40

Last Wednesday, I woke up feeling a little congested, and by late morning, I had the headachy, feverish, slightly unreal sensation that is usually the harbinger of some hideous virus o' doom. I felt so rotten that I went home after lunch, slept, woke up long enough to collect G from school and order pizza for her dinner, slept again, got up to feed the cats and make sure G went to bed properly (i.e., not with unbrushed teeth and still wearing all her clothes) and then went back to sleep.

I don't know what miracle my immune system pulled off during the night, but somehow by the time I woke up on Thursday morning, I was completely fine--every trace of whatever had been ailing me the day before was gone. Which was a good thing, because Thursday also happened to be my 40th birthday.

(!!!)

I went to work, where friends had baked homemade brownies for me and turned my cube into a mystical black-draped tent lit inside by battery-powered tealights, and then after being taken out to lunch, I left early (again) so I could pick G up immediately after her last class. We had tickets to see Twelfth Night at the Old Globe in San Diego's Balboa Park, and it's a good thing we got on the road as early as we did, because the traffic was so heavy that it took three hours to make a trip that usually takes an hour and a half at most. Luckily, G and I are good traveling companions--we like lots of the same music and usually pass the time by singing along loudly to the favorite artist of the moment-- and we still got there in plenty of time to check into our hotel and relax a bit before heading over to the theater.

The director had decided to set the play in India during the British Raj, and it made me a little uncomfortable to see some of the cultural appropriation that involved, but the production was so good I couldn't help loving it. It was a black-box theater, and we were in the front row, so there were several occasions when the actors came right up near us or actually sat just offstage beside us to watch the action. In fact, thanks to our position, I suddenly found myself part of the show during the closing song, when the actor playing Feste zeroed in on me in the front row, climbed up on the raised area surrounding the stage, and sang this verse directly to me with a hand outstretched:

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive
For the rain it raineth every day

This raised a roar of laughter from the audience and nearly caused G, seated to my right, to spontaneously combust with a combination of hilarity and tween-girl embarrassment. After the lights came up, I leaned over to her and said "Apparently I'm the Fool's girlfriend," and she said, still laughing, "I'm glad it was you and not me!" Hee.

The next morning, we had room-service breakfast and then hit the highway again, stopping along the way to do some shopping for G, who had earned a pair of coveted, trendy Toms shoes by doing work around the house, and also for me, because it was my birthday and I intended to indulge myself. :D We had chocolate cake at Corner Bakery (can't have a birthday without cake, right?) and finally got home in the late afternoon, tired but satisfied. All in all, a good birthday, and while it wasn't the crazy over-the-top celebration you're "supposed" to have for a milestone year, it was just right for me.

A visit to the past

G suggested going to Medieval Times for Mothers' Day this year. As it happened, I'd never been there before, which made it an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by celebrating the holiday and adding an experience to my list of new things, so off we went.

I was secretly expecting it to be cheesy tourist crap--which is why I'd never gone, despite living in the area for 30 years--but I was wrong. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. The idea is that you're at this tournament in medieval Spain, and the section you're seated in is represented by a particular knight, and you cheer him on in battle. It's easier to get into than you might think; even G, who is usually too full of almost-teen self-consciousness to participate in that sort of thing, was screaming and clapping and yelling "Boo!" and "Get him!" during the final epic battle between the Yellow Knight and the evil Green Knight. There are displays of dressage and falconry, and tournament games, and jousting, and hand-to-hand combat, and it's really pretty neat. (And it didn't hurt that three of the knights, including ours, were smoking hot. Wow.) Here are a few photos:

The arena before the show started. 

Dressage display.

Our knight was the Black and White Knight.

This is a flower that he kissed and then threw to us in the stands. I've never seen G come so close to swooning before.

Galloping blurrily off to the joust.

Jousting!

They have the obligatory overpriced merchandise to buy, and people wanting to take your photo and sell it to you for $10, but we ignored all that and just enjoyed the pageantry. G is already longing to go back, so I suspect we may be spending her next birthday there. Definitely a good time.

One thing that bothered me a bit about the day--and in fact has been a general annoyance lately--is that almost no one realizes I'm G's mother anymore. She looks older than she is, mostly because she's so tall, and I look younger than I am, and so strangers assume that I'm her friend or elder sister, or sometimes her aunt. When we arrived at the castle, the person checking reservations at the gate wished the women ahead of and behind me a happy Mothers' Day, but not me. Inside, they were handing out flowers to the mothers; I wasn't offered one. Obviously with my 40th birthday only a few months away, it's nice not to look old enough to be the mother of an apparent teenager, but I am a mother and proud of it, and I'd like to be recognized as one.

It does sting a little, too, to think that if P were still alive, people would probably have no trouble pegging us as the parents and G as our child; it's G and me being on our own together that throws them off. But there's not much I can do about it, short of investing in some MOTHER and DAUGHTER T-shirts or sticky labels--and embarrassing as G thinks I am at times, I'm not that over the top. Yet.

Faire thee well

Today we went to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. We've been several times before, but our last visit was at least five years ago, and I was ready for another trip. G was all over the idea when I proposed it last night, but when it was actually time to get ready and leave this morning, she said she had changed her mind and wanted to stay home and play video games all day. "Some people just want to be lazy," she opined, to which I said unfeelingly, "Yes, well, your desire to be lazy is interfering with my desire to have fun, so get dressed and let's go."

This is not us, but if we had gone in costume, I like to think we would have looked that good.

A troop of combatants marching away after a staged battle.

Horses! We both spent a long time patting them and scratching their necks. They seemed to enjoy it, or at least not to mind.

Let's all take a moment here to be grateful for our automatic washing machines.

I'm not sure what this pile of brush and sticks and random objects was supposed to be. Maybe they were planning to burn someone as a witch later on.

I wish I could tell you that G was completely into the Faire once we arrived, but of the three hours we spent there, at least two of them were set to a constant refrain of "It's so hot! My feet hurt! There's too much dust! It's so hot! I can't do this anymore!" However, she did enjoy some of it, especially the horses and the booth where she got to shoot bolts from a crossbow. As for me, I would have enjoyed myself more if there had been more enthusiasm and less complaining, but it was good to make the point that sometimes you have to suck it up and do what someone else wants to do, rather than what you want to do. Only children don't get much practice at that, since they never have to sit through their older sister's dance class or their little brother's Barney video, but it's a lesson everyone needs to learn before they're grown up.

The real highlight of the day came on our way home, when we stopped at a KFC to pee (both of us would rather have exploded than use the port-a-potties at the Faire) and get something to drink. As we pushed open the front door, we nearly collided with a guy dressed up like Colonel Sanders, white goatee, pale-pink suit, string tie and all. He was doing some sort of promotional appearance and there was a professional photographer who would take your photo with him, so of course I could not resist saying to G, "Now's your chance to get a picture with The Colonel!" The look of absolute horror on her face was a wonder to behold. I managed to play it off for about five seconds before I broke down, laughed, and told her I was only joking. It was a surreal moment, though. You don't expect to walk into KFC and see The Colonel any more than you expect to walk into McDonald's and see a man in a clown suit.