Jackson had spring break last week. I covered the morning boy-watching shift, which meant that we laid around in our underwear until noon every day. Then Jack would come home and look at us in disgust and we’d get dressed and I’d go to work and I have no idea what they did while I was gone. Embroidery? Ditch digging? There was some talk of squirrel hunting but since none of us owns any squirrel hunting weaponry, no violence was done to our chipper little rodent friends.

By Friday I couldn’t take the relentless inactivity anymore so I called in well to work and Jackson and I drove down to the science museum. It takes about two hours to get from here to downtown L.A., so we left early. Early-ish. Okay, maybe 9:30 isn’t that early.

Apparently L.A. schools are on a different schedule than we are because there were approximately ten thousand school groups in varying stages of hysteria running around with us.

The first thing we did was go into the hurricane simulator, which is a glass booth with a big fan directed into it. It’s pretty much a $2 blow dryer, and you end up just standing there, attracting a small crowd while your hair gets all whipped around. If you have hair, which I don’t. (Did I mention I cut my hair? I couldn’t take that anymore, either.) Anyway, I didn’t manage to get a picture of Jackson with his hair standing on end, instead my camera took this one of him looking all angelic. Thanks, camera.

The science museum has lots of really good interactive sound and light and basic engineering exhibits, but throw a lot of amped-up kids raised on video games into rooms filled with big, chunky levers and cranks and you’ll see the light slowly fade from their eyes. Like, sure, it’s kind of cool how this prism bends color but EWW, THAT’S A FETUS! WHERE’S RAMON? CELIA, YOU TOOK MY HAIRBRUSH, EEEEE!

In a quiet hallway, however, Jackson stumbled onto this fog bowl and was able to practice his airbending.

I was feeling a little lightheaded — the aftereffects of an extra glass of pinot grigio the night before — and watching this kid ride the high-wire bicycle just about made me pass out.

I was immoderately pleased that there was a McDonald’s in the museum lobby. The food anticipation I was feeling reminds me of a story my friend Leslee told me when she was pregnant, how she got some Chinese food for lunch one day and then had to close her office door so no one would see how intensely she horked it down. Yes, manners and food ethics go straight out the window when a plain double cheeseburger with fries and a Coke (and an extra Monsters vs. Aliens toy) are at hand.

Hi, everyone, my name is Eden and it’s been six days since my last Happy Meal.

After lunch we cruised the gift shop but it was absolute pandemonium so Jackson suggested we walk over to the natural history museum.

Whose entrance is so large it defies the powers of photography.

“Blue lamps!”
“Mom, no one cares.”
“Wait, I’m going to take a picture. Those are crazy!”
“I’m going into the gem room.”

Okay, the gem room was amazing.

The side room where they display the rubies other valuables even has a bank-vault door. You’d think a kid would be impressed by a 10,000-pound door? He would not.

“Hey, baby, you know where the tar pits are?”

Yeah, unfortunately the tar pits are over on like Wilshire and La Brea, and despite the fortifying cheeseburger lunch I only had enough gas left for ten minutes in the touch-a-skeleton room in the basement and the usual argument about spending money as a form of entertainment in the gift shop.

I like to imagine this guy having the same accent as Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Awwww, babies! God, I hope I still have some M&Ms; left in my bag.

And so, after dropping $20 on a mood ring and a diamond-cut chunk of green glass, we bid adieu to science and nature.

“I can see that guy’s nuts!”