Doing Stuff

In an effort to bring the kids down from a week of doing stuff with their Nonna, who had been here visiting from the swamps of south Florida, we decided that we would have to do stuff with the kids today. Two of The Quartet spent the night with their grandparents last night, so we took GK and JP to breakfast at Brother Juniper's. GK was born two weeks ago today and this was her first dining out experience. I’m afraid she was terribly bored by it all – she slept through the whole thing.

We went out to pick up C and S and then surprised them by taking them to a movie. I would rather have sat around watching the World Cup matches, but Sunday is my only day off work and The Quartet get it in their heads the other six days that they want to spend a day doing stuff with me. It was supposed to be 105 degrees today, making Peabody Park out of the question, so we went to see Cars. Or, as JP called it as we pulled into the parking lot of the theater, “Disney’s new movie, Cars!”

Pixar, once again, went above and beyond with the animation in the movie. However, I put all of their movies up against Toy Story, which I still think is their best, and which this one didn’t even come close to. I didn’t realize that there were not going to be any people characters in Cars. There were cars in the stands watching the cars race, which was weird. C and JP really seemed to enjoy the movie. S, exhausted from either staying up too late at Grandma’s, or from picking on JP through most of the movie, fell asleep for the last 15 minutes. GK told me later that the film left her feeling hollow, like that last scene in Planet of the Apes. These cars seemed to inhabit a world that was built by humans for humans – there were buildings everywhere, obviously meant to house people, and tractors which, presumably, would have been used to harvest food. “Where were all the people?” she asked. “Did the machinery rise up and destroy the population like an episode of Twilight Zone or a Philip K. Dick novel?” I didn’t have the answers. Damn you, Walt Disney!

So it was a big day for doing stuff and for GK – her first breakfast out and her first movie, which led directly into her first lecture from Daddy on how movies are too expensive when they really needn’t be, and that the snack bar is an unconscionable scam which should be investigated by the federal government. The cost, by the way, for two adults and one child having breakfast at Brother Juniper’s: $26. The cost for two adults taking three of-age kids to the movie with large popcorn, Coke and bottled water: $40. The cost of spending time with my kids on my only day off: $66.