Mothers, mullets, mohawks, and monster trucks

Well, this weekend was our annual trip to the big monster truck show at the beach.

Remind me again why we continue to torture ourselves this way? Oh yeah, it's part of that whole parental sacrifice thing I guess.

Let me recap the past few days. The weather here has been abnormally odd. On Thursday night, I fell asleep on the couch just to have Joey wake me up and tell me casually as we're getting in the bed that there's a tornado watch in effect and oh, by the way, tornadoes sound like a freight train.

You know damn good and I well I didn't sleep a wink after that. The thunder was rolling like crazy, lasting for several minutes at a time and just as I'd slip back into sleep, RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE. Dammit.

Friday, we got down to the beach around 8 PM and decided to check into the hotel before heading down to one of the local raw bars to meet Malcolm and Paula. They live down there, you see, so when we get in the area we usually try to get together for a drink or ten. This time it was more like A drink since we had Monkey Man along with us and we had to retain our stellar hand/eye coordination so we could have our asses kicked in air hockey.

We got back to the hotel around 10:30 and all crawled into the bed, exhausted. The kicker to this is that somehow I screwed up our reservations and got two DOUBLE beds instead of two queen-size beds. Big mistake, as a 62-pound 6-year-old who flails wildly in his sleep all night definitely can't share a bed with a good-sized adult - and the two adults surely can't fit in that double comfortably. So I bit the bullet and volunteered for Sharing The Bed With The Monkey Man.

He coughed. He flailed. At one point, he got up on his knees in a dead sleep and scared the piss out of me, then collapsed on my stomach knocking the wind out of me. And all the while I kept thinking that it was hotter than Hades in the room.

As we discovered the next morning, it WAS hot in there. The air conditioning wasn't working and it was a balmy 80 degrees in our room. But we got dressed, called the front desk to see if they could send someone to fix the air, and went on our merry way since the show started at noon.

We got to Big Sam's our favorite breakfast place, to discover that there was a huge waiting list and we really didn't have time to wait that long to eat. At that point we hauled ass up to the boardwalk and found a place at one of the hotels that had a buffet...that was closing in 20 minutes. I don't think you've seen three people pile more crap on their plates than we did - it was kind of like "Toasted yak? Sure, put some of that on there. Eye of newt? Yeah, I'll take some of that too." So it all worked out but it was kind of hectic.

The show, honestly, is kind of tired. This is the third year in a row and they hadn't changed a damn thing about the show other than they had a few different monster trucks. At least the tickets are only $10, otherwise I'd probably be way more bitter about it. And this year was almost as cold and windy as last year, but this year we had New! Improved! Cold Rain! to add into the mix. At least it waited until 15 minutes before the end of the show before that started.

Anyhow, we got back to the hotel around 4 and discovered that our A/C still wasn't working. And although it was cold outside, it was steamy in our room which really wasn't helping Monkey Man's cough any. We called the front desk again and they sent another guy up to check it out and at least this guy seemed to know how to fix it.

Dinner was at our favorite spot, we crashed for the night, and today was the trip home.

Today hasn't been so great. I am honestly tired. Three nights of constantly interrupted sleep has made Mommy a cranky girl. Monkey Man woke up saying he was feeling bad so we took him to the urgent care just to have him tell the doctor that he felt fine. And the doctor sent us away with a dismissive wave, which made my blood pressure skyrocket to the point my head was throbbing by the time we got home. I seriously felt like beating my kid for telling the doctor that, and all he's done since we've gotten home is cough and lay on the couch. Argh.

But I got some nice cards from my boys, and have just been able to watch all the crappy TV my stomach can handle. It has been raining cats and dogs all afternoon so it's been a nice excuse to be a lazy pig.

So we're back. And this is going to be a ballbuster of a week. Yippee.