You know the place.....

Giant building filled with germy kids, liquid sugar and something that resembles pizza, little paper tickets spit out of machines to exchange for a plastic monkey or eraser, and it's always painted like a castle, or circus or jungle.

In our town it's called Pete's Party Palace. I call it "Pete's Party Purgatory". It's big. It's blue. And there's a ginormous plastic dragon outside for the lil ones to pose with and crawl on. I'm sure it's covered in rotovirus, influenza and pertussis. So of course Rockstar wants to climb all over it.

We go to purgatory for a birthday party. Upon entering, I realize we have come on the wrong day because mommy is a friggin idiot and got her dates mixed up. Well frick. I can't leave now! Rock has already gotten a whiff of synthetic nacho cheese and heard the train whistle blow.....

He runs past the grey haired grannie trying to put a wristband on him. I give her the "he'sautisticandwillfreakifyouputthatonhimsoi'lljustholdit" spill and we are now in the armpit of hell.

I figure I might as well teach him to play a few of these things instead of watching him run around the perimeter of the building 879 times. First up: Ice Hockey.

We buy tokens and head on over to the table. He can't quite grasp the concept of hitting the puck with the handle, so he ends up throwing it at me. Ouch. That is going to leave a mark. I can already feel my lip beginning to swell. Oh well, women pay big bucks to have swollen lips, right? So I take my new fashion statement and Rock and head for Skee Ball.

Fail. He thinks throwing the balls into other people's lanes is way more fun. I kind of do too. They don't. In the faint distance I hear a train whistle. Ahhhhh finally....something he knows. The train. We make a beeline to the back of the building. Rock practically throws his token at the conductor and hops on. I give the man 10 more tokens and ask if he can just stay on there. Either I looked pitiful or he thought my swollen lip was sexy, because he said yes. For the next 30 min, Rockstar was in choo-choo heaven.

A couple of glasses of liquid sugar and a greasy pizza later and we are ready to go.

As we are pulling out of purgatory, I ask "Rock did you have fun"?
He says "Rock did you have fun? YES!"

Makes Pete's Party Purgatory worth it every time................