Keeping busy, with mixed results

I have nothing in particular going on this week. I mean, in and of itself. But it's hard to sit around and have a normal week when you know that the upcoming month is going to be anything but. My brain wants to gallop around in circles, but I've been doing a pretty good job so far of keeping cool. We'll see what the score is by Thursday.

What else? On Saturday evening I volunteered - volunteered, mind you - to accompany my sister and nephews on a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's for a birthday party. The party was for one of the twins' school friends, but predictably the other two boys didn't much like the thought of their brother going to the rat's lair without them. I hadn't set foot in a Chuck E. Cheese's since maybe 1990, so I figured, what the heck? It might be fun!

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha HA. If by "fun," you mean "a waking nightmare," then yeah. Sure, it was a blast.

I beg of you - never go to Chuck E. Cheese's on a Saturday night. Just don't do it. Or, if possible, at any other time. The parking lot was full at 6:00 p.m. There was a big sweaty ball of humanity crowded into the entryway and spilling out onto the sidewalk waiting to get inside. The place was at capacity. Once the birthday party had secured us passage through the door, I spotted the world's most frightening salad bar. Think about the general cleanliness of any buffet, first of all. And then think about all the people smooshed into Chuck E's on any given day. And all of the unsupervised little kids running amok. And just the fact that the salad bar is located about ten feet from the entryway, for maximum traffic. Gaaaah.

Past the salad bar, we entered the teeming belly of Chuck E. Cheese. Half the games were broken, and half of the rest were out of tickets. I played a few games of skee ball, constantly defending my tickets from grabby little children. (I gave my tickets to my own grabby nephews. Though I did use a few myself on a high-quality magnetic tic tac toe game. Because you can't possibly just use a pencil and paper for tic tac toe!) At one point I passed my sister, shepherding two of the boys with a look on her face of vaguely glazed horror that I recognized immediately. "It's a like a whole new level of hell," she murmured with a touch of awe. Indeed it was.

I swear Chuck E. Cheese's wasn't this horrible when I was a little kid. It seemed like they didn't have nearly as many fun rides anymore, either. Sure, I know there must have been a reason my mom never wanted to go there, but it couldn't have been this bad. Anybody back me up here?