For those of you who don’t know, my hubby, Lou, loves the OC Fair. Every year leading up to the fair he begins planning his first visit which always happens on the first day the fair opens, unless he has to work.
When the kids were little he lined up with the girls on the first day because admission was free for the first few hours. They waited in the sweltering heat but several years ago we starting buying fair passes, which are a much better value and allowed me to stop screaming and complaining about how much money we would spend at the fair every summer. If you buy a pass early it is only like $25 which includes free fair admission during the entire month the fair is here, plus you walk in a different entrance with no lines. This way we can ride our bikes over for an hour and then come home if we want, without feeling guilty about wasting money. Anyways, the fair opened this past Friday and sadly Lou wasn’t quite as excited as normal. We live about a mile from the fair and Lou loves to drink some wine, ride his bike over to the fair, drink some more wine in the wine garden, walk around and then ride home. Or he likes to take our kids and the cousins on all the rides and play all the games. Sadly everyone is too old for walking around the fair with Lou and being spoiled by him, so the only real participants left are Tabitha and I. Tabitha loves the fair like her Dad, and I don’t, but I try to be a good attendee because I love Lou.
Lou happened to have Friday off from work, so I already knew we would be going Friday afternoon or night. I tried to push for late afternoon because I hate walking around in the sun and since Tabitha had to work until 3:00pm, we all agreed to go right after she got off work. Trinity was not interested in going with us and Chandler, gave a hard NO. Last year we bought Chandler a pass and just as he predicted, he wasn’t a fan of the fair. He endured a long visit for Tabitha, which was a bit traumatizing for him, but he gracefully asked me NOT to buy him a pass this summer.
Friday afternoon the three of us took off on our bikes to make the short ride over. I wasn’t exactly sure what we were going to do once we arrived because Lou and I aren’t drinking alcohol, which meant the wine garden was out. We don’t go on rides, I’m not a big lover of throwing money away on games and I refuse to eat any of the unhealthly food sold there. Boy am I fun! I do like to go inside and look at all the competition winners but of course Lou doesn’t like to do that, but Tabitha will go with me. Oh well, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself for once and figured we would find something to entertain us. We parked our bikes in the racks and Lou locked them up. He put the bike lock key in his sunglasses case and then handed the case to Tabitha and asked her to put it in her purse. I left my big purse at home, so she got to carry all his stuff.
Once we got inside, we walked for about 5 minutes and then Lou declared he needed to sit down and rest his back. He has a bad back and literally can’t walk very far without being in total pain. Tabitha looked over at me with this look that said “Are you kidding me? He already needs to sit down?” I smiled and nodded my head with an affirmative, YES. “Let’s go inside and look at some exhibits, Tab.” Lou said he would meet us in there. Once inside, I accidentally stepped on a large man’s foot, who acted as if I had sliced off his leg with a butcher knife. After walking away, while profusely apologizing and laughing because he was being so dramatic, I bumped into another man and accidentally skimmed my hand across his leg. He looked at me and said: “Well, well, well….” as if I was making a pass at him. The room was wall to wall people and in less than a minute I somehow managed to injure one man and practically jump another. Tabitha looked over at me and said: “Mom, what are you doing? Let’s get out of here, you are crazy!” I started following her towards the exit while saying: “I think’s it’s because I’m not drinking? I act even worse than when I am.”
As we exited the exhibit building we spotted Lou still sitting on the bench. He was watching the weird “flamingo’s” who were pretending to fight each other. One got rather close to Tabitha and she immediately started waving Lou over to us, so we could leave. Weird clowns and other weirdly dressed up characters are always drawn to her and tend to start following her, so we had to leave quickly.
“Let’s go get my face painted now”, she declared. Yes, she is 26 and still loves to get her face painted every year. It is her favorite part of the fair. We arrived at our regular face painting booth and the woman who none of us recognized, gave Tabitha a big hug and said: “I’m so glad you are back.” I was a little perplexed because usually 2 young Latino girls ran the booth and this middle aged white lady did not look familiar at all! Tabitha decided on the leopard face in pink and Lou and I watched as we waited on the bench in the booth. At this point, I was holding Tabitha’s purse for her and Lou took it out of my hands. He removed his glasses case, put his glasses inside the case and returned it to the purse. As the lady started painting Tabitha’s face, Tabitha said: “what was that?” Apparently she heard a sound. The face painter said, “Ohhh, I just dropped my brush” and I saw her lean down and pick up something off the ground. Once she was done, Lou paid the lady, the lady took a picture of Tabitha and gave her another hug. As we walked off I asked Tab: “Did you recognize that lady?” “NO! I have never seen her before in my life. She isn’t my regular face painter.” “That’s what I thought!” I said. So Weird!
“Now what should we do?” “Let’s go look at the animals” said Lou. Once we arrived at the animal tents, he needed to sit down again. Tabitha and I left him on a bench outside the pig area and went inside the tent. We became fascinated with the pigs buttholes and kept wondering why some had a “sack” of skin on the area outside the butthole. Some were so large, it looked like a small penis. I thought we should ask one of the high school students who owned and cared for the pigs, but Tabitha pulled me out of there before I could embarrass her by asking the question. We then asked Lou what he thought they were and his response was “probably a hemorrhoid!” That sounded like the perfect explanation to me, which allowed to me to stop obsessing over the buttholes and move on to something else. That is until I started writing this post and had to Google it! It’s called a rectal prolapse and is totally normal. I would show you a picture but the pictures online are disgusting, so I can’t! The rectal prolapses on the pigs at the fair didn’t look horrible like the ones online. Back to the fair…
We walked through the ride and game area and kept asking Tabitha if she wanted to go on any rides. She loved rides as a child but she kept saying: “NO, I told you I don’t want to go on any rides!” Lou finally said, “I’m going to buy some tickets, we have to play a game, at least.” Once he got us some tickets I walked right over to the water balloon game and declared: “Let’s play this one, I’m going to beat everyone and win a big prize!” “Really Mom? You are going to win?” “YES, I am!” So what happened next? I beat everyone and won a mid sized stuffed animal.
Tabitha and I were feeling more in the fair mood now after playing the game and decided we would go on the carousel because Tabitha wanted to ride the tiger, her favorite animal. Funny enough, the tiger was the only animal on the entire carousel that didn’t move, which did not make Tab happy.
After the merry go round, we decided to go on the big slide. When we got to the top, I said: “Let’s race!” The girl helping us lay down our mats shook her head in agreement and was about to say, “Ready, set, go” when Tabitha pushed off before I was even ready. The girl looked at me and said:” Did she really do that?” I laughed and followed her down, trying but failing to catch her. She won!
We walked up to Lou and said, :”Now what should be do?” At this point we had only been there an hour but had exhausted all our normal activities except the aisle where they sell personalized jewelry, dog collars and a host of other items. Tabitha gave Lou 2 quarters so he could sit on the vibrating foot chair while Tabitha and I checked out the items for sale. Lou loves sitting in these chairs!
Somehow I got separated from Tabitha and I couldn’t find either of them. I called Lou and he was right around the corner and said he would head towards me. I hung up and heard, “Mom, come here!” I saw Tabitha standing with a big black Chinese Umbrella open and rested on her shoulder, while she posed for pictures. I walked over and she was talking to 2 ladies. “Hey Mom, look at the umbrella I bought!”
The one lady, who had been taking pictures of Tabitha, looked over at me and said: “This is your MOM?” We both replied yes and then she started saying: “wow, you must have been 12 when you had her? How could you be so young and pretty?” I loved this lady instantly and was enjoying her rather over the top compliments until Lou walked up and stole the show. “Hi babe.” I said, while Tabitha said: “Hey Dad!” The lady looked over at us and says: “This is your Dad and husband?” “Yep” we both reply.
And then she says: “When he walked up I was thinking: my new future husband just arrived!” I was a little stunned she said this but since I’m not the jealous type, I laughingly replied:” Well, he has been my husband for 27 years, so….. ” I said, as I smiled, laughed and shrugged my shoulders.” She leaned closer to Lou, looked at him deadpan and said: “WELL, THINGS CAN CHANGE IN A MINUTE!” What? Did she really just say that? I look from Tabitha to Lou and Tabitha’s eyes are wide in horror and Lou is preening like a peacock with all the attention directed towards him. This lady starts talking about how gorgeous Lou is and Tabitha grabs my arm and says: “we have to go! bye!” We all rushed off, laughing and rehashing what she said. Lou was feeling like he just climbed to the top of Mount Everest and kept saying: “Well, you can’t blame her!” After that, we all decided, it was time to call it a day, even though it was only: 5:15pm!
We got to our bikes and Tabitha fished Lou’s sunglass case out of her overstuffed purse and hand it to him. He looked inside and there was no key. “The key isn’t in here” he said. Tabitha started digging through her purse but couldn’t find it. “Let me look,” I say. “Fine Mom”, she says as I start dumping the contents of her entire purse onto the pavement. “Great Mom! I don’t want my stuff all over the pavement,” she protests. Well, you guessed it. The key was not in her purse. So for the first time in years we went to the fair sober, stayed sober and for the first time ever, lost the bike lock key. Tabitha then declared: ” I’m going back inside, I know the key is at the faceprinting booth. I heard something drop when she was painting my face and it must have been the key?” “You two go, I’ll stay here and organize your purse.” I said. So I sat on the pavement at the bike racks organizing her purse, the best I could until they returned 20 minutes later, with the key! It was right on the table at the face painting booth. It was a miracle. How could you lose a bike key in the fair and know exactly where to find it? God was so looking out for us.
Anyways, that was our first outing to the fair and actually lots of fun, even without the wine garden!
xoxo tiffani
This was great fun to read Tiffani! Thanks for taking the time to write it, you had me giggling out loud 🙂
I’m glad I made you giggle! xoxo