Dillon’s spring soccer season started last week, and this season all of his games are in Cole Valley, which is the worst place in this whole stupid city when it comes to parking. Seriously.
So the first game I get to the field not really knowing what to expect. Other parents told me that it was hard to find parking but I was like – this is stupid San Francisco, what else would I expect? Well I DIDN’T expect there to actually be NO parking as far as my eye could see and I didn’t expect the streets to be so narrow that with a solid row of parked cars on each side, there was room only for one car to drive down at a time – but they weren’t one-way streets. So if I was halfway down the street and another car pulled in from the opposite direction, one of us would have to back up or pull into someone’s driveway, if it were even empty. Ugh, what an awful place.
Anyway, that first Saturday I got kind of lucky. Only my 3rd time circling, I saw one of the other moms as she was walking to the field and pointed out a spot that she had seen. So I pulled down the street. Of course the space was on the opposite side, so I had to make a 25-point u-turn. Then I’m like – okay, I’m not a good parallel parker AT ALL and this space will just barely fit my car so please let me not embarass myself. I pulled in like a pro, I gotta say. Backed in perfectly, whew. I was so happy I had to take a picture and send it to HBY. Lol.
But this past Saturday, I had a REALLY hard time finding a space, and when I finally did, I pulled in and my back tire was on the curb. I thought about leaving it like that, but didn’t want anyone I knew to see it, so figured I’d try and fix it. I did try, back and forth, again and again. I swear if anyone were watching they would have been laughing their ass off. I ended up with the tire flush against the curb, with a little of the tire spilling over (think muffin top). I took a picture to show HBY again, and explained and said – there wasn’t that much space for me to correct. He looked at me like I was crazy and said – that’s PLENTY of room. Psh.
I do not look forward to the rest of the season….
Afterwards we went inside. I’ve never been there before, and I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was HOT and HUMID inside. Okay, makes sense, it’s a greenhouse. And when we went into a side room it got even worse! THEN! We get to the Butterfly Zone. 
A few years ago, the Bellagio had a butterfly display in their atrium that was basically netting from the floor to the ceiling with a bunch of butterflies flying around inside. Kind of like this, but gigantic.
So I pretty much expected that sort of thing, but NO. It was a room with a bunch of plants and displays and the butterflies were just flying freely around. Like – LANDING on people. Oh my god. AND it was crazy hot and humid, I was sweating just standing around. Dillon was determined to hold one, 
I saw some kids with 5 or 6 on their hands. Eww. So Dillon finally caught one, I didn’t get a good picture of it because I was trying to hurry before it flew away. 
And then I saw it. It was so huge and nasty looking all I could do was stand there and go – eww, oh my god. 
There were two hidden in this plant, so I felt kind of safe, they weren’t going to just leap out at me, I would have screamed I swear. But then there was this old lady and after I pointed it out, she got the butterfly to sit on an outer leaf of the plant, all spread out like this (I wonder if she touched it, eww).
Then, on my way out, I saw another one sitting on a plant by the doorway, 
so I told Dillon to put his hand next to it so I could show the relative size of it (haha, yeah, I’m a chicken). 
I swear if those things were flying around landing on me it would be my worst nightmare come true…
I guess it looked kind of funny, these two small kids with their clipboards and crayons, looking all serious. I saw this asian guy wandering around, taking pictures, talking to his friends, and he kept glancing toward the kids smiling. He came up to us and his first question: “are you guys taiwanese?” uhh, yeah RIGHT. haha. anyway, so then he asks in his backwards broken english if he could take a picture of the kids, and i’m like – uhhh, i guess, why not, right? and then he hands me the camera – i’m all – OHHH, you want me to take a picture of you with them? weird, so they’re drawing with their boards on the bench, backs to me, and he goes and stands next to them while I snap the picture with his camera. HBY was standing next to me, I’m surprised he was cool with that whole thing. Then, since I had my camera ready, I took a picture of him so I could blog about him, haha. 
Funny tourists…lucky for him I understand the desire to photograph everything I see, otherwise I would have told him HELL no, lol…
Being CK 