CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MISADVENTURE

In my continued quest to entertain the girls while Arden’s off from school we hit up the Hollywood library yesterday. It’s new and it’s clean, which means four out of five homeless people use it as their bathroom of choice. Besides the initial waft of B.O., I was pretty impressed with what was in store for the girls. Especially since it was free and I’ve been known to spend as much as $35 for 45 minutes of Mommy & Me torture.

I had read online that they had a thirty-minute story time for kids under two and after that they were having a “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” story/activity session for the older kids. I was looking forward to exposing Arden to “Cloudy” because it was a favorite book of mine when I was a kid and I’m sure because of that Arden’s had no interest in letting me read it to her. But now that the movie is coming out she’s all about it. Of course the movie resembles the book almost as much as I resemble a cocker spaniel.


It was no surprise that Arden was more entertained by the baby storytime than Alex was because Alex is…a baby. And Arden knew all the books. Though Alex did perk up when the librarian whipped out a mini guitar and sang “The Grand Old Duke of York.” Every class I go to sings this song. Apparently it’s a children’s classic. One I have no recollection of from my youth. Anyway, after reading “Meatballs” the guitar came back out and everyone sang the apropos “On Top of Old Smokey” and then the kids made clouds out of marshmallows in honor of the book/movie. For glue they used marshmallow crème or Fluff where I come from. This was a good idea in theory except it was a hundred degrees in Los Angeles yesterday and those bad boys were guaranteed to melt in the car and destroy the upholstery. But it wasn’t my car’s carpet that ended up getting ruined yesterday.

Out of nowhere the “Cloudy” themed afternoon became a dance class. This inner city youth group showed up and started teaching the girls some dance moves. We learned that when you point your fingers out that’s called “naughty fingers” and when you turn them back to yourself that’s called “good fingers.” When I was a kid I was taught that turning your fingers on yourself was “naughty.” But times have changed as evidenced by the dance instructor’s choice to play Beyonce’s “Diva.” Now Arden and the other four years olds were singing along to “Diva is a female version of a hustler. A hustler. A hustler…”

The dance class seemed to last forever and Alex started to get restless so I gave her my phone to play with or rather gnaw on. And then lunch was served. That’s right they had a free lunch. A themed lunch. Spaghetti and meatballs. While the girls were eating I checked my messages on my cell phone and learned that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Apparently Alex had drizzled so much saliva into my phone that it fried the speaker and permanently clouded the display. Our free class ended up costing me $199.