After Passover had passed.

That night Sam and I slipped out to do our annual shopping trip to a sampling of the hundreds of malls in Fountain Valley. I bought an extremely expensive handbag. We also bought Boggle and 20th century Trivial Pursuit. Then we treated ourselves to some real food at a mall restaurant and finally saw Chicago. My favorite part was the scene where Renee Zellwegger was Richard Gere's ventriloquist's dummy.

We got back to the house after one.

The next day was fun. We went to Disneyland. I went to Disneyworld once when I was 12, but really now -- Disneyland in Anaheim...?

[I confess that even though I have lived in California for 7 years now, I still have this golden nostalgia for the dreamy California of the early 80s. I could almost smell the Coppertone and taste the fresh orange juice. I would hear about the sunshine and ocean and surfers and skaters and sun-bleached-hair-on-tanned-skin and it was all just so quintessentially American and somehow pure and real. And just a little bit out of reach. Now, of course, I know that I was the gullible consumer of careful marketing.]

Ironically, when I did move out here it was for the misfit queers.

Nowadays, Americana en-masse holds little romance for me. All it means is to me is fat people and fast food. I was a bit reluctant to commit to a whole day of it.

But we needed to get out and do something and the tickets were free. We elected to begin in the new California Adventure part of the park.

At first we were not having a good time. It was extremely difficult to navigate the crowded park with a wheelchair. Little kids would stare and make faces at Don to "test" if he was really blind. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to sense all these people around me and not be able to see them or react to them.

I immediately got myself some green cotton candy.

The coolest thing about being at the park with a disabled person is that we got to cut ahead of every single line. Here these other suckers had to wait 60 to 90 minutes for a 2 minute ride, and we got to just skip to the front. It was awesome. At first we were afraid that some of the rides would be too physically hard on Don, but once we got on the California Screamin' roller coaster and I saw him sitting there with a huge smile on his face, everything got a lot better. I was more afraid of getting on some of the rides than he was. (I have a dizziness/naseuosness problem with centrifugal rides.) There were enormously fat people everywhere shamelssly zipping around on little carts. These people have allowed themselves to get so fat that they can't walk. It was pretty fucking gross.

We went up, down, around, and upside down (watch the vid) on the California Screamin' ride 3 times. I screamed each and every time. We bought the expensive picture of ourselves hurtling down the track. If I had pro-blogger I would scan it in.

Later on, Sam won me an enormous stuffed pink pig by throwing a whiffle ball into a small necked jug on her second try. The lady who was running the game gave her the 'high-five'.

By the time we got home at 11 or so, I was so tired that I went straight to bed.