Asteroid Belt: Attempt to Navigate

Ant at Wal-Mart the other night: "Boys only need conditioner, right?"

It's amazing how many things he says prompt that meerkat response from me.


Ant on our way to the laundromat last night: "You should be a teacher."

"Why?" I ask, thinking: Please be a compliment...

"Because you like to assign things."

Dammit.

"If I became a teacher for any reason, it would be because I love school supplies," I told him.


Yesterday we got talking about Field Day.  Field Day is Tuesday.  He's got a messed up grill.  Does anybody remember what Field Day is like?  I started putting that one together and saying "Uhhhhh..."

"I'll be fine!" Ant cried.  Yeah, of course you think so!  I involved Chris.

"Ant wants to go to Field Day."

"Okay," he said.  Ant looked happy.

"He's on a soft diet for two weeks," I said.

"Oh... yeah, no Ant.  You need time to heal."

This was right before we were preparing to walk to the dog park.

"Can I take my skateboard?"

Oh good grief, no!  At least give it a few days to heal!  Am I being overly cautious?  No.  Not only did the dentist tell him to knock it off for a while, but can you imagine me having to take him back in there with his tooth knocked completely out?

"How did this happen?" she'll ask.

"Field Day?" I'll say sheepishly.

On one hand I totally understand how he feels- first he was grounded and did nothing but reading and book reports for two weeks, he finally turns in the last one and the next morning he tries to take out a pole with his face.  He's desperate to go play.  On the other hand, yesterday he came home looking like this:

"What happened to your eye!"

Tetherball happened to his eye.  What that picture doesn't show is the cut on his eyelid.  After he got smacked in the face with the tetherball his eyelid started dripping blood into his eye.  The other kids tried to get him to go to the nurse, but Ant said all he needed was a napkin.

Yeah, you're shaking your head and saying, "ANT!" in both puzzlement and amazement.

"I think I look like God of War," he said.

Yes, very close.

So Ant and I were waiting for Chris to meet us at the laundromat and we were talking about Field Day.  I told him I would try- TRY- to wait to decide about Field Day until next week.  I told him that if my answer would be no, and odds were good, that I would not send him to school that day.  If I say no and send him to school, there's no way he'll be able to sit on the sidelines and not join in.  Besides, that would suck.  Instead I would just keep him home from school and we'd go do something fun.

"Like go to a movie," Ant said.

"You know what?" I asked.  "Let's just plan on that."

I'm relieved.  Ant was totally on board and that makes me feel much better about making him miss field day.  It was a good solution, I think.

Then Chris showed up and Ant told him about our decision.  "We're going to go to the movies instead."

"You and me?" asked Chris.  "I'll be back by then.  Or the three of us?"

"No, me and Jenny," said Ant.

:D  Love, love, love.

The only thing making me even consider letting him go was how unhappy he is about not being able to play.  I get it and I feel terrible about it... but oh well.  The tetherball incident did not help his argument.  And if that wasn't enough, he seems to have lost all motor skills.  He can't walk down the hallway without tripping over something.  He's falling left and right and I can't tell if it's just his way of releasing energy or if he suddenly just became ridiculously uncoordinated.

"It's almost as if your equilibrium is in your lips," I said.

"The problem IS my lip," he said.  "I can't see my feet."

LOL


Ordinarily I review only movies, but today I'm going to review a board game that is based on a movie.

Zathura

For anyone who didn't see the movie, it's basically Jumanji in space.  The house takes off with just the children in it and they have to defend themselves against a malfunctioning robot, evil Zorgons, and I can't remember what else.  One amusing thing about the movie is that Dax Shepard plays an astronaut.  Right?  So we found this game at Savers 50% off sale on 50% of the store.  We thought it was $1 but it was not on sale.  I would have chucked it but Ant was so excited I decided to keep it.  We finally played last night.  I was confused as to why Ant was randomly cleaning the living room until I figured out that he was clearing the coffee table.  Chris came in, sat down and said, "I don't want to play this!  I'm tired!  What if we get sucked into the movie?"  One can only hope.  Ant handed me the directions to read and missed absolutely everything I said because he was busy rolling the weirdly shaped die, spinning Zathura, and trying to flip game pieces out of Tsouris-3.  As we began to play, it soon became obvious that this is not a game that anyone is supposed to win.  On every turn you "spin" the dial which moves exactly one spot up or down.  The only way to really "spin" is to turn it for a while and then just stop.  Wow, a three.  You're supposed to move first, then turn the key and press the button for a card to pop out.  A typical move goes like this:  You "spin" a three, only to find that you've landed on the robot and have to move back five spaces.  Then you get your card and it says


Robot has Electronic Misfire and Attacks Ship: Defend or Move Back 5 Spaces


Hmm.  Or you land in Tsouris-3 where you're stuck until someone "rolls" an even number and your card says:


Enter Cryonic Sleep Chamber: Lose a Turn


Seriously.  We laughed in disbelief at what rotten luck we had.  The game ended when we lost the last piece of our house.  We all lost.  "What kind of game is this!" Chris yelled.

We all started getting ready for bed but Chris knew I had the makings for strawberry shortcake and would not accept postponement.  He made banana and strawberry shortcake without any sauce to make it slightly better for me.  Not that you could tell what you were eating- it was COVERED in Cool Whip. Chris started heading towards the bedroom but I knew Ant was sitting in the living room so I redirected him.  We were both surprised to see that Ant had set the game up again.  "Oh no," groaned Chris.

Within two rotations, two of us were stuck in Tsouris-3 and one had to start from the beginning.  I started sorting the discarded Z cards and found, as suspected, the bad cards outweighed the good cards 4 to 1.  "How much did we pay for this?" Chris asked.  We had already used our defense tokens and it seemed like every card activated the robot when Chris suddenly shot up to Zathura.  On his next turn he said, "Watch this," spun Zathura and yelled "BAM!" as it stopped on orange and he won the game.  I don't think he even stopped to see where it landed, he was already walking towards our room.  Ant and I looked at each other.  Ant called after Chris, "How did you do that?"

"It pissed me off.  I was done playing."

I went to start the dishwasher while Ant put the game away.

"I want to keep this game," he said.  "We don't normally laugh as much when we play other games."

True.