I’m just going to say it. Friday night I did shots of tequila and spent most of the next day’s valuable babysitter time lying motionless in bed. I had to skip my planned yoga date with Kay because a) it would have been bad form to puke in yoga class and b) Kay did tequila shots with me, so the possibility that she would stand me up was very high. On the bright side, it was an excellent night.
Hot Firefighter Husband was out with me as well. Unfortunately he had to spend his recovery time hanging off a 6-story parking garage. But that’s the life he chose.
By this morning I finally felt as though I might survive, and longed to do something wholesome and good, or anything, really, that didn’t involve sucking lemons and dancing like the spinning head girl in The Exorcist.
Husband decided we should go hiking at Guana State Park.
I had mixed feelings about this idea. Guana is among my most favorite places in the universe. I love to hike in Guana. But hiking in Guana with a Tyrant on my shoulders and a Pterodactyl’s whine scaring off all birdlife and a Diva having to go potty every half-mile could very well cure me of loving to hike in Guana.
Plus there’s the prep work. Packing the picnic lunch. Finding shoes. Stuffing jackets in the backpack. Re-finding the shoes. Bribing the kids with Starburst to get into the car. After all this, who needs a hike? When we finally arrive at the park gate, Husband says, “Do you have any cash?” and I almost screamed at him, “Do I have to think of EVERYTHING? NO, I do not have any CASH!” But the fee was only $3 and I had enough dimes to cover it.
After all that, the hike was AWESOME and we saw three armadillos. The Diva and the Pterodactyl brought notebooks and wrote down everything they saw, which lengthened the trip considerably because the Pterodactyl needs to spell everything correctly and can’t walk and write and ask how to spell things all at once. 
They liked the armadillos a lot, and didn’t seem to realize they see squished dead armadillos every day on the side of the road. They had a lot of conversations like this:
Diva: How many armadillos do you think there are here?
Pterodactyl: I bet there are 50 hundred.
Diva: Or 2,000.
Pterodactyl: Yeah!
Diva: Or infinity and beyond. Or maybe google.
Pterodactyl: What’s google?
Diva: That’s like infinity and beyond, but more.
Pterodactyl: Google’s a funny word.
There’s something redeeming about watching my kids get excited about a wood stork, or a funny-shaped tree, or an oyster shell – particularly when the same children didn’t even notice the ocean on the drive to the park because they were too busy playing Nintendo. I felt for a moment like I was passing my values onto them, and helping them understand their role in protecting this incredible slice of Florida wildness.
Then we arrived at the picnic site and the Tyrant took off her shoes and started throwing chips into the Intracoastal Waterway, and on the way home she chased down an armadillo with a stick and tried to stab it. 
But all in all it was a fine day, possibly even a great day. The Tyrant told me as she went to bed, “It was a nice Mardi Gras, and a nice parade, and tonight’s gonna be a good, good night.” Thank you, Black-Eyed Peas, for that.
She’s right, though. And there’s no tequila involved. 
