We took the kids to the county fair on Saturday, and we had lots of fun.  It may have rained most of the day,  but we stayed comfortable using  an umbrella and our stroller awnings for the little ones.  There was only one or two major downpours, and we spent those in the animal barns, looking over the fair kids’ 4-H projects.

It’s always amazing to us how much our 6-year-old  loves going on all the most extreme carnival rides, and my husband and I took turns with her on this:

and this:

To her disappointment, she is not yet tall enough for this, but maybe next year:

My little guy took his nap at the fair, and when he woke up, we stopped for a snack.  He began to cry; at first we thought he was just crabby from his nap and that his sister had taken his cookies.  But then his cheek up near his eye began to swell up and turn black and blue.  When he said, “Bug hurt me”, we knew that he must have gotten stung.  We made a precautionary visit to the fair’s EMS squad, and they were excellent with him, even  though he wanted no part of it.  He soon got over his ow-ie with the help of some fair rides, but if you look at his right eye, you can see that he was sporting a minor shiner:

I know, the clowns are scary enough, but our son loved this ride despite how upset he looks – it was just his swollen eye.  When the ride stopped, he got off the clown and immediately climbed into another one.  Hey, you can’t expect a 2-year-old to understand the concept of fair tickets being $.75 each!!

I’m happy to say today that the swelling on his face is down a little bit, and good thing too – I got tired of the scrutinizing looks from people who were wondering, “How did that cute little boy get that black eye?!?”

Darn it, I am sick of this!  Some time last week, I came down with a nasty canker sore.  I don’t remember what day it was, but I remember that by Friday, I was already sick of it.  We took the kids to the county fair and the demolition derby on Friday, which was great fun, but I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t enjoy the fair food in the slightest.  In fact, the location and intensity of the pain has kept me from enjoying many of my favorite activities since last week – talking, singing, eating, drinking, even smiling…  THIS SUCKS!  I’ve never had a canker sore this painful!  I feel like that big grumpy bear with a toothache from some old cartoon.  It’s really hard to think about anything else, and since I can’t really do anything in daily life without aggravating it and causing more pain, I think I’ve been kind of crabby.  I’ve been looking up remedies incessantly on the internet (and no, I didn’t find any cases of fatal canker sores, which is why I vowed to stop looking up medical stuff on the internet after we scared ourselves silly about my husband’s stomachache), and none of the remedies I’ve tried help.  Since I can’t really eat anything, I’ve been living on water and Tylenol for the past week!  The Tylenol barely works, so I finally went to Walmart yesterday and got myself some Benzocaine stuff to put on it.  It works wonderfully; my entire mouth goes numb, and there is a substantial amount of drooling and slurring of words, but no pain.  The only problem is that it only lasts for about 25 minutes.  But for those 25 minutes, I am so high on my own endorphins from finally not feeling intense pain that it’s wonderful.  But then the pain returns, and it’s almost worse than before I took the medicine because I actually got to experience life pain-free, even for just a few minutes.  I think I’m going to have my husband hide the benzocaine from me before I become addicted – it’s really hard to stop putting it on there when I’ve had constant pain for a week!  But I read that if you use too much benzocaine, you could develop a serious condition called Methemoglobinemia, among other things, so I’m really trying to limit that.  I’ve read a lot of things about canker sores, but like I said, nothing has really helped.  Experts are not even entirely sure what causes the darn things, but stress is the top suspect.  That makes sense; I’ve had a ton of stress lately between family stuff (Sammie is back in a phase among other things) and just being so busy all the time, and I don’t always handle stress in the best way.  Guess I need to find better ways to deal with stress than to internalize it, but I can’t deal with learning that right now – everything is hard to do with all this pain!!!

I can’t help but think what a great diet this is though – it hurts to eat anything, and I’m really surprised certain Hollywood types haven’t paid someone to discover how to give them canker sores just so they can’t eat.  People are crazy that way; I used to work at a frozen yogurt shop in an upscale suburb of Chicago, and these rich housewives would come in with their jaws wired shut wondering what kind of fat-free yogurt they could still get into their mouths.  Not that any of them were terribly overweight to begin with…  But anyway, I hate this!  I guess there’s not much more to write about it, but I have to say that it feels good to be able to “talk” without the pain increasing…  Time to take more meds!  YEOWWW!!!  🙁

Last night, I received an email to meet a bunch of friends at the county fair this afternoon. Since I got off work at 4, I just made it to the fairgrounds by the 4.30 meeting time. None of the other people who were invited were able to attend (or just were “too good” for the rest of us…KIDDING). It has been a few years since I have been to the fair. I believe the last time I went was about 4-5 years ago when I was asked to go on the bus for the county high school band show. We never made it. By the time the bus arrived, it was pouring rain and the show was canceled.

I am pleased to say that this evening was great fun with great friends. With rides and attractions provided by Poor Jack Attractions. We came to the conclusion that it is called Poor Jack not because the proprietor is a poor man named Jack, but because Jack is laughing at all the poor folks spending their money.

I am constantly amazed at the daredevil Sammie. She will go on ANYTHING… or at least try. There was one ride that she could not get on because she was not tall enough. But she and her two sisters were just a ball. Even when they had their moments. But with three siblings of my own I well remember having moments of our own.

After depleting our supply of tickets riding the “ocrapus” (is that it?), bumper cars, Goose rode her favorite (Tilt-A-Whirl), among other rides, we spent an absurd amount of money on carny food that was deep-fried, fattening, and delicious. We then played one game. However, I REFUSE to play a game in which you could not understand what the barker is saying. I did treat myself to a chocolate milkshake at the dairystand (a must at the fair). Hopefully, a precursor to the fun I will be having on a trip next month. I did take exception to one thing: Why was it that the bumper car operator told the other riders to gang up ON ME?!