I wasn’t consciously manifesting this one… but nor do I think most of my manifestations are what one would call conscious!
A few weeks ago, my old friend Jen, a red-headed pixie mother friend from my acting daze in Arizona, sent me a note on Facebook: the family’s gonna be in your neck ‘a the woods in September, Diva! Want to join us for dinner?
Between that email and this weekend, I didn’t invest much mental thought in where my friends were staying. I kept thinking “San Diego, right?”
Turns out dinner was at Goofy’s Kitchen in Disneyland!
Diva Baby hams it up with his buddy Jen, Matron of the Disneyland Clan 
(Life List Item #1… go to Disneyland.)
So I found myself driving through lazy Labor Day weekend traffic in downtown Los Angeles with a snoring Diva Baby in the car seat, chatting with friends on my Blackberry head set and managing to only get a little bit lost in Anaheim… then 15 minutes of wrong turns later, voila!
I was in Disneyland. 
Thank goodness everyone there is trained to smile and wave, just smile and wave at the dipstick tourists. On the way between the valet parking and Frontier Tower, a 15-story blue glass building smack dab in the middle of Happyville, I managed to run my stroller into two posts, drop my diaper bag, forget to warn the parking attendant that my car was a beast to start thanks to a ridiculously ineffective outdated alarm system (and then forget to tip him later – I know, karma will find me), and that was just in the first half hour…
Fortunately, O Baby, being a patient chap, decided to sleep through it all... his usual tactic for coping with his air-headed Momma.
By the time I bumped into Jen (was it literally? most likely!) a few minutes later, I was so frazzled by my new-found clutziness (welcome to Motherhood!) that I had adopted the Disneyland stance of smile and wave. So I just smiled and waved numbly at the tiny red-headed figure floating towards me in a white bathrobe and after a quick hug, we were off to find the guys.
Dave, Jen’s musically-inclined actor husband and one of my oldest friends in theatre, greeted me with his classic half-smile. And the birthday boy, Xander, who I’d last seen when HE was a 6 month-old booby-loving baby, was now a dashing 5 year-old splashing around in the spa.
Originally the plan had been to bask by the pool, but the thick clouds overhead and occasional flashes of lightning on the horizon spelled doom for pool time. So instead we opted to walk through what I dubbed The Village, but probably has some other less faux-horror name since it was really quite a light, bright and cheerful place and not in fact a pseudo-1880′s frontier town where red flowers need be trampled lest we all get ‘et up.
First stop, BOOK STORE of course! Every last member of our 4 and 1/2 person party is a bibliophile, including Diva Baby (who prefers A.A.Milne) and Xander (who reads with all the airs and confidence of a third-grader despite only just having turned 5). We could have stayed there an hour, but dinner reservations were at 5:30 so onward we marched back out into the fray…
Did I mention my addiction to Legos as a child? I was a Lego-aholic. I spent hours, days, weeks of summer vacations constructing magnificent small scale cities, train tracks and space ships. My siblings and I used to enter Lego creations in the County Fair (and win ribbons!). We were into Legos before Legos were cool! (Okay, maybe not that extreme.)
And in Disneyland… there is a LEGO STORE! Not just a store – but a miniature Lego MUSEUM! Where you can find a red Lego airplane soaring on the store horizon… and a gigantic Lego giraffe with legs thick as tree trunks… and a Lego DARTH VADER that TALKS.
Jen, Xander and I were so enamored of this store that we tried to remove the Lego Door from its hinges and take it home with us!
But when the Lego Police strolled by we quickly fell into place and acted normal...
Then we were on to some random Dress-A-Bear-For-The-Same-Cost-As-Your-New-Car shop were people choose various and sundry parts of teddy bears and convert said stuffed creatures into heart-bearing, bling-wearing, birth-certificate-bearing family members… for a blingy price, of course. Though I’ve collected bears since age 2, I managed to skate out of there without dropping a single red cent. Mostly because I left my wallet in the car.
Soon, the ladies of the party were crying “Hunger!” and we all crashed at a charming cafe where it took slightly less than half an hour for our single order of onion rings to be delivered. (Hey, the bread was free!)
All the while, I was caught up in the enforced Happy Vibe of this, the Happiest Place on Earth – and I confess, the happiness came in waves and was mildly effortless. In fact, I didn’t have to think about it at all. Before too long, I was prancing around in a Minnie-Mouse-Ears cap, posing under sculptures of body-builder Genies, and spending my last paper dollar on Tinkerbell gear (hey, she’s a Pixie – I’m a Pixie… it’s a Pixie Thing!)
Then in the hotel room, Xander entertained us all with his charming reading skills (seriously impressive child) and Jen taught me how to read Dr. Seuss books properly (was that 3/4 or 6/8!?). Diva Baby cooed, giggled, pooped, sipped milk and dazzled everyone with gummy smiles. And Dave snored underneath a starry wizard pillow. Classic Dave.
But I confess… like the giddy child-at-heart I am, the highlight of my day was Dinnertime. Because Goofy’s Kitchen is where I met the one true love of my animated-film-loving life… MULAN!
I didn’t just get to meet Mulan. She placed her hand on my shoulder (shivers), she called me a fellow WARRIOR WOMAN (!!!) and she goo-gooed over my son!
*melts*
However, the one thing I failed to do (of course) was have anyone snap a photo of me with my feminine-feminist goddess idol. Classic Diva Mom moment! A dream realised! A long-awaited fantasy springs to life! And the camera is forgotten!
Diva Baby forgives me. He knows we will be back... and when we are, we will have our Nikon D3100 Digital SLR camera at the ready!
But as I gushed to Jen, who was probably amused by the look of pure zoned out happiness on my face when Mulan entered the room, “I have to come back here! I have to come back here soon! A lot!”
Eloquence goes out the window when the Diva is in love.
But at least I have discovered that Mulan lives just one hour from my home, that Mulan is really Latina, and that Mulan says “y’all”. And if I’ve got any say in the matter, you can bet on it I’ll be back.
Addendum: Jen, Dave and Xander are first-rate Disneyland-going buddies. I owe y’all!