Last Saturday Maggie was invited to a birthday party at the local Pump It Up party place. I took her there. Now, Maggie went to a party there sometime last year, and her daddy selenite took her to that one. She'd invited him to come play with her, in the big obstacle-course-then-climb-then-slide inflatable. selenite came to grief in the flexibility areas and hurt a rib, which affected him over the holidays pretty badly.

So I went with her this time, and was really expecting to just sit there and catch up online as fordprfct loaned me his fancy phone that's almost a mini laptop. But Maggie asked me to come in and play. And hey, I want to be the kind of mom that will occasionally come play with her kids in that sort of thing - and it was tickling memories of climbing all over the rope structure at Sesame Place as a teenager - and well, I know I'm lots more flexible than selenite, so it'd be fine, right? I peeled my shoes off as required - knowing that walking on the thin carpet over concrete without my shoes was going to add to the plantar fascitis pain but figuring what the heck - and climbed in.

Going through the flexibility parts in the obstacle course, no problem. Sure, I was getting more exercise than usual, that felt good. Climbing over things with Maggie, pulling her over one, laughing with her.

Then we turned the corner, got through some more, and got to the climbing up part before the big slide.

They have it set so that you have to climb straight up a wall. There's little blocks of padded material sticking out for footholds - sized for about the feet of a six year old. And alternating with those, there's strap handholds.

I gave it a valiant try. At first, climbing right up, the footholds are small but mostly no problem. And then I got up to the top part, and the handholds really needed to go up over the curve at the top - and they didn't. Maggie was up there no problem, I'd climbed what I guess was maybe 10 feet? I suck at estimating distances, but I think it had to be between 8 and 12 feet. And at the top I just could not get that last bit up and over. Maggie was trying to pull me up, and I was trying to convince her no, dear, you cannot possibly pull Mama up. Eventually had to fall back down. Tried again and again, even once with another Mom up at the top trying to help me up. I just could not do it, and each time eventually lost my grip and slid back down the wall to the bottom.

And annoyingly, I was then STUCK. I couldn't go all the way back the way we'd come, as there'd already been a smaller slide we'd come down that I couldn't get back up. Ended up speaking with one of the teenage staff girls - who just came swarming up the side, I remember being that young - asking if they could unlace the back join section to let me slip out. She said getting stuck was way more common than I might think, and wanted to get the kids off and deflate the thing - oh, it'd just take a few minutes, she said. I totally did not want to stop the kids' play and create a bad incident for their party, so I refused, and managed to go over the side where she'd come up and slide down - coming down on my feet on the carpet over concrete hurt, but I didn't think it was that bad.

So yeah, the parts that took flexibility, no problem. The part that took brute strength hadn't been enough of an issue for selenite to even mention, but totally beat me.

That night sure, I was exhausted and my feet hurt, but I thought I just had a day of soreness to pay for it. Fast forward a couple of days, to yesterday morning, and I'm having massive stabs of pain in my right ankle, it's intermittently unreliable and man stairs are really really difficult. I was thinking what the heck did I do to my ankle? I think it must have been Saturday at the party, even though it seems odd that it would take until Tuesday to really be a problem. I was discussing it last night with my mother-in-law Maggie, who's visiting with us. She says it happens like that, and thinks that the slides down into the inflated flooring might have disguised how much I hurt it in the falls.

So I took ibuprofen last night, will take some more this morning, am trying to stay off it, and spent some time with it iced last night. Ow.

Maggie and I just had some lovely Mama-daughter time. Earlier she decided she wanted her fingernails and toenails painted, in purple, so I did. Then I was going to go out and pick up lunch for me from a drive-through - but Maggie really wanted to come when she realized I was going to go out. She didn't even know where I was going, she just wanted to come along. So I figured this was a sign she needed some time with me.

So selenite took care of Alanna for me, she'd been recently well-fed, and seemed stable, and Maggie and I took off in selenite's car, with her next to me, and had lunch at LJS/A&Ws. With the jukebox having free music, I just kept plugging more music in, all bouncy stuff I thought Maggie'd like, it was pretty much all 60's music, and we bopped and talked and ate and had a good time.

I think Maggie wants to learn Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini.

They had King of the Road, so I had to play that, and explain to Maggie about how I remember her granddad rlseiver singing that when I was young, and I've loved it ever since, because it reminds me of him so much. (That, and "Brother Can You Spare A Dime", but I don't encounter that one nearly as much.) It's weird, it's a song about a hobo fer crying out loud, but since it reminds me of him I love it. I even wrote a filk to it once.

And Alanna handled my absence well, she wasn't crying when I got home, although I think now she would like to eat.

patgund showed this to me:
Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary

selenite's comment was "right. I'll have to owe you the balance, sorry."