entire night.

He’s going out of town this week.

I watch Ray Donovan alone after the kids are asleep and cry into a glass of wine.

Looking on the bright side, there’s half a bottle left.

Posted by ScreamerDreamer in Children and sugar, Children diet, Family, Family humor, Family life, Funny family, hyper kids, Mother-in-Law, Motherhood, Parenting, sugar high, Toddlers, Working mom Tags: birthday parties for kids, bowling, candy, rave for kids, weekends suck