Not A Fun Day...

Yesterday was his day off. We took the kids to the zoo. This zoo has to be the worst zoo we've ever had the displeasure of visiting. 

The parking lot is not so much a parking lot, as it is a partitioned field. There is about an acre of dirt and grass to park on. That's not so terrible. Great way to cut costs and focus on the animals, right? well...one of the first things you see as you walk up is a set of train tracks for their toy train. Tat means one of the first things your kids see is the nine dollar per person train. So, if you happen to have a young child that is mildly obsessed with such things, you are looking at your first meltdown. 

The next thing you will note is the admissions line. Not a big deal, right? They have three admissions windows. It seems like they are not too efficient, since the line stretches back 1,000 feet, wraps around all the way back, and out across the train tracks. You are going to stand in line for about 45 minutes. Fun! The entire time, you have dueling attention grabbers. The carousel, and the damned train. It isn't until you get to the tickets window that you realize that it isn't simple inefficiency. They are also trying to upsell everyone to their walk on water bubbles, zip line track, bungee jumping, etc. Oh, well. Not paying another 100 dollars for all that.

That's when the true horror begins. You have to walk through those thing, and past those thing, to get to the zoo entrance. Your *kids* have to walk through and past those things on the way to the actual zoo entrance. It's okay though, soon you will be safely within the confines of the fantastic zoo ad botanical garden....

Except, as soon as you enter...

The first thing you see, and your kids see, is the giant splash pad. Why? Why is this even here?? Of course, you are now a monster. An unfair jerk. A bully and a villain, because you told you kids no. No. That is not what we're here for. There is a huge splash pad just down the street from home. Right next to the ocean. For free. We didn't spend 70 dollars to do stuff we can do for free. Let's go see the animals. 

Well. It was lackluster at best. They did have a few big cats. No, not lions or tigers. Nope. But they were cool. They have two rhinos. Two. That made my day. Some giraffes, snakes, river otters. More camels than anything really. That would not have bothered'extras me s much if that had not spent so much focusing on the extras. f course, the kids could only focus on those things, and they were unhappy. So he was mean, and unhappy. But things got a little better on the way out. Shaved ice makes everyone happy.

For a while.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Walmart? Well, I do. It is a deep loathing. It is always far less pleasant with the kids, because he never wants to buy them anything, but they want him to. He literally lost his shit in there. I asked a question about the pizza he planned to buy for dinner. He lost his shit. I told him off this time, for all the good it did. I still left in tears and cried all the way home. I hate having days like this...