Sunday, August 5, 2007

Submerged in yarn

  • I'm hip-deep getting my Ravelry notebook up to speed, after having gotten my long-awaited invitation to be a beta tester today. Full story over at Toxophily.

  • The Arkansas summer heat has finally hit with the month of August -- 95-98 by early afternoon, and not much of a respite in the morning either. So we made our first visit of the year to Playworld, the last resort of parents in the dog days of summer. We're held out until now, but eventually we all give in and pay $12 to let the kids slide and jump in ball pits for a couple of hours. It was worth it this time, though, and not just for the air conditioning (partially offset, it must be noted, by the replacement of classic-rock Musak by -- urgh -- Radio Disney). Archer entered the giant maze -- only two ways in and out, lots of tubes to crawl through and things to climb over and obstacles to negotiate -- and emerged safely. Not once, not twice, but three times. This is huge. The last time I pushed him to climb farther in there than the ball pit right at the back entrance, he had to be helped out by big kids, weeping and scared. Going all the way through the Playworld maze is independence and adventurousness that I didn't expect of him for years yet. I'm bursting with pride.

  • I'm looking forward to two opportunities to entertain in the next two weeks. First, the Secret Knitter will be visiting for a few days, starting Thursday, and I'll get to squire him around Central Arkansas. Second, preparations have begun (and the invitations have been sent) to the Archer-Cady Gray combo birthday party. I have big plans for my Legends of the Hidden Temple theme -- a tunnel in the backyard made of big cardboard boxes, uh ... a cake, definitely a cake ... well, my plans still need more help. But I am still excited about thinking up ideas and scavenging supplies. It's possible -- just possible -- that these two pleasant occasions could merge. Will the Secret Knitter be coming up with Mayan games and pagan decorations? Or will he simply be helping me schlep tiki masks from the party store? Stay tuned.

3 comments:

Adam Villani said...

You know, I think they started coming up with Playworld type stuff when I was a teenager, too old to participate. We used to go to a bunch of the different city parks when I was a kid and you bet I would know which ones had the best playground equipment.

The ultimate was a park in Lakewood that had some kind of giant pyramid of ropes forming a lattice. I drove by again years later and the pyramid was gone. They had something similar in La Mirada, but that one's gone, too. Rrrrr.

There's a kickass wooden fortress/ play structure thing at a park in Santa Barbara, too. That's still there, last time I checked.

the secret knitter said...

With this heat, I think you could make the kids plenty happy by throwing a sheet of plastic on the lawn, turning on the hose, and letting 'em run wild. But I'll put my thinking cap on and see what it produces. :)

Kelly said...

It totally escaped my mind that Arkansas is somehow much more of an oven than Alabama. At least there's no drought in AR - I keep driving down the street aghast at the lawn watering, wondering when the cops are going to show up and start writing tickets.