I have to have a plan. I still can’t quite play it totally “by ear.” It may be something I need to work on in therapy. Or after a bottle of wine.
But today’s plan? An adventure for me, (I would have said, “an adventure for the boyz”, but the truth was, it was for me, me, me and me.) An adventure for The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World. And an epic adventure for The-Oldest. Since yesterday was pretty much a whole day for The-Youngest, the rest of us would get something special today.
On the agenda, a visit to the fashion mall. Take the Avengers Tour. See Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles Love.
Can you guess which experience belonged to which person?
Luckily, The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World felt good, today, her migraine mostly, but not completely, gone. We began by marching out into the sunny… wait, what, cloudy??? Day. The air smelled of smoke from a fire off to the west. My eyes burned. The-Oldest sneezed a lot, though he was pretty sure it was not because of the smoke, but because of the light???? Apparently being allergic to light is a thing.
At least according to the internet.
Not a lot of people up at 11am, not many in the mall. Shamefully, we ate breakfast at the food court and I devoured about 3000 calories in a crape so stuffed with whipped cream, they burned out an entire can on it. (BUT, also inside, there were 3 banana slices, so, yeah, it was totally healthy, too!)
While we ate, The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World kept glancing towards the mall, towards all those shoe stores and purse stores and clothing stores … with a lean and hungry look like a praying mantis.
No, ah, not praying mantis? How about an octopus? No??? Ok, how about a beautiful lioness? Ok, that’s the one, then. …with a lean and hungry look like a beautiful lioness.
But what would the boyz do in a fashion mall, you ask?
Well, there was a Lego store, a video games store and The-Youngest had decided he needed a pair of headphones – ones that he could afford, that would have professional, studio-quality sound, and ones that had super comfy padding so his ears would be, you know, super comfortable. He set his price limit at about $20. I set the possibility of finding one at about 0, especially with no Best Buys or Walmarts in this mall.
So as soon as we were all done breakfast, The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World roared off. I won’t say she ran, but, you know, she didn’t saunter to the stores, either.
We boyz meandered around, vaguely heading towards the gaming and Lego stores, looking at the people, at the displays set up and at the other stores, no matter how mundane,
When we found the gaming store, we looked at every game there. Literally. Every. Game.
We even looked at a few twice. Plus, The-Youngest touched everything at least once and I’m pretty sure he fondled the headphones there more than 30 times, (but didn’t buy any, cuz, “Joe, did you know that these are gaming headphones? They have mics and I don’t need a mic.”)
Then we went to the Lego store and found that they have a nifty new screen that detects your box and then animates the Lego for you. So, lemme esplain. The screen reads the picture on the box, say a tie fighter, then an animated tie fighter appears on your box and zooms around and shoots things.
It was dead cool.
The-Youngest tried every box in the store, I think. All the while, the-Oldest began to build his most epic racer from old Lego parts. See, they have a neat box that you can build lego the way I used to build Lego. No instructions. No tie fighters (sadly). Just blocks and wheels.
After about 40 hours, The-Youngest grew bored with getting boxes and watching the animated lego pictures, and began to build his own super racer. It was about a foot long. The-Oldset built a wide, heavy, four-wheeled racer with a jet engine on the back. The-Youngest built, ah, something like a truck. Or a snake with wheels, I’m really not sure.
Then they raced. If they started nose to nose, The-Oldest won. Hands down. But!!! If you started butt to butt, then the shear length of The-Youngest’s extra long hauler could squeak out a victory.
Honestly, I don’t know how long we were in there, but that’s the cool thing about the Lego store. They just let you play if you want.
When we left, I texted The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World. She was still in the first store. Zara. Right beside the food court.
I had to laugh.
But she was having fun, so we went in search of headphones, trying all the major stores and even the booths. Remind me never to approach a booth. The-Youngest shot off to one and I nearly had to punch the person to get away. Think of it as having to get rid of a leech. Fire is the best method, but lacking even a lighter, I had to say, no, we aren’t interested about 8 times as we walked farther and farther away, the seller trailing us like a Turkish Rug hawker.
Having looked through the ENTIRE mall, I texted The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World and she had found a great store that carried the pants she LOVED.
“Better you boyz head off to the Avengers,” she said. At least that’s what I heard. Could be she said, why don’t you come bra shopping with me, but whatever, we went back to the hotel to do something I wanted to do.
Nerd stuff.
Avenger stuff.