If you ever need your parenting skills reaffirmed, I strongly recommend going to McD�s Playplace with your kid. I have generally avoided all things involving creepy clowns shoving health tips at you with one hand and French fries with the other (not to mention anthropomorphic skateboarding rats), but once AJ got a taste of the Playplace with a friend, there was no denying him.

The local Playplace is an indoor playground in a depressing state of disrepair. The kids there are generally misbehaving in such egregious and dangerous ways that AJ repeatedly runs over me to express his concerns, �Mommy, that boy is hanging by his ankles thirty feet in the air. He�s not supposed to be doing that, is he?� The parents are inevitably either, a)screaming obscenities at their kids (�JIMMY! GET THE FUCK OFF THERE! DON�T MAKE ME GET THE BELT!�) or are yapping on their cellphones while their kids desperately try to get their attention (�HEY MOM! OVER HERE! I�M HANGING BY MAY ANKLES THIRTY FEET IN THE AIR! MOM! MOMMY! MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!!�). No matter what is going on there, I can pretty much guarantee that the average kid is going to look like an angel and the average parent is going to feel like Mother Theresa compared to the usual inmates of the Playplace.

The Playplace makes me feel like an obsessive compulsive. I have the sudden urge to wipe everything down with Lysol the second I get in there. I always make AJ eat first because the idea of him climbing all over the germy slides and then grabbing his food turns my stomach (if the food itself didn�t do that first). My husband has put his foot down and refused to ever set foot in the door again. But I keep going back because to AJ, it is the next best thing to Disneyland. There are kids! To play with! And French fries! With Ketchup! All in the same place!

I get a salad in a box and grin as AJ waves from each and every level of the two-story-high slides. It�s almost worth it. As long as we sterilize everything when we get home.

As my morning train left the station today, we were greeted with an announcement that informed us that the train would not be delayed because they would not be arresting anyone at the next station. Um, thanks. That�s reassuring. Were they just letting us know that everything was A-OK? Have arrests become so common on suburban trains that the absence of one is noteworthy? Or was there some incident of which they failed to inform us? Nothing like starting your day with a mystery.

I have come to believe that iTunes is actually a direct line to the deity of your choice. On those days, like today, when all of my favorite songs come up as soon as I plug in, I feel like it�s some kind of sign that my day is going to go better than previously expected. I expect this feeling is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as such good fortune always puts me in a good frame of mind. Nevermind that it would be extremely easy to assemble a playlist to create the same exact series of sounds. It just wouldn�t be the same. The randomizer is all knowing and all powerful. Clearly my lecture on sonata form will kick some ass today. If iTunes says so, it must be true.

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