Several months back, Groupon had a phenomenal deal on a yearly membership to the Natural History Museum.  You know it had to be good, because I bought the family pass — knowing full well that my child doesn’t like museums!  But that’s just who I am.  Wasting money as I hope for the best.

This was also the time of year when they had the Spider Pavilion set up.  (If I’m not mistaken, it goes back and forth between spiders and butterflies.)  I don’t know what came over me, but in the instant that the cashier asked if we wanted tickets, I said “Sure.”  …SURE.  SURE?  Why, though?  I really do not like spiders.  Maybe I had some internal instinct to overcome my fear?  I’m still confused about it myself.  The spiders were described as introverts, so maybe we bonded over that commonality between us. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  With Stevie’s poor vision, I honestly don’t think he could even see the spiders.  And I was mostly making sure he didn’t crash through any webs, causing spiders to rain down on us, and somehow entirely ruin the pavilion.  And we made it!  But I’m still not a fan.  On to the museum.

I had taken Stevie to this same museum a couple years back when it was newly renovated, so I knew what to expect, but thought maybe he’d find something new to be interested in (LOL).  We walked around a bit — or more accurately — Stevie ran while I followed behind.  Nothing really caught his interest, and in fact, with every oooh + aaah from me, he seemed less and less engaged.  So I just shut my mouth and tried to catch little glimpses of the displays as we rushed through.  My one trick for maximizing our time there: same as last time!!  I kept pretending that I was looking for the exit.  Oh this way Stevie!  I think we can get out over here… No wait! Mom is so silly, I think it’s actually this way.  That turned our 5 minute museum visit into a 25 minute museum visit.  And still an improvement from our first visit of 45 seconds.

Then we walked to Chik-Fil-A.  So I don’t know.  #winning?