You Deserve A Break Today

MacDonald's now has a triple chocolate muffin that includes Oreo cookie crumbles on the top. I applaud them for embracing the fact their food isn't good for us. Honestly, if you're going to MacDonald's for a muffin, why are you kidding yourself? Just take the stance that it's 7 am and I'm in the MacDonald's drive thru (they embraced poor spelling long ago) for breakfast so I may as well just go all out. I'd like to see them take it a step further. "Try our new triple chocolate muffin. Guaranteed to give you sugarbetes." In case anyone's curious, they're pretty tasty.

So we took the kids to MacDonald's the other day. Not just MacDonald's but the one with a playland. I have no idea how combining fast food and running around a play area could possible go wrong. I'm still shocked that I haven't witnessed any youngsters throwing up there. That's not to say it hasn't happened; I don't want to know what goes on inside those giant tubes. Our oldest is at the point where she can maneuver around the tubes with no problem. She's no longer scared by them and has a blast any time she gets the chance. The younger one hasn't quite gotten there yet. She's agile enough to get around but is still kind of hesitant. Lucky for us she wants to do everything her sister does so she dives right in. They disappear into that maze of PVC and we're left trying to figure out where they are by catching glimpses through the strategically placed portholes.

We were doing a good job of keeping track and big sister was doing a fine job of acting as Sherpa. For a while at least. Then suddenly "Tenzing Norgay" makes a break for the summit and little "Edmund Hillary" is left in the middle wishing she'd just brought a GPS. A short time later Tenzing pops out of the slide and we're left to ask where she left her sister. You'd think a Sherpa would know that pointing doesn't really help answer our question but that's about all we get. Thankfully, the tube system's acoustics allow us to hear our little one and let us call to her in an attempt to guide her through. With my wife calling to her from the bottom of the slide and me acting as spotter, we locate her just short of the peak. My motioning for her to climb up and go down the slide don't seem to work. We sent her sister up to retrieve her but that doesn't work. Clued into that when the big one cam "weeee"ing down the slide.

A couple more failed rescue attempts and I'm beginning to wonder what the protocol is in this situation. Do they have a crack team of trained staff that comprise an emergency rescue crew? If so, am I supposed to press some kind of alarm or do I just go up to the counter? "Hi, can I get a double cheeseburger with fries and the MacDonald's elite search and rescue team to get my kid out of those tubes? Oh, and that triple chocolate muffin looks good, I'll take one of those."

As much as I'm enjoying the imagery of Grimace and the Fry Guys springing into action, I'm pretty sure that's not the case. If anyone is going to have to squeeze into those tubes it's probably going to be me. My wife chose to play the pregnancy card on that one. My hope is restored when little Sir Edmund starts to turn around and head back down the way she came. We send her Sherpa sister up to help her but that backfires. Big sister realises we're leaving once little sister is safely out so she helps her go back up. Stupid Sherpa. Just reinforces what I always say "never trust anyone from Tibet." (I've never said that before. I just threw it in there in a desperate attempt to have the Dalai Lama leave feedback.)

Luckily, the big one only got a couple more slides out of it before her little sister finally gave in and attempted the big slide. We grabbed them both, threw on their shoes, and made a mad dash for the parking lot. Of course we got a couple triple chocolate muffins on the way but other than that we got out of there as fast as we could.