Saturday, October 13, 2012

Year of Writing 288. Los Angeles, Good riddance.

10/12/12

We finally made it out of LA, thank god.  It was a harrowing journey, especially the last day at Olvera St, where I thought I could bribe Isla into being happy with cheap trinkets, churros, and Mexican candy.  Yeah, no.  Two steps down Olvera street and Isla was already loudly proclaiming her boredom.  This was followed by me attempting to quell my starving belly with some authentic sopes from the oldest Mexican restaurant in LA.  What I actually got was a disgusting grey piece of "Carnitas" full of veins and gristle, on top of a hockey puck trying to pass for a masa cake.  Immediately after I threw away my one chance for nourishment for the day, Isla declared she had to poop. This was a public space, I wou;dn't have been able to let her use the facilities anyway, if they weren't shuttered.  Then, Isla began howling and hopping around, at one point slapping me in the face with her errant hands.  I totally wanted to quit.  Instead, we hightailed it to a McDonalds with a playland to wait out Tegan's last hours at her conference.  This could have been a happy ending if the playland didn't have an extremely unsafe high tunnel "bridge" as part of its crazy gerbil maze of a play area.  Isla climbed all the way up (it was probably suspended 9 feet in the air), but then lost her nerve when the bridge began swaying and squeaking loudly as if it was going to fall.  This unease turned to outright terror and she began screaming that she couldn't get across.  I, of course couldn't fit into the play area and I had a one year old in my arms, so all I could do was attempt to talk her down.  It worked, after about 10 minutes of screaming, and a McDonalds manager getting involved.  


But you know what?  I made it home, so there.

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