This past Friday night was Family Fun Night at Chloe's school. The kids have been working on making cardboard arcades for the past several weeks now. Some of the things they came up with were super ingenious. Not only did the families get to enjoy the multitude of games and creativity, the Superintendent and the school board came on Monday and the kids are letting the preschoolers they share a building with come play all the games tomorrow.
This was a great lesson in learning how to work together to solve problems and think outside of the box or in this case - inside of it.
Chloe's group made a game that someone sat inside of and spun a little platform type table in circles. There were 5 different levels of difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, Pro, Extreme and Pro. The person playing the game had to choose a level. Dependent on that, the person inside the game would change out the cardboard platform with small spaces in it that spun around (that's what is under the plastic that you can't see very well in this picture). Once it started spinning you had to slide a small, plastic duck down a tube and hope it landed in one of the colored spaces. If it did, tickets would spit out of a little slit in the box. You could then take your tickets to a prize table and buy something with your earnings. It was so adorable!
The whole event was based off of the story shared here about Caine's Arcade:
I spent my day moving about the house from one room to another. You know how it is when you are preparing for guests to stay with you. Each room had some task that needed to be done. My mind was a blur with activity and thinking about the next thing that needed doing. You start cleaning in one room and before you know it you walked into another part of the house to put something away and now you're working hard in that room only to have left the previous room and it's mess unfinished. You could liken me to a ball in a pin-ball machine; that would be an accurate description. This sets the stage for my frame of mind.
So I found it extremely odd when I walked back in the bathroom to brush my teeth later in the day and found that my toothbrush was not in the toothbrush holder. Hmmm I thought, why would Chuck put my toothbrush there? Of course, my initial thought is to blame him. He must have done this. I would never do something this...this...bizarre. Or would I?
Upon further reflection, I had to admit to myself that it was me. Chuck left for work at 5:30 this morning and I certainly wasn't awake. So we had to rule him out as the culprit. But then that left only me and why would I do something so stupid and non-sensical?
It looks as if our toothbrushes are fighting - like they can't stand looking at one another let alone sitting in the same toothbrush holder together. Maybe it's a Freudian slip. Maybe my mind is on data overload and it couldn't locate the proper location of the toothbrush in time to tell my hand what to do. Maybe I'm just that weird. How many other things do I do absent-mindedly?
I mean, if you think about it, I'm sure you can understand my confusion...two cups, similar in size and stature, right next to one another...it makes perfect sense that my brain was fooled being in the state of mind I was in. Actually, come to think about it, I think my brain was playing a joke on me. It knows how susceptible I am to confusion and thought this might be a fun little prank.
All I know is that our "twilight years" sure are going to be a lot of fun. I better start labeling everything in the house now.
