The three-year old's birthday

I don't know who else takes their three-year old to Las Vegas for his birthday, but that's exactly what we did. I haven't been there in fifteen years because I use to work Caesar's Palace with my all-girl band and when I was through, I ran screaming from the city. It wasn't the worst gig I ever had (I had to stick a coat hanger with tape around it down into a floor safe once to get paid and we drove up to a club in a hick town that billed us as "Five Girls -- All Live" once and they asked us to take our clothes off...Oh and the western bar behind chicken wire where we were expected to dance with the patrons on our breaks...well, I guess those are all stories for another time!). Let it suffice that Las Vegas has changed a lot since 1991.

When my 5-year old daughter walked down the strip, enjoying the fountains at the Bellagio she declared it the most beautiful place she'd ever seen (though she's a seasoned international traveller including Paris, London, Iceland etc.) and wanted us to cancel Disneyland right away so she could spend her next birthday here (a mere six weeks away).

And now I know why they REALLY call it Sin City. My kids were eating ice cream for breakfast. And I didn't say anything. I didn't even care. Was it really all that much worse than the GRAVY-DRENCHED CHICKEN-FRIED STEAK on the buffet for breakfast? Or the greasy hash browns? I doubt it. Besides, I have this private, impenetrable place in my head where I was currently hanging out replaying a scene of my family from the previous five minutes where my 3-year old was contentedly eating his ice-cream complete with candy sprinkles while my husband grunted like a gorilla gesturing to my son to eat his trans-fat laden scrambled eggs and my 5-year old daughter bounced in her booster seat making babyish pre-verbal wah-wahs trying to get something slightly out of her reach.

It was bad enough that I had witnessed this scene in the first place, but why was I torturing myself with this little clip over and over like the six o'clock news? Ice cream, grunt-grunt, wah-wah, ice-cream, grunt-grunt, wah-wah. It put my family in such an unattractive light. Is this really my life? Somehow, you think you're going to have pleasant conversation at mealtime for the rest of your life when you get married...somehow it turns into...into...well, this! My kids have moved on to the cookies and my husband is now hunkered over a new mountain of food.

My son starts tapping out distinct, grooving rhythms on the dinnerware with his knife and fork. Ofcouse, I know that I should stop it. Not only is it irritating my husband, but probably other folks around us...but I find it hard to squash his budding sense of musicianship. Part of me is proud he plays so well. Having dated so many drummers, I've heard the stories about wanting to--well needing to beat on everything...all the time.

Oh, those drummers I dated...I sigh and smile as my mind wanders back to that private place in my head again for awhile. My family actually pauses from munching long enough to look at me curiously. My son takes it as approval and starts playing the 'drums' louder.

Finally I get up for some more coffee--if that's what you can call it. Suddenly, I'm homesick for my triple-shot lattes with easy foam steamed to precisely 140 degrees. Hey! Some girls just know what they like.

We make our way to the tigers. As I try to take a picture of my husband with them and become frustrated at the lack of the tigers' cooperation, he points out to just forget it, that he has plenty of pictures of him with tigers without the glass in between. I have a renewed sense of appreciation for my worldly husband having been to over 80 countries and done things as exotic as taking an elephant to a business meeting in Thailand because that was the only way.

My son learns that penguins can live in warm weather--which I didn't know myself. I thought the white stuff they were walking around on was suppose to be snow. Turns out, these are African Penguins and it's suppose to be white, sandy beaches! He also learns that hot lava comes out of a volcano from the 'volcanic explosion' at the Mirage. He repeats this for the rest of the week. "Hot lava comes out of a volcano, right? Hot lava comes out of a volcano, right?"

We pass Paris, Las Vegas and my daughter points out that the Eiffel Tower (which she has been to) isn't real and we eat at the Rainforest Cafe where another patron points out the animatronic monkey to which she glibly replies 'that isn't real, silly!'. My husband can't hear anything on his cell phone (which doesn't stop him, by the way...) and I get to relay a story to the kids about our honeymoon in Costa Rica where LIVE monkeys are making such a racket that daddy DOES get off his satellite phone (even THEY seem surprised!). By the next day, my daughter looks up at me and says, "you know mom, I like this place OK, but nothing's really real. I want to keep my birthday at Disneyland. At least the princesses are real!"

My cosmopolitan family...I guess they're not so bad after all. Grunt, grunt...wah-wah.

Those drummers were all shitheads, anyway.