Well, my son was adamant that it was "Movie Day" and knowing that the heat index was supposed to get up over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it didn't sound like a bad idea to me. I searched to see if there were any movies that were even appropriate for him, and found Pixar's "Cars 3" which seemed to have halfway decent reviews for a kids movie. Apparently the posting on the internet was wrong, because when I took my son to the theater at 11:15am, the ticket office said they didn't have any showings until after 1pm. My son was upset and said he would sit and wait until then. I was sure he wouldn't really want to wait two hours in a movie theater (or if they would even let us) so we searched for another one and he reluctantly agreed to leave, but insisted we couldn't stop and run errands.
We went to the movies at another theater and he had a great time and tried to stay to watch another one (after shelling out close to $50 for the tickets and his soda and parking, I tried to explain this was a special treat). We went to lunch and then the only way I could convince him to willingly and pleasantly join me at the grocery store was to tell him he could pick out his own flavor for ice cream.
As we went through the produce aisles, I picked up two oranges. He noticed they were like balls and I told him he could have them. He was very sweet and insisted to me that he wasn't going to "squish them into the grocery cart like he did with the peaches last time". That was an ordeal where I ended up rummaging through my purse for kleenex and wipes to clean up a mess and having 2 or 3 peaches I had to pay for ending up in the grocery trash... Lesson learned. I told him I gave him the oranges because I was sure he COULDN'T squish them like the peaches, but I appreciated his promise.
As we continued to shop, my son started saying something about making orange juice for neighbors and we needed more oranges. For my picky son who doesn't like to eat fruit most of the time to ask for more oranges, I decided not to quash that request. We went back and I asked him how many he wanted. Five, he said. He was excited and held onto his oranges for the whole trip.As I got home and started unloading groceries he took off for downstairs and out the front door with oranges. It was about 3 pm, but he was convinced he needed to make orange juice for the neighbors like Daniel Tiger did. I tried to get him to stay inside until I was done unloading groceries, but had a hard time, I ended up coming with ideas of things he needed to get upstairs, sprinting up the stairs ahead of him to get a few groceries put away and then coming back down with him with supplies. The prospect of sitting outside for the next 3 hours to wait for the neighbors to come home in the heat was just not appealing. Fortunately, a neighbor across the street who had just picked up her daughter from school was passing by. I pled with her to please come over and have some orange juice from my son's stand so I wouldn't have to stay outside for the next couple of hours. She looked slightly perplexed, but obliged.
They came over and had said some freshly squeezed orange juice (I was able to convince my son that a necessity of having an orange juice stand was thoroughly washing your hands before you touched other peoples beverages). My neighbor offered to pay, as she thought it was like a lemonade stand, apparently, according to my son, "Daniel Tiger gave orange juice to his neighbors because it is a neighborly thing to do". Free orange juice for neighbors, that's not a bad lesson my son had learned... Fortunately, quenching the thirst of two neighbors was enough to satisfy my son and he decided it was time to move on.
It wasn't too hard to get him to move on at that point when I suggested we take his new chocolate ice cream out to the back porch. My dog Dewey, the "Arizona Dog" likes to sunbathe in 100 degrees. It's kind of crazy, but he'll actually ask to go outside in the backyard and lay out in the sun when there is a heat alert. I decided to let him on the porch with us too. Not long after I had gotten water bowls, phone, ice-cream bowls, etc. out on the porch, I heard thunder. There hadn't been any warning of storms other than the vague, "It could storm between noon and 9pm". I told my son it looked like there could be storms to our north, and we would monitor it, I told him at the first sight of lightening, we should all run inside. I surveyed the porch for Dewey, who has thunderstorm anxiety and he was as cool as a cucumber, so I decided I would start rounding up other stuff first. As I did this, the lightening started. I got my son inside first and then went for the dog. Well, that was an adventure... My son apparently likes to get excitable about storms, he's not really scared, but he's like my sister who has a strange fascination love/hate relationship. He was like a cheerleader through the screen door.
That didn't help the already freaked out dog. As I was trying to wrangle him inside, the cat snuck out. This is the same cat who I previously had to jump from our 2nd floor porch to our neighbors 2nd floor porch to get her off of before she could jump to another neighbor'
s porch. The prospect of jumping porches as the wind was picking up and the lightening was going made me forget about the dog and get the cat. I got her inside and then almost gave up on the dog. Except I didn't. The mom in me just couldn't leave him out there. I wrangled him inside and got some anti-anxiety medication down him (He was so stressed he refused beef jerky and all of his most favorite treats). My son was excited; he had had perhaps the most exciting day he'd had in a while and he almost looked at me like I was some type of frazzled wet-haired super hero. I had tried to spend the day like a kid but responsibility had kicked in. A very memorable day and one I'm not sure how my son would re-tell it.
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