the ocean

My parents took great pains to not spoil me and my sister when we were kids. While some of our friends were inundated with My Little Ponies and Transformers, we were generally steered towards more educational toys, like board games where you talk about your feelings and answer questions about history's notable lesbians or construction sets designed to avoid any masculine gaze. I am not complaining about this; I recall many wonderful hours spent assembling and disassembling my world map puzzle that had tragically been rendered inaccurate almost immediately by the collapse of the Soviet Union. But what I do find interesting is that this policy ascetism for tots has been utterly abandoned for the next generation, as my sister's children find themselves waist deep in Lego sets and princess costumes from their Mimi. I'm not saying the children will start torturing cats in the woods or anything because this is happening. If anything, I'm just jealous. And by the way, I would still accept a solid Lego set today.

We had one job for my niece's birthday party: procuring two mylar balloons, one each for my niece and nephew, with characters they like on them. Because we are idiots, we assumed this would be easy. We could not have been more wrong.

Did you know that Party City is absolutely the place to be on Friday nights? I had assumed that people would rather be home drinking boxed wine and eating Pringles (which were the two items the lady in front of me in line at Walgreen's got with her prescriptions, by the way), but apparently shopping for novelty plates and plastic noisemakers is the way to go. And did you know that balloon orders have to be placed with the cashier? So we got in a line that was twenty people deep in a desperate attempt to purchase $6 worth of Mickey Mouse and Spider Man balloons.

But it was not meant to be. For, in fact, they were "a little backed up" and had therefore imposed a forty-five minute waiting period for all balloon orders. (Firearms are still available instantly, no doubt.) We were cocky, friends, and thought we'd just get our balloons elsewhere. A Walgreen's, Jewel, and Mariano's later, however, we were still empty handed. If we'd wanted balloons shaped like mugs of Guiness, we would have been in business, but unfortunately the children cannot yet hold their liquor.

We ended up ordering them online from Party City for "curbside pickup" Saturday morning. Unfortunately, that seems to be a term that means "fuck you, sucker," because we pulled up to the curbside pickup zone at our appointed pickup time and checked in via text, only to wait fruitlessly for twenty minutes with nary a Mickey in sight. So I headed inside.

"Welcome to the party!" one of the cashiers greeted me in that tone reserved solely for corporate-mandated welcomes.

"Yeah, I've already been at the party for twenty minutes, waiting for my curbside delivery," I could not help but reply. And, as usual, being white and sassy got me places. I was out of there with my balloons in a cool three minutes. I carried with me serious concerns about the mental health of the clearly overwhelmed woman working the balloon counter by herself and getting screamed at about partially deflated Anna & Elsas, but at least I was alive. 

I feel like we're kind of at this odd inflection point in the U.S. right now, where things are obviously improving on the COVID front but people are kind of split between having some measured optimism and just deciding that it's over and throwing their masks in a bonfire with their Dixie Chicks CDs. I myself am a bit torn because I definitely see the appeal of heading to Daytona Beach and rubbing up against random strangers, but I also don't really want to end up on a ventilator, especially since I don't think I have any outfits that go with one. And we do have these weird mutant strains of COVID just kind of hanging out there in Texas, eating barbeque and shouting about states' rights just like everyone else. So, um, maybe I'm not scheduling any foam parties or jello wrestling matches just yet.

On the measured optimism front, though, absolutely I'm there. My mom has been vaccinated, as anyone who has encountered her in any capacity in the past month must surely know by now, and Ian's parents are scheduled now as well. I have a few friends who have been vaccinated, too, and not one of them has suddenly developed a strange desire to purchase Microsoft products. (Although I'll stan for Microsoft Paint until the day I die, of course.) Restaurants are reopening, and even if I'm not quite ready to throw back a Megarita at Chili's myself, I take it as a positive sign. People are even starting to talk about "when" theatre will come back, as opposed to "if." Can that Godspell revival we've all been hungering for be so far behind?

So yeah, things are on an upswing. The sun is out and the chocolate I impulse bought on Amazon has arrived. (And I brought it inside before the aforementioned sun got to it.) What a time to be alive, ish.