Queen of Rambles

While in Oregon, my diet and exercise habits went to hell. I did manage to get in my fruit servings every day and eat lots of legumes (two of my newish goals), but there was still lots of cake, ice cream and cookies. Every day with the cake! Or the ice cream! Or the cookies! It’s no surprise I’m a fat ass. The big surprise is that I don’t have diabetes.

I managed to hold the line I’ve set for Erik pretty well and no part of a Lunchable entered his mouth, nor did he get ten popsicles a day. But, and you knew there was a but, I broke a sacred vow.

In the modern US of A there’s a rite of passage all children go through that I’ve steadfastly refused to take any part in. The rites are so ingrained in our society that Erik’s pediatrician lectured me about it, even when I made it clear I had no intent of letting Erik go down the path lined with trans-fat. My family, of course, has very different perceptions about this rite of passage and while I throw my body over the gate into Hell, they happily buy tickets and rush through with balloons and streamers.

Is my metaphor falling apart yet?

Erik ate at McDonald’s.

There. I said it. I can no longer scoff at the people who take their kids to Micky D’s as a regular outing, because my son was there three times in two weeks just to play in their play land. I saw the light, and the light was filled with tunnels, slides and a pretend plastic airplane. It was really handy to pick up my grandma and take her and the kids up there to play since she can’t sit outside at a park very well. I guess McDonald’s really can contribute to family time.

He likes it!

My guard has slipped, and despite eschewing the Golden Arches since I was thirteen years old (you try eating a diet of McDonald’s, McDonald’s and more McDonald’s while on a two week road trip with your “frugal” great-aunt. She got a free senior drink at McDonald’s, so she wouldn’t stop the van anywhere else), I actually didn’t mind it. I didn’t gag from the smell. I didn’t puke when I ate their new chicken select strips. I knew they had tried to make a healthier menu and they’ve certainly succeeded. I won’t be eating there weekly, or even monthly, but I guess I can put aside my strict ban on all things McDonald’s.

Tonight we needed to get out of the house. I didn’t want to go to the mall or Chik-Fil-A, so I looked up the McDonald’s website and found a restaurant near us with a play area. My world has been rocked! Me. ME! I looked up McDonald’s and made a plan to go there. Whoa.

Mike wanted to go to the mall instead, so we didn’t go to the McDonald’s, but I know that when the weather turns bad and the mall playground is turned into Santa’s Wonderland, we’ll be at the stupid McDonald’s, eating chicken strips and watching the kid get stuck in a tunnel.

I just hope he doesn’t get stuck in the tunnels very often.

Did I ever mention that while on my trip I had to go all ninja and climb through a stupid McDonald’s tunnel? At that particular play area there are tunnels running across the very high ceiling. Instead of being solid plastic, they are short plastic tubes hooked together with netting so the tubes sway and when you go over the netting part you can look down below and imagine falling to your death. Fun for all!

(If you look at the top of the pic, you can see the bottom of the tunnel/netting)

Erik managed to get himself half-way through the tunnel before deciding he was terrified. There was no coaxing or cajoling him down, so up I went, like a good mama should. In case the pictures haven’t made it clear, I am not slight of waist and nimble of elbow. Crawling through a kid sized tunnel, suspended 20 feet above the ground, wondering if my vast weight will cause the ropes to snap in half is not exactly cardio, but it does get the blood pumping. Once in the tunnel, there was no backing out thanks to a little girl on my tail who kept urging me to go faster. I got to Erik and he suddenly had a fit of courage and scampered off, leaving me to belly crawl to the slide and try to figure out how to turn around and go feet first.

I’m sure if Mike had been there he could have used his magical brain powers and figured out a way to turn around, but it was just me, my non-spacial brain and my over-sized ass. I went down the twisty slide face first, all the while listening to my grandma yell at me for not having socks on (the sign clearly states socks must be worn at all times, but I didn’t have any with me).

And I want to go back? I must be nuts.

It’s not that I want to go back, but it is nice to have a free indoor place to play. As I was looking around the website, I noticed the BEST feature ever for a family going on a road trip. You can input your start and end points, then it will spit out your route and all the McDonald’s on the way. The list shows which restaurants have a play land, so when we go on our road trip in November we’ll be able to easily find places for Erik to get out some energy. It’s genius! Pure, marketing genius! We’ll be eating at their establishment even though we don’t really want to because they provide us with A) a place for our kid to get some energy out and B) easy to find directions to find the oasis of tunnels. I went to Burger King’s site to see if they had anything similar and couldn’t even navigate their site they have it so flashed up.

I can’t believe I’ve written this much about McDonald’s. I’m not about to become their spokesmen, but I guess I won’t be totally shunning it from no one either.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.