Foot Loose and Fancy Free

Teddy's Girl, Carmencita, Alita and I all went to the New York Aquarium yesterday. It was an interesting experiment and a fabulous day. For instance I can tell Alita is about to be 6 without thinking about it at all. How? Perhaps the endless pestering all the time at the Aquarium, "I want to go swimming. Can we go swimming now? We've been at this place a very long time." despite the fact that she was actually having a really good time. You've never seen 3 adults more excited than when the following conversation occurred:

Me: Hey, look at those cool seahorses. They're camouflaging themselves in the sea grass.

Alita: ...

Teddy's Girl: Camouflage means to blend in with something.

Alita: We're studying camouflage in school.

Me & Teddy's Girl: Cool! Wow! So you can tell your teacher all about these seahorses.

(Insert endless coaching on what to say to the teacher and neverending pointings out of other animals using camouflage. I give it a 50-50 shot whether she remembers to tell her teacher.)

Hee. never go on an unauthorized field trip with a bunch of ex-teachers.

I, personally, could have spent the entire day watching the otters, sea lions and the enromous walrus. So cool. I can also highly recommend this year's cheesy attraction Deep Sea 3-D (pronounced in a deep, scary, announcer voice). I don't want to spoil it in case you go but it's totally cheesy and super fun. I'm embarrassed to say that I actually involuntarily squinched my eyes shut and braced for impact at one point. Oh yes, brave as a lion am I.

Eventually (some might say finally) we did go to the beach (a matter of walking about 10 steps from the Aquarium entrance) and this is what it looked like.



The girls came in for just a minute at one point. They were brave and stalked upright into the waves like awesome Amazons.



I only went in this far. But I wanted you to see.


Then I walked up and sat on the towel for a while. My sneakers still have sand in them. Memories of childhood. ("Dust your feet off before you get into the car. Before for god's sake!")

By the time I got home I was exhausted. This whole having a life thing is intense. How do you people do it?