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Friday, September 03, 2004

the fair

Before I get started on the stuff about the Fair, I wanted to show a picture of THE DRESS. The person wearing it really does have a face -- a quite pretty face, with a little 50's flip, and a cute glittery veil* -- but since I don't have her permission yet I'm not showing it to you all. Anyway. Did I mention, THE DRESS IS DONE?


*in my head this description is in the voice of the Knights who say Ni, describing the shrubbery :)

Without further ado:

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Now. It is odd about the fair. I remember being a little kid and the whole year revolved around two events: Christmas and the Fair. Back then it was all about the rides. My brother and I would go through forty tickets each a night on the Scrambler and the Hammer and the Holy Grail of rides, the zipper [heavenly chord]. We looked forward to the fair so much that we had a huge post-holiday syndrome afterward, thinking how long it would be till the next one. We spent every possible minute there. We couldn't understand my parents who actually for some reason wanted to leave before closing time, and we would whine and argue about it all the way home in the car.


Now, I am that parent. Except the kids don't whine, largely because it's never occurred to them that we could stay much past dark. It's so noisy, and so crowded, and there's so much foul language (I swear I heard a group of way-pre-teen boys -- probably between eight and ten -- spouting off the F word like they were aspiring gangsta rappers), and between the country music blaring out of the beer garden, and the metal blaring out of the teen rides, you can't hear yourself think, and drunk people collide with you, you could feed a small African nation for a week for the cost of dinner for a family of four, and I could go on. However, there are some high points to make it worth it for a few hours, and here they are:





This one really doesn't have anything to do with the fair. She's just so darn cute.

Just for a total change of pace, LT was shouting cowboyish things like "Yee-haw" and "Giddap!" while C was pulling the whole I'm-scared-Mommy-don't-take-your-hands-off-me routine.

However, the real thing (if you can call sitting on a bored pony who's harnessed to a metal thingamajig and riding around in a plodding circle "the real thing") didn't phase her a bit...

More yee-haws and giddaps, but quietly...

LT won Best of Show for Lego creations in his age group with this oliphaunt. He made it completely from scratch out of his own head -- well, his, Tolkein's, and Peter Jackson's. Needless to say we're totally proud of him and he's very pleased.

Here's a better picture. Check out the little eyes, and the guys riding it. :)

The petting zoo sheep knew exactly what was in the little plastic cup LT was carrying around and by golly he wanted his share of it.

I was heaving a sigh of relief at his bravery here. He had a great time and totally forgot to be nervous. We won't talk about the Super Slide, though. :-|

The big event for tomorrow is the destruction derby. I'm taking LT and one of his friends. I get almost as excited about the fair as I used to be as a child, when I remember that hallelujah, it marks the end of destruction derby season, and I get my husband back on evenings and weekends again. :) This year hasn't been so bad; he takes LT with him which is fun for both of them, and their work went relatively smoothly. Except that he ended up working on other people's derby cars for them, almost more than he did on his own team's. This is perhaps the only sport where competitors have been known to help each other to win. Even tonight he is off at someone else's house doing last-minute fixing on a car that he'll hope to have just beaten at this time tomorrow. What a guy. :)

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