Observations (firsthand and overheard) during a full school fair weekend

(1) You should strip completely before entering your home at night. Shaking out your hair does not rid you of the deeply-implanted results of multiple confetti-eggings. I think I’ll be finding white bits of paper around the house for months. I’m hoping the cat will learn to eat them.

(2) You should never … ever … eat three forms of fried foods in the same day. You will think it’s a great idea at the time. You will wonder why you hadn’t thought of it sooner and will try to encourage others to join you in this whole new decadent, artery-clogging world. You will laugh at the future. But don’t do it. I can’t explain what it does to your body … all through the night … and you really don’t want me to try.

(3) Leave your checkbooks at home! You should still plan to bring lots of cash for all of the crap your kids simply must buy/eat/take a chance on. But having your checkbook makes entirely too much money available to you when your brain and good judgment are clouded by excessive quantities of grease and sugar.

(4) Wait until your child is on his or her own to hand them their spending money. I like to keep the amounts small to ensure that they’ll actually check in with me (often!) throughout the weekend for more. Not everyone operates this way. And you don’t want to be caught handing your kid $5 when their buddy is being handed $50. It creates a bit of an ugly scene … and your child will not wind up displaying his or her best side.

(5) Silly string should never be sprayed into a little girl’s hair. My husband and I took shifts working on its removal process when we got home. And the bits didn’t break up small enough to go down the tub drain so then IT needed to be cleaned. And it was approaching midnight.

(6) Do not think your child really wants you to join her and her friends in the Rock Band booth. She doesn’t. You’re “embarrassing” her. Decide you don’t care and do it anyway. Sing as loud as you can. Own the experience. How many of these do you really get these days, right? Oh, and realize now that you’re most likely going to be singing “Don’t Stop Believin.” (Does that song have a G at the end or not? I’m not sure and I refuse to google something so ridiculous.)

(7) You can’t buy too much glitter for your child’s costume for the fair performance. Every kid wants a ton and you will find yourself putting it on ALL of their faces … and then your own. And then later your daughter will decide her dad needs some, too. Which he will agree to, thinking everyone will understand that it’s because of his daughter’s role in the play. But they won’t and he will just feel foolish and be trapped under a layer of glitter the whole day. After he’s sufficiently frustrated with the fact that it’s all anyone is talking to him about, call him ‘Pretty.’ Get others to do it, too.

(8) If you want to take on the hamster ball, do it early in the fair when you still meet the weight requirements. You will be fatter by the end of the weekend and thus potentially ineligible.

(9) Limit your kid to one goldfish win or you will find yourself in our predicament of last year … with SIXTEEN! We only had two bowls at home so we split them up evenly and decided to let nature take its course. After fifteen fish funerals in five days, we admitted that it was probably not the best idea for the fish or my kids. Oh, and yes, ONE made it almost a year. He died as soon as we put a second fish (that we received as a party favor!) in the bowl with him. And then the party favor fish died, too. We decided it was some kind of fish murder/suicide pact and moved on with our lives.

(10) If you’re writing a blog about your boobs … and boobs in general, expect that they will be a pretty consistent topic (or should I say topics?) of many of the conversations that you have at your kids’ fair. Which, of course, makes for an interesting weekend.

Hope your weekend was as fun-filled, fattening and completely exhausting as mine. Now … let the detoxification begin.