Science and Grouchy People

Could whoever stole Simon today please bring him back? The possessed evil baby that you left in his place really wore us all out.
The stroller broke in Brooklyn, on a bumpy sidewalk.
It was hot and sticky.
We had the most horrible array of leftovers for dinner.
Carrying a grouchy baby and a broken stroller and all the gear from the science fair was a drag.
The science fair was only so-so this year. We nearly had a family breakdown before it even started, but managed to buck up and do it anyway. It is amazing how consistent people are. We walked in the room and the ROUND tables were immediately noted by Maya, who was extremely displeased. She had imagined her experiment on RECTANGULAR tables. Or at least SQUARE tables. Her posterboard was to be displayed on the music stand that would be stationed flush with the flat edge of one of the aforementioned RECTANGULAR or SQUARE tables. It was like a flashback to when she was three and had to have the BLUE plate, or her sandwich cut into TRIANGLES. She began blinking rapidly and wouldn't make eye contact. I could have helped her, but El Diablo was whining and moaning so persistently that nobody within a 15 foot radius of us could think clearly. So I sat nursing grumpily in what became known as The Grouchy Corner, since I was later joined by 3 other moms whose kids were driving them to drinking that day. Maya was rescued by my friend Madeline, who helped fill up her bowls of water--the fact that she couldn't get any warm water out of the bathroom sink was not helping matters at all. Hard to do heat transfer experiments with only cold water.
Meanwhile, Jonah was acting totally disabled, lacking all ability to get his stuff out of bags, set up his table (Rocks!) and interact with kids coming to look at his display. His was about identifying rocks as igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic, and he had a word search, a rock quiz and a bunch of rocks to identify with some identification guides.
I don't do this very often, but I sat in the G.C. and didn't help at all. I didn't look at any other kids' exhibits, I didn't talk to my kids or bail them out when they ran out of copies or spilled water on the table or didn't know how to ask questions that the other kids asked. I tried not to care when other parents asked them things and it became clear that they didn't really have a significant depth of knowledge about their chosen topics.
Ultimately, they both declared their experiments a success, I ate most of a Toblerone bar, and the garden outside the church where we were meeting was so inviting that a group of 10 of us parents might as well have been having a private dinner party. In summary, we managed to kick out the bad feelings and have an OK day.