Elephants and Chimps

Sshhhh...don't tell my clients but I played hooky last Thursday to go the San Diego Zoo and see the Elephant Odyssey with my grandson, Little Z, Teddy Bear, Killdozer, and the Hot Tamale. Tell me, do all men stick together? Even when they are 2 feet tall and can't speak yet? Is there a grunting secret code? A special handshake?

I am as out of shape as the floating lumbering hippos in the hippo exhibit. I let the Hot Tamale push the stroller until we got to the Elephant Odyssey exhibit. I whined to the Hot Tamale to let me take Little Z out of the stroller so I could chase him around and just squeeze the stuffin' out of him. He is so damn cute. I had forgotten though that at that age, 15 months, if you zig, they want to zag. He was mesmerized by the horse...which is weird. A horse at the zoo? Temecula has loads of horses. We gave Teddy Bear's horse away to friends who had 5 acres where he could really have fun.

We kept trying to herd him toward the elephants...ha, ha, I made a pun without trying, but he would only let Killdozer take him by the hand and lead him along. Sheesh. A fifteen month old male chauvinist. He toddled along finally to the elephants where one HUGE elephant was getting cleaned and hosed down and spoiled rotten with treats. You could stand right at the fence and watch. That giant elephant was so well trained and sneaky, too. The guy would give him a treat every once in a while so she kept trying to sneak one out of his pocket. Hee, hee. I could have stayed there for hours as long as Z was having fun. He kept standing on his tip toes to see better which was cracking me up. He was right at the fence as you can see from the picture and it wasn't like he could see OVER the fence.

We were there for quite a while when Killdozer leans over and whispers, "Hey, Michael Jackson is dead." What?? Who told you that? His brother had texted him the news, but I did not believe it when a lady in front of us turned around and said it was true, her daughter had just sent her an e-mail that it was true. How ironic and how weird how wired the world is now. You know what I kept thinking as I was standing there listening to the people talk about it? Damn, I wanted my computer. I felt out of touch. I have a stone age phone still so I could not connect to the internet, although I did get a text from a friend of mine telling me the news, too. In a strange twist, I understand how hard it is going to be for Iran to keep their young people down with how connected we all are now. To tell the truth though, I am already sick to death hearing about Michael Jackson.

He is going to be buried or something on Tuesday which is good for me. My niece is flying out from South Dakota with her son and we are going to Disneyland on Tuesday. I am hoping everyone in Southern California will be clogging up the freeways following the motorcade like a bunch of yokels and we can have the park to ourselves. Yes, I like his music. Heck, he is my age, so his music is like a soundtrack for many parts of my life, but please, all the adulation? Why? They are giving away 11,000 tickets to the Staples center for a memorial of some kind. You know, the same Staples Center where Laker fans rioted. Will Jackson fans riot? Do a mass moonwalking? Flood LA with their tears like Alice in Wonderland?

So, anyways, if you are at Disneyland on Tuesday, hopefully we will be the only people there and we can have fun running around the park racing from ride to ride.