Waterworld

Man, it's hot today. Like, almost 90°F hot. Unseasonable for April, even with the global warming and all. We're putting off busting out the air conditioners for as long as possible, so today we decided to go to the park down the road and check out the splash park they put in last year in lieu of a public pool.

The good news first: it's a nice "sprayground" (that's their term, not mine, although it is the kind of obnoxious pun that I would have come up with), and Shae had a pretty good time. We were there for about half an hour, 45 minutes tops, and she already has tan lines. No, I am not kidding.

And now for the bad news -- no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise, with our fancy camera and our beautiful girl, we kind of live in a bad neighborhood. Like, really bad. Something is off when we're the classiest people in a five-block radius.

Maybe some of it is because we're a bit on the doting side, parentally speaking. If you are willing to accept that by "doting" we actually mean "responsible." We took our toddler to the public water park, yes -- but we also kept her at arm's reach so we could make sure she would stay safe.

The same was not true of other parents, who let their kids run amok, shoeless in some cases, where there were all sorts of ages and sizes of people, probably a hundred if there were a dozen, and grown-ups who could not easily be matched to their children. Possible perverts.

We also had a couple of collisions, all caused when other kids who were not watching and not watched ran smack dab into the Boo. We have a skinned knee, a scratched ankle, and a brush-burnt-bruise on an elbow. Not one other parent asked if our child was okay.

But Shae had a good time, which I guess is the important part. We put Neosporin and enchanted unicorn band-aids on the boo-boos -- she calls them stickers -- but I think that from now on, except in dire emergencies, we'll stick to family pools for our water sports. Devils you know and all that.