I have had “A Whole New World” stuck in my head for days. You know, super normal adult stuff.

It all started last week when a friend came to town for her birthday, and we went to see the new Beauty and the Beast, followed by a trip to Disneyland, on a Monday. It was a lot of Disney, all at once. The movie was honestly pretty fantastic, but I like Emma Watson and am super into talking appliances, so don’t trust my opinion.

At Disneyland, we went on all the fun rides, got fast passes, inhaled churros, and impatiently waited in the never-ending lines. It was so much fun. Fun is great.

I am writing about it because for a while there, I had sort of forgotten about fun. It’s not that I have been living in a deep sadness all by myself or that I don’t smile or laugh or anything, I just sort of lost track of the things that make me feel like me. It’s easy to get lost in the constant mind spaghetti of “figuring it out,” which has sort of been my life the last year. Figuring it out blows, and constantly working on myself and through issues that I don’t really want to deal with is exhausting. Disneyland snapped me out of it.

I giggled. I screamed on Space Mountain and ducked on the Indiana Jones ride when it felt like there were arrows being shot out of the wall. (It’s apparently just air.) I screamed and laughed and tried really hard to keep my arms up on Thunder Mountain. I insisted we go on the Teacups, because they RULE, and I may have gone a little crazy with the spinning and made everyone sick. Sorry guys!

Disney is problematic, obviously, especially in the 90’s when most of the movies they put out seemed to be in competition with each other for “most racist and anatomically unreasonable.” (I think Pocahontas won.) I will forever have bizarrely unrealistic expectations for love and cleavage, but those stories are a part of my childhood, and screaming my face off on rides inspired by them was the most fun I have had in a long time.

So thanks for that, Disneyland, and the rest of the Disney movies I have seen this week. It doesn’t matter what they are, mind your business.

PS, I am really proud of myself for not using the phrase “inner child” once in this post.