That Time We Went to the Zoo (First Ever Blog)

Caroline told me she wanted to go to the zoo. This meant we were going to the zoo. We started off with a berry and kale shake. I took the picture, then realized there was bare butt in it and that would never do. Then I took it again after shorts were present, and realized there were dirty dishes and that would never do. Then I took it again after the dishes were moved (not washed of course, just moved), and realized that there was a prominent boxed wine in the foreground. This was fine. But it took another five minutes to get Caroline to look at me. I threatened her with missing the tigers.

I told Caroline she could have $7 of her very own money to spend at the zoo, but that I wasn’t going to spend any more than that. She would have been happy if I had given her a quarter. In fact she prefers metal money–there really is more substance and weight to it, so I understand. I mean the metal itself has inherent value…you know, I’ll bet a penny is worth more than a penny. I’m going to have to look that up. Anyway, she decided she needed a purse to keep her money in. Which is a good thing, as you’ll find out later. But it HAD TO BE THE DORA PURSE. On several occasions today she called it her puss. I laughed. IT WAS FUNNY. Stop judging.

When we finally had everything ready–I had keys and a wallet and Caroline had money, trinkets and chapstick in her purse, her apples, her heart socks, her frog barrette and her unicorn–we embarked. When she found our car, Caroline yelled, “Mommy look I found our car, there it is!” Our car is parked directly in front of our house.

We finally arrive at the zoo! Which didn’t take long since we live approximately one half-mile from Forest Park, which you can see on the map I’ve included below (Dora likes maps). This is approximately the length of 240 tigers standing end-to-end. Yes. Yes I did calculate that shit. She’s sleeping and I have nothing else to do and tigers are her favorite.

This is us at the entrance. This is the only picture of me in the whole trip. Wanna know why? Because after this photo, I am red-faced and sweaty the entire rest of the morning. I look like a tomato that’s just been washed with a little bit of hair on top. Caroline, however, looks ridiculously angelic in EVERY.SINGLE.PICTURE. You may notice the coffee. Yes it may have contributed to my near heat-stroke, but it was absolutely necessary since Caroline woke me up at seven threatening me with stinky butt in the face if I didn’t make this day happen. Also notice I am now carrying the purse. For the rest of the day I have the purse. But what I have gained from this experience is that a purse is an invaluable thing to have. I put my phone, keys, wallet, and camera in it and it prevented everything from banging around in my pockets. Also, later on, I use it to smuggle banned goods onto the carousel and train. Purses are great for smuggling contraband. I am going to go buy a purse today JUST to smuggle things.

Every animal Caroline ran up to, she yelled hello at. But not like any hello. Like, “HellOOOOOOoooo!!!” The long “o” is drawn out quite a bit, with a heavy stress in the middle of the “o” sound. Okay you know what, just think Biff from Back to the Future when he’s banging George McFly on the head. Except louder. She’s doing that to these ducks in this picture. You’ll just have to use your mag’nation.

Here she is doing it to some tortoises. “HeellOOOOOOOOoooooo!”

Here she is doing it to a camel. “HeeeellllOOOooo!”

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Here she is doing it to a sea lion.

And here…

And here… (she liked the sea lions)

After we saw the above animals, I listed them out…ducks, camels, tortoises… Caroline yelled, “Yeah and turtles!” We are working on nomenclature.

She was obsessed with the animal tracks in the cement all over the zoo. Here she is inspecting them. Well, actually, it took me two minutes to realize that in this picture she’s actually playing with gum stuck to the sidewalk. But whatever.

At some point I realized I’m a terrible person because I didn’t even think of sunscreen. Which resulted in us darting around like crazy people here and there to snatch shade. We’d cross walkways for shade, we’d walk really fast in sun, then super slow in shade when we got to it–we were basically extremely erratic looking. Any activity that involved sitting in shade was even better–like the carousel! Notice she picked the tiger, leaving me with the chimp. Not cool.

Caroline decided she wanted to do the choo-choo train. Of course she wanted to do the choo-choo train. What kid doesn’t want to do the choo-choo train? She convinced me by saying she’d spend “her” money on it. I guessed that was pretty nice, so we bought tickets. But then we had to wait for the next one, so Caroline wanted dippin dots in the mean time (meaning I paid for them with “my” money). When I asked her for a bite she said no and explained it was because the lady gave them to her. Yeah she gave them to you after I paid for them, you little [inaudible under-the-breath mutterings here]. We sat on the ground next to a bench with some pentecostal-looking people on it but scared them away with my gay robot tattoo, so that was cool. I mean we got a bench out of it.

Here we are on the train… (and yes, you can successfully smuggle an open container of dippin dots in a purse)

The only time on the train Caroline would actually LOOK at me was in the tunnel. It didn’t come out so well…

Here’s some pictures of some big cats just because. “HellOOOOooooo!”

Here’s a picture depicting how Caroline might be found much of the time. That is, running ahead to climb on something she’s not supposed to. Even from this distance, I can see the sneaky look in her eye.

When we were finally ready to leave, Caroline said she was too tired to walk to the car, so I had to carry her. First of all this is bunk, cuz she sure shot outta my arms when she saw toys at the gift shop on the way out. And second of all, if she hadn’t run away from me so much maybe her little legs wouldn’t be so tired. The explanation of this failed to land like I hoped it would. Here we are back at home watching some cartoons. Poor thing. Life’s rough.

I asked Caroline what her favorite aminal (yeah aminal) of the day was. She said giraffes. We didn’t see giraffes. She’s ridiculous. Then she said Gus. Gus is our cat. This kid. I don’t know why I hadda sweat two gallons of water to go see exotic aminals (yeah, aminals) when her favorite lives in our house. Figures.