What not to do...

Disclaimer:  Any seeming relation of following thoughts to writer's own situation is purely coincidental.

If you ever find yourself increasingly rotund and coming off of the worst head cold of your life, here are some things NOT to do:

1.  Do NOT imagine that there could be nothing worse than staying home with 2 energetic boys on a rainy Monday morning.  Even if you know they will be in weekend withdrawal, you are not up to entertaining them, and they will fight like cats and dogs if you stay home, don't assume other options are always better.
2.  Do NOT imagine that if you take them to that place of mothers who've officially given up, that haven of infectious disease, that birthplace of ADHD, that kiddie casino---aka Chuck E. Cheese--do not entertain visions in your head of them running around with smiles on their faces, playing games, collecting tickets, climbing and sliding with glee, all while you sit comfortably in a booth and look on, nursing yourself quietly back from the brink of sinus pressure devastation.
3.  Do NOT assume that your 2 year old will find giant animatronic cartoon animals as fascinating as your 4 year old did at his age.  Do not leave him near the animals without realizing the 'show' is about to begin while going to get game tokens, and then wonder where that skin-crawling, terrified screaming is coming from.
4.  Do NOT, with a sweet smile at the corners of your mouth, watch your 4 year old help your 2 year old shimmy up the climbing steps (which are technically too tall for him to manage on his own) into the closed-tube hamster scramble running around the room at ceiling level.  Once again, do not assume your 2 year old is a brave as your 4 year old was at his age.
5.  Do NOT find yourself forced, at 21 weeks of pregnancy, to shimmy up into a space designed for 6 year olds to retrieve your child.
6.  Do NOT feel your uterus contracting on the way down the slide while getting kicked by your upset child.  Oh yes, just don't do it.
7.  Do NOT hand your younger child a cup full of 4 or 5 tokens at 25c each and sit down exhausted in a booth to finally blow your nose and sanitize your hands the 10 or 12 times that you bypassed doing so when it was really needed.
8.  Do NOT wonder where all his money has gone in a 30 second time frame and walk around looking for it strewn across the floor.  Another mother will politely inform you (with a snide chuckle) that she watched your child methodically and purposefully deposit all coins quickly and sequentially into the same game (perhaps imagining how she herself could never sink to such poor parenting supervision).
9.  Do NOT imagine that with 50 different games strewn across the establishment, your two children will not fight over the same game.
10.  Do NOT imagine that there will be any level of independent play when accompanying a two year old who needs total supervision, help, and a single coin meted out at a time.
11.  Do NOT attempt, in a moment of weakness, to play the only really fun game in the room, skee-ball, which involves 10 or 12 rock-hard, heavy plastic balls that descend at one time, long lanes for rolling them, and the perfect opportunity for a 2 year old to grab them and chuck them at passers-by's skulls, other games, his brother, or anything that moves.
12.  Do NOT assume that 4 year olds will not try to play games that are beyond their ability, and then get really frustrated and want help, all while you are trying to reassemble the skee-ball diaspora.
13.  Do NOT try to educate your child about the difference between games that actually offer something fun to do, and games that are essentially slot machines, earning you a whopping pile of 8 penny-value tickets (to buy penny-value candy that has been inflated in price 500%) in exchange for 1 quarter.  He will not be able to hear you over the sound of the tickets being dispensed from the machine.
14.  Do NOT assume that 'separate but equal' prizes bought with the tickets will be accepted by both parties involved.
15.  Do NOT look around at the dismal-looking faces of bedraggled mothers all around you and realize that you too fell prey to a master marketing operation!

 (The mother in the picture may be smiling, but if you examine closely, it's really the wide-eyed look of half-crazed lunacy.)