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First, and I recognize that this is a bit late, but happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there. And I mean that in the nicest way possible, too. Truly. Think about it. If it weren’t for mothers, where would we all be?

This weekend was pretty busy. It started on Friday, as most weekends do. I took my sons to a Father and Son’s campout. I have photos. I want to do a proper write-up on it, but I’m really not sure if there’s anything worth mentioning. I will say this, though. We camped along the San Pedro River. Which, and I promise I am not making any of this up, had actual water in it. The mighty San Pedro River - a full six feet at its widest point - was nearly 50 feet from my tent. You want to know what the really sad part was? I pitched my tent in the riverbed, and the river was still still not within sight of my camp spot!

There was a time when this wouldn’t have been the case, though. Once, the San Pedro was really huge, and people actually used to float up and down the river in boats (as I hear tell, anyway). But you can’t do that anymore. That’s because someone stole all the water out of Arizona. Or it might be because my city is sucking it dry, as some would have you believe. It’s probably got nothing to do with the dam on the river that was built in Mexico.

Audience Member Question: In Mexico? Wait, isn’t Mexico south of Arizona?

Me: Sometimes, yes. And?

Audience Member Question: So how does building a dam south of you stop the flow of water on the river?

Me: Generally speaking, when you biuld a dam upstream from something, you pretty much affect the flow of water to everyone downstream.

Audience Member Question: But you’d be upstream from the dam.

Me: That would be true only if the San Pedro flowed north to south, which it doesn’t. The San Pedro is one of the few rivers in North America that flows south to north.

Audience Member Question: Are you sure about that?

Me: Is this Kyle? Look, I live within a five minute drive from the place. You don’t think I know these things?

Another Audience Member Question: Do you have any other interesting facts about the San Pedro?

Me: Yes, I do. The San Pedro river is probably the only river in the world that has the words San and Pedro side-by-side in the name.

So that covers my Friday and Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon was spend tooling around Tucson, AZ with my four children while my wife went to a doctor’s appointment. I learned a powerful lesson that afternoon. And that is; never take four children to the mall when seventy-three and a half million other people decided to go to the same exact mall at the same exact time you did. There are three reasons for this:

1. You will never find a parking spot. You will spend the first hour of your allotted mall time simply driving up and down the parking lot isles trying in desperation to find a parking spot. Eventually, you start to lose your sanity. And now people stay away from you because you are driving like a maniac through the rows of cars because you spotted an empty parking slot five rows away, and no matter what, you were definitely going to be the one to get it. Even if that meant you had to barrel through innocent pedestrians to do so. The real fun comes when not only do you spot the available parking spot, but someone else does, too, and now it’s a mad dash to see who can be first. I think probably 50% of all mental institution patients come from mall parking lots.
2. Once you do find your spot, it will take you another 30 minutes of your allotted mall time to make your way back into the mall. It takes this long primarily because you have to spend much of your time answering stupid questions from drivers who have been driven to insanity from searching out an empty parking space. Questions like “Are you leaving? Can I follow you to your car and wait like a hungry lion until you pull out of the space?” These questions are particularly annoying because you just spent the last hour asking them yourself. And on top of it all, you still have four young children to try to herd from your car to the closest entrance to the mall, which is not easy when one of them is 10 months old and requires carrying, and your two-year-old inststs that she, too, requires carrying. On top of this, your two boys, being that they are future guys, aren’t paying attention to where they are walking because of all of the explosions happening all around you from drivers racing for a suddenly available parking spot.
3. Once you do finally make it to the mall entrance, you will spend the final moments of your allotted mall hurrying from one bathroom to another, because you do, after all, have children with you. As soon as you leave the bathroom and find yourself immersed again in the sea of crazed consumers, one of your future adult humans hits their next queue and immediately calls out that they have to go to the bathrrom. “Why didn’t you go when we were there?” you ask hysterically. “I didn’t have to go then,” is the contractually obligated response. Personally, I think that kids do this on purpose. They realize that you are already driven to hysterics by the whole parking lot thing, so they get together and form a pool as to what statements they can say that will make you crack completely. For me, it was the unspoken statement. You know, the one where you suddenly realize that one of your kids is no longer anywhere near you and you start shouting your kids name in the middle of the mall like a howler monkey and start worrying about where they are when really, they were right next to you the whole time but you couldn’t see them because they were hiding beneath the infant you’re carrying. That’s when you realize that it’s time to go. You spent a grand total of 26.8 seconds actually in the mall.

Sunday was comparatively restful. I was able to start on, but not complete, a Mother’s Day gift for my wife (she’s come to expect late gifts from me). And I’ve pretty much nearly completely recovered from my brief bout of insanity. Although not quite enough because I decided, as a Mother’s Day gift to my wife, to take all four kids on another wild excursion and let her get a restful, if not brief, reprieve and have some time all to herself. And not only did I decide to take the kids, I took the family dog, too. I didn’t take them to a mall, this time, though. No, I learned my lesson regarding that. I took them to a much less crowded place. In fact, there were no people around whatsoever. I have great photos from this excursion, and will post a separate story on it later. So where did I take them?

The mighty San Pedro River.