---

I’ve loved amusement parks pretty much my whole life. I was very cautious as a child, so I don’t remember riding roller coasters until young adulthood, and I think I’ve been making up for it ever since. When BlogHer and Cedar Fair offered me the opportunity to review Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun for free plus some money to spend in the park, I was all in. (And my family was pleased, as well.)

I grew up in Iowa, and thus I’ve been spending summer Saturdays at Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun my whole life. I remember packing up the car and making the journey to Kansas City – the thrill of the roller coasters and the big hot air balloon with “Worlds of Fun” written on it coming into focus on the flat highway. Ah, bliss. “I wish I LIVED in Kansas City,” I would tell my parents. “I would go to Worlds of Fun EVERY WEEKEND.”

Ha!

Now I do live in Kansas City, and we go to Worlds of Fun two or three times each summer. Usually we do the twilight pass, which saves you $10-$15 and the heat of the day. If you’re local, you’re probably good with five hours of amusement park, especially if your kids are younger (mine is 8). Normal rates to get in top out at $45/person at the gate plus $12 parking.

So that’s the past, and now we go on to the present. This summer, the Arens family went to Worlds of Fun!

The little angel wore her special coordinated-sunglasses-and-earrings set.

Beloved made sure to insure important items against water rides.

Note: We got there at 10:45 on a Saturday morning. The gates opened at 10. Note: GO EARLY – there are fewer lines early in the park’s day. True, I went early in the season, but in my experience the park really starts to get busy right after lunch.

One of the things I like about Worlds of Fun are the roller coasters. It’s smaller than the Six Flags parks, but there are still nine aggressive thrill rides in Worlds of Fun and two in Oceans of Fun (read: roller coaster equivalent). This is a picture of my new favorite, the Prowler.

The Boomerang is interesting in that you do the whole coaster forwards and backwards.

The Boomerang has several upside-down turns, as well.

My second-favorite coaster is the Mamba. The first hill is the best.

Despite her love of every roller coaster her 52” self can get herself on, the little angel’s favorite ride is the one that was my favorite when I was a kid: Le Taxitour.

She likes it for the same reason I do – she gets to be the driver, for once.

After we rode the rides, we decided to try out the games, since part of my compensation was some money to spend in the park. In my experience, if you have a small child and you ask the game wranglers where your wee one might win something, they are generous with their information about “everyone wins” opportunities in the park.

Sorry, Worlds of Fun, but the plastic vuvuzela is perhaps the worst prize I have ever seen, on many levels.

We were not that thrilled with the inflatable bats, either. But we kept trying!

When we walked in, we saw some huge stuffed gorillas. The little angel was sure we would win one. The game: Rebound. You had to throw a whiffle ball at what looked like an artist’s easel with a stick balanced on the bottom tray and land the ball in a box at the base of the easel without knocking off the stick. Truly a bizarre game. The little angel tried. She missed the first two times.

And then …

She won. OMG.

The best thing about this gorilla, which we named “Tiny,” was the reaction from the other park goers as we carried her out of the park. One guy mentioned we might need a truck. One teen tried to give us $50 for Tiny. But the little angel won her all by herself, so alas, capitalism didn’t prevail.

There was a tense moment in the parking lot.

 

But we did, at last, get Tiny home. The little angel triumphantly showed her off to the entire neighborhood.

 

Just for yucks, Tiny wanted to sit in Vicki the Convertible.

 

At the end of our exciting Worlds of Fun adventure, the little angel tucked Tiny into bed.

Pros and Cons to Worlds of Fun

Pros:

• Lots of coasters
• Fast Lane available (though we didn’t use and didn’t really need, due to our timing)
• Availability of Subway if you don’t want to stuff yourself with theme park food
• Games your kid can actually win
• Planet Snoopy has a good selection of rides for the wee ones so everyone can have fun
• Ride conductors are comedians
• Rating system for rides makes it easy to determine if you want to go on them before you get in line

Cons:

• The fried food was a bit greasy for my taste (but hey, it’s fried theme park food)
• Not as many misters as there could be for a park in the hot, steamy Midwest
• Many of the lines aren’t shaded
• No hand sanitizers near rides or food (at least that I saw)

What’s your favorite amusement park memory? Ours is definitely the little angel winning Tiny (though I wish she were a little tinier).

Kansas City is in a stage D4 exceptional drought. I've never seen anything like it. The ground has cracked, just like in my daughter's picture book about Africa. The grass has gone dormant, the color of straw, prickly. This grass hurts bare feet. For the first time in my life, I've been watering the birds by leaving out trays of liquid. Some of the trees have gone fuck it and dropped dead leaves on the hay-grass, lending August the appearance of October even as the heat still shimmers on the pavement.

It's been a summer of dry heat, unusual for Missouri. Summers here usually feel like walking around with a wet washcloth stuck to your body. This heat sucks the moisture from my nasal passages instead of clogging them with thick air. When I emerge from the swimming pool or lake, the water evaporates within minutes, the wind thirsty for what clings to my skin.

I have spent the summer vascillating between internal panic about end-of-days weather and reminding myself draughts have happened before. In 1936. The copyright on my yellowed paperback of The Grapes of Wrath is 1939.

I asked my father if the dust would come. He said no, farm practices have changed, but this is the kind of weather that would do it.

Yesterday while I was working I heard a loud motor outside. I couldn't figure out what it was, so I went to look. The neighbor who has been watering his lawn had a lawn service come. And I realized that no one on my street has mowed their lawns since June, because the grass will not grow. It's sleeping.

This week, for the first time in months, the temperatures have dropped enough to open the windows in the mornings. Petunia hovers on her chair, her whiskers pressed against the screen. But it does not rain. 

I'm waiting for it to rain. 

Last Saturday, I spent six hours removing a layer of July from my house. I put Killz on the ceiling where I had *thought* I'd shut the bathroom sink off after hand-washing the swimming suits. I scrubbed Okie dust off the windows. I attempted to open the door that's stuck shut because our house has settled due to lack of rainwater on the foundation. I scrubbed the floors.

Then, because Beloved had taken the little angel to one place I have absolutely zero desire to visit -- the Missouri State Fair -- I went to the swimming pool by myself with John Irving's In One Person. I stayed there for three hours, and in that time, I fell back in love with the writing of John Irving after several novels of "is what we had lost forever"? My John Irving high lasted through date night at Cafe Verona --  where we ate in the little courtyard and the waiter explained the locks hanging from the wrought-iron gates were engraved and hung on people's anniversaries to signify their forever love -- and well into the next morning, when we had a lazy breakfast and headed into the Plaza to get something I needed at Barnes & Noble and maybe browse with my gift card they gave me for Mother's Day, which was at least 50 95-degree-plus days ago.

The Plaza killed my high. I never actually *shop* in the Plaza, which for the uninitiated is a high-end four blocks of shops and restaurants. I love hanging out at the Plaza, but I never buy anything anywhere other than Barnes & Noble, because I don't have $375 for a handbag. We went into at least ten stores, but I realized I have grown really, really bad at shopping, because we've been trying to save money for so long I now fully understand that I really don't need anything and want everything. And everything I want costs more than the balance of the gift card. But everything I need I already have.

It's a quandry.

I ended up in H&M staring at all the cheap crap and ill-fitting clothes that would look good on my daughter but not on me and realizing there was not one thing in the entire Plaza that I wanted to buy. Then I saw a $12 white, gauzy scarf, the exact kind of scarf one would wear if one were riding in an open convertible and wanted to avoid mussing her hair, even if that convertible were built in 1997 and even if that woman were also wearing yoga pants. 

I bought the scarf and we drove home, and I realized I'd forgotten that feeling of wanting to be a better writer that I'd pulled from John Irving's words. And it made me mad -- the Plaza made me mad -- myself made me mad -- I went from feeling inspired and content with my lot to grouchy and jealous of other women's shoes in one hour flat.

The next time I go to the Plaza, I'm spending the entire gift card at Barnes & Noble, and then I'm getting the hell out.

Why do it to myself?

Halfway.

The average lifespan in the United States is 78.2 years. I will be 39 on my next birthday.

Halfway.

There is a part of me that feels as though I could go tomorrow having lived a full life.

There is a part of me that prays every night I will live to be the little angel's mother for a long, long time.

---

I have so many friends who have already lost parents. I have not lost mine.

I have so many friends who have lost children. I have not lost mine.

The average number of close friends people have is two.

I have more than that.

I am blessed.

Because I know and care about so many people through the wonder of the Internet and my job, I am subjected daily to their sorrows and their strengths. I realize, perhaps more than any generation before me, how completely normal everything that happens to me really is. I have bad days, I have good days, and that is normal. The universe is chaotic, and peace comes from within. I believe in God, but I also believe my God is both empathetic and hands-off. We learn from our chaos. We get another day, but the next day might suck. If we didn't have the low points, we wouldn't appreciate the high ones. There is a need to balance darkness and light.

---

My daughter is upstairs sleeping. I wanted her very badly, and then I didn't want more children. I hope she will not be upset with me when she is halfway, and I am as old as my parents, and she is looking upon potentially being the only one left when we are gone.

I pray she will have more than two close friends. I pray her friends will be her sisters and brothers, because even though I treasure my sister more than I can say, I'm also thankful for the other friends who have stepped in when my relatives can't be right by my side. I think people get planted for us when we need them, virtually and physically. I believe in paying it forward. I believe in answering the emails I get weekly from women struggling with eating disorder recovery. I believe in the woman I saw in the Serenity Suite crying for Susan Niebur when I didn't realize that was what she was upset about. I was talking with my friends when she started crying, and I hope she doesn't hold against me that I didn't realize what she was doing. I didn't lose Susan in that I didn't know Susan well, but I've lost my own Susans and I understand that pain. I'm sorry, blonde woman. I hope you don't hold it against me.

---

Halfway.

When I thought on goals for my life in high school, they were grandiose. This year marks my twentieth high school reunion. I have reached an age in which many professionals look like teenagers to me. I wonder if the people I bonded with in high school will come back or if they will stay secure in their new lives and their new selves, not wanting to be reminded of who we were at eighteen. I don't hold it against them if they want to forget. I was sick when I was eighteen. What does anyone know of me then? I don't even remember it myself.

Have I gotten old?

I am only halfway.

---

Last weekend, I listened to Katie Couric talk about how much more she has to contribute now that she is in her fifties than when she was in her twenties, and I understand. As much as I miss the elastic skin of my twenties, I don't miss the angst. I don't miss the uncertainty.

I wonder if I will feel even better about who I am in another twenty years.

I wonder if this website will still exist.

I wonder if my novels will be published.

I wonder if my daughter will still want to be held by me.

I wonder if I will be the person I want to be.

---

I am halfway, and for some that would seem a bad thing, but for me it feels glorious. If I am lucky enough to achieve the average lifespan in the United States, I will have another whole 39 years to become twice as good as I am tonight, twice as meaningful. My words will hold twice as much weight as they do tonight. My grandparents lived to be fifty-something and eighty-two or eighty-three, three of them. I never met my maternal grandfather, but my other three grandparents were strong well into their late seventies and early eighties. They had so much to tell me in their last years.

I am halfway, I hope. And I have so much more to learn.

So ... if you don't like sponsored posts, which I totally get, come back tomorrow because I have something more normal for me planned then. 

Most people who visit Surrender, Dorothy already know that I work for BlogHer. And so, of course, any time my colleagues in the publishing network want to try something new, I always volunteer. I say YES WE SHOULD ALL MAKE MORE MONEY. It's not always a popular opinion in the blogosphere, but I think art + commerce = novels, so why not have art + commerce = Rita's Blog.

Anyway, today I'm talking about Olay and Proctor & Gamble. Proctor & Gamble has an ecommerce initiative I'm trying on for size. It's an online store, and if you buy things there, I get paid a little bit, very much like the mphoria store in my left sidebar. So far, I have not noticed the ability to buy tile for Chateau Travolta's kitchen floor, but that's where all the extra income in my world goes -- toward stimulating the home improvement sector's economy.

Here's my story about Olay. When I was in college, I went to this bar in Iowa City called Joe's. It's still there. It's actually where I met Beloved for the first time, but this time wasn't that time. This time I was there and drunk, I believe, and I ran into a woman who told me she was thirty. THIRTY. And I was all, "Why aren't you wrinkled?" Because I, in my 21-year-old stupor, thought anyone over the age of 25 was wrinkled. Now I realize we all look fabulous forever, right? I mean, I'm 38 and I look amazing. (cough)

So this ancient 30-year-old pointed at me with her beer bottle and said, "START MOISTURIZING NOW." And I was so moved by this statement, that the next day I went to the drugstore and stared at the wall of moisturizers. The only one I'd ever heard of was Oil of Olay, so I bought a bottle. I have put Oil of Olay on my face every day for the past 17 years. It seemed counter-intuitive, because I actually have oily skin, but I realized it was helping even out my skin tone. My guess is that parts of my face were all THERE IS NOT ENOUGH OIL HERE WE MUST MAKE MORE and once I started moisturizing, my oil glands felt comforted and stopped overreacting. Because yes, even my oil glands overreact. #catastrophize

The product I've selected to tell you about in the P&G store is 

Olay Regenerist Skin Care Starter Trio Pack

It says "great value" right there!

I just copied and pasted that because I can't spell "regenerist" on my own. I think they might have made that word up. I haven't used this particular pack, but I have used all of the lower-priced Olay products and they are all great. I also appreciate the price point. You can pay the GNP of a small African country for skin care products, but I'm frugal and don't do stuff like that. And, you can get 10% off your order if you go through my awesome link on that huge type from now through August 31, 2012. There is free shipping on any order over $25. And I'm supposed to tell you P&G is an Olympic sponsor so there is a lot of cool Olympic-themed stuff in there, like this.

For those of you with record-breaking periods. FTW! ha ha ha 

Either way, START MOISTURIZING NOW. Especially if you are older than 21. My tip from me to you. And if you need some P&G stuff, by all means, buy it through this link so I can rip up my lineoleum a little sooner. (And tell your mother, who probably moisturizes, too.)

I've been gone! All week! To BlogHer 2012! Here are my thoughts as they fly through my head.

• So honored and proud to work for BlogHer. The conference just gets more amazing every year in terms of programming, which is my favorite part.
• Very excited this year there were at least as many women of color speaking as white women, maybe more -- Polly didn't have the final numbers. This is hugely important, and might perhaps be the biggest win of the conference for many reasons.
• Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Soledad O'Brien, Christy Turlington Burns and Malaak Compton-Rock all live in person.
• The sitting president of the United States addressed BlogHer directly on live video. I'm pretty sure I never thought that would happen in my life, and it made me feel very heard and respected. Thank you, Mr. President.
• I thought I would not like the fashion show as I am not a fashionista, but it was amazing in the way the first community keynote that became Voices of the Year was amazing -- I just saw what it was supposed to be and loved it.
• The Voices of the Year community keynote continues to impress me and inspire me to try harder with my writing. 
• I had so much fun laughing with so many friends and meeting new people and putting faces with email addresses. There is truly no replacement for meeting people in person, and I'm so glad when I'm able to do it.
• I got to share my hotel room and my experience with my awesome sister despite her having the worst travel experience I have ever seen go down in my entire life -- six-hour delay coming out and cancelled flight going back. Boo, United! 

I'm back at the office today and working frantically on some exciting things for BlogHer, so this has to be short today. More soon!

Hi everyone! I'm at BlogHer '12. I'll post when I get back!

The kitchen is the last room not in the basement that needs to be remodeled in Chateau Travolta. The country rose wallpaper has been scraped off, the dark wood wainscoting pried from the walls, one arch put in, the walls painted, new windows installed. We still need to replace the half-hanging-off cabinets and the counter top and the back splash that is half-missing and covered in clear packing tape above the stove. Oh, and the tile. The linoleum is still missing a chunk from when we installed tile in the half-bath.

And for the past year or so, we haven't had blinds in the bay windows or above the sink. There were blinds there once, aluminum Venetian blinds stained with rust and bent in places. When the man came to replace the windows, he pulled them off, and I just threw them away, thinking we'd buy new blinds soon.

"Soon" turned, as it does, into seasons passing and nights growing shorter and an entire winter of eating dinner in front of windows that became mirrors at six in the evening, of learning to be fully dressed and wearing a hat when I came downstairs for breakfast on weekend mornings, to being on display for the two families living behind us. Not that they are total spies, but how could you not look in at night when the lights are blazing and there we are, living our lives like television characters?

I hated it. So in February, we got the windows measured for shades. I wanted Roman shades, not being aware that Roman shades cost more than a new sidewalk. I readjusted my expectations and picked out some pretty woven roller shades at half the price of the Roman but twice the price of What the Fuck.

And we waited for the money tree to grow.

Then earlier this summer, an unexpected freelance gig came along, and lo and behold, it paid EXACTLY the amount of the shades. Which I totally took to be fate. So we ordered the shades.

A nice man and woman came to Chateau Travolta yesterday and installed them. I gave them cinnamon rolls left over from the cul-de-sac sleepover last Saturday. And then I drew my shades.

I was shocked at how boxed-in I felt. Apparently I'd grown accustomed to having the world see in, because it meant, too, that I could see out.

Last night I found out about an unexpectedly large bill. I'd just returned from CVS, where I spent twenty-five minutes combining coupons with weekly deals to save $23. The pointlessness of blowing all that time to save a few bucks only to find out a mistake had cost us hundreds totally deflated me. And it was 107 degrees at 7 pm.

I sank to the kitchen chair. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I think I'm going to throw up," I said.

I sat there, breathing deeply, trying to calm my anxiety, when my daughter appeared at my side and handed me the teddy bear that lives in her room but was mine when I was her age.

She patted my arm and went upstairs to shower.

Wow.