It Seemed Like a Good Idea

The Packers won the Super Bowl! You may have noticed that already, but I could not be sure. Since I live in Green Bay there is no escaping it. I did not grow up watching football with my Dad (and for sure not my Mom!) but after having moved here about ten years ago I have found that it is mandatory. Something in the water maybe, besides all the chemicals and used prescription drugs, infuses Football Love into your cells.  So I have become a Packer fan over the years! You will never see me with cheese on my head but I did wonder Tuesday if those cheesehead hats things were warm.

Tuesday, the Packers put on a "Welcome Home" party for the Lombardi Trophy and the team at Lambeau Field. Tickets were $5.00 a person and since I am now a Die Hard Fan I was super excited at the chance to go and take the girls.

We (and by "we" I mean  The Husband) were online at 9 on the dot to get our tickets and we got really good ones, row nine on the 40th yard line. Bar winning the lottery, we will never be that close again.

Even though it was forecasted to be approximately 10 degrees with a -10 wind chill. Die Hard Packer Fans go out in the cold. Love the cold, laugh at the cold. And we had excellent seats.

Even though I have a mild case of the flu, Die Hard Packer Fans will wake up from a coma, or cart an IV, or haul a dialysis machine etc. Flu Schmoo, we were going.

Even though ESPN reported that seats to the event were going for $140 bucks on the secondary market. Well actually I was willing at that point to be a Die Hard Packer Fan With an Extra $560 Dollars but we called a local ticket broker and it was too close to the thing to sell them that way.

So we went! I swaddled the girls in every warm clothing item they had. They were wearing their snow pants, layers of shirts, hats and hoods, scarves, coats, mittens, all of it. Myself I was wearing regular clothes with long undies, extra long socks with another pair on top, long coat, awesome boots, my hand knit hair hat, hood and scarf with doubled up gloves.

Even though it was a weekday, and a work day, and scheduled for 4 o'clock, about a billion people showed up. Some people, those with spaghetti for brains, had shown up at 9 am! Lambeau Field is a real stadium, no wienie- dome for us Die Hard Fans! So when it snows it snows in the stadium as well and they solicit local people to come and shovel it out for like, 8 bucks an hour. I would just like to point out that the crew in charge of row 9 was full of slackers and suckasses and we had snow and ice covering our bench. That's right, no sissy- seats here at Lambeau either. You get an aluminum bench to sit on and thank goodness for all those extra clothes because you get rather intimate with your neighbor. Mmmm hmmmm. Since you are a Die Hard Fan you are grateful to be on the hallowed grounds at all and you cozy right on up to your neighbor and everyone in the row lifts their beer simultaneously to avoid spillage.

Our politicians got up there and spoke a few words. Our mayor, who is up for re-election against an ever increasing cluster of competition declared that a street would now be renamed McCarthy's Way (after the coach). He even held up an oversized sample of the sign. Sadly for him, his attempt to gain positive publicity failed as it appears renaming a street is not one of the powers available to the mayor. Oops! Then The Prick, who is our new governor, got up there. Much booing commenced. I guess you don't get a free pass from being The Prick even if you are standing in the middle of Lambeau Field. Then, a bunch of other stuff happened. Players, the trophy, interviews and other talking. Since no one was talking about My Little Pony, Hello Kitty, or How to Keep your Polly Pocket Pieces out of the Vacuum, Genea started to notice she was cold and Teena started to notice she couldn't see anything. I also noticed I was cold and could not see anything. Plus, no one was talking about knitting or sunny vacations.

There is something I sort of forgot to consider. Genea is a sensitive little girl when it comes to her head and all things on her head. So I had her dressed for a job on Ice Road Truckers, thinking just of the coldness. And let me say, it was freaking cold. Cold, holy shit it was cold. Arctic Circle of Hell cold.

Here is a bizarre phenomenon, something I have never heard of. It was so ever-lovin' cold that large chunks of my eye makeup seem to have frozen and fallen off onto my face. Once on my face, it melted and made a big racoonish mess. Now what is that?  This country wastes all kinds of money studying air pollution and other pointless garbage and here I am with mascara icicles and no answers.

Oh yeah, Genea. Right, so she could keep her hood on for only a few minutes at a time. Her scarf to cover her face, less than that. So she got cold fast. Teena is jumping around like a flea, on the icy bench trying to see stuff. It was so cold my vision had begun to blur. And though I had really covered most of myself successfully, there was an area from my knee's to my, well, to my hoo hoo, that was only double- covered which was as useful as naked which is to say, Not At All. So I felt the cold. However, I was trying my damnedest to suck it up and be positive and set a great example. I tried really hard.

It turns out I am not a Die Hard Packer Fan. I guess I am a sit on the couch in my nice heated house fan. With a blanket.

So are my children.

Even though we wanted the girls to have the experience of going to Lambeau Field and have the "we were there" memories I am afraid that is not exactly going to be the dominant memory they hold. We decided to blow that Popsicle stand and head home.

Only by now Genea has started to get upset. And once Genea gets upset a person has to help her calm down and fix the situation. Here was the situation. We were leaving. But. It appears someone had moved our car about 17 miles from where we were. This was not good and she knew it. Barely out of the stadium, she started to cry. Walking through the parking lot towards the residential area we had parked in, she started to wail. I tried to distract. It held her a few minutes. I moved into bribery, (hot chocolate when we get home!) again, it bought me about a minute. I commenced with questionable logic- when your face is wet it will feel more cold! Moved into outright lies- your open mouth is letting all the cold air in and that's why you are so cold! By now, she has lost all control and is howling and shrieking so loud I thought she would set off someones car alarm. I began to tell made up stories about things we had done that day that had not actually happened. She usually hates that and has to correct it. She ignored me. Possibly by now she could not hear me over herself. I held her as we walked, I tried to keep her as covered as I could but the fact was there was nothing any of us could do but keep walking and try to get to the car fast. Reallyfuckinfast.

Fact was, I was really freaking cold too and wanted to shriek and really did not want to walk to the car either. Being the adult sucks. Teena did better than us. The Husband was also fine.

We got home and it probably took Genea about an hour to re-set from hysteria to her normal calm/ hypervigilant pacing and talking. It was about 3 hours before the area from my knee's up thawed.

Go Pack Go!

Above are all the people who did not go to work past 3:00 on Tuesday. Plus all the school kids who were off. It's a sea of yellow!

See what great seats we had! Count heads..... we were in row 9! I don't think anything had started yet here.

Teena and Genea and their Daddy. See how almost everyone has their heads covered!

The End.