Day: May 26, 2004

All the kids are abed and Buffy Season Six came in the mail today. I know what I’m going to do right now! Night all.

No Buffy Spoilers please! I haven’t seen this season yet.

For those who are unfamiliar with this tradition, Field Day is the day at the end of the school year where the teachers herd their young charges out to the fields around the school to play games. They do tug-o-war, and relays, and 50 yard dashes, and basically run the kids around until they’re exhausted. Then during the “lunch” break the PTA raises funds by selling the kids sugar. Lots of sugar. All of it highly refined with artificial colors and flavors added. There is one hell-food that doesn’t even pretend to be anything else. It is colored, flavored sugar powder in a straw. Then with the kids so wired they can’t see straight, they run a few more games to work the sugar into the system and send the kids home for the parents to deal with.

My kids had a great time at field day. Kiki’s team won the tug-o-war. Link got to show off his newly missing tooth to all and sundry. Gleek got to run around in large open spaces and climb on things that weren’t meant to be climbed. Even Patches had fun. He got a lollipop which he applied in a sticky layer all over his face and hands. Then he got cheetos which adhered to the layer of sticky creating a substance previously unknown to man. He added a second coating of sticky from a ring pop as a kind of varnish. He loved it. (Note: I don’t think Patches actually ingested any of this sugar in measurable quantities, smearing was the game of the day.)

And then there was the aftermath. Patches crashed into a nap during the five minute drive home. I also discovered he acquired his first ever facial sunburn. (Bad mommy, forgot the sunscreen) Gleek also crashed into a nap, but only after the sugar high had worn off. I think she’s a little sick as well, she had croup last night. Now she’s up and I hope tonight will be better. Link seems to have suffered no ill effects. Kiki, on some kind of not-thinking-things-through sugar high, played a game out back which involved stripping all of the petals off of all of the in-reach roses from all 10 rosebushes. There were multicolor petals strewn all over the backyard. She topped it off by accidently breaking a branch off of one of our Silver Maple saplings. Fortunately it was a branch that we were going to have to eventually cut off anyway, it was too low. As restitution Kiki had to trim the rosebushes correctly so that in about a month they’ll all bloom again. That’s the nice thing about plants, they survive and grow back.

Anyway, we survived field day. There won’t be another one for a year. And my kids will have no more sugar for the next month at least.