Away I Went

So two weeks ago tonight I was settling into the Residence Inn in lovely Man-ass VA outside (unfortunately well outside) DC. I had gone away for work for the first time in Gracie's short life. I had attained Gold status on American (not nearly as much as the dude in "Up in the Air" but a lot of flying nonetheless) thanks to this same trip to a windowless secret facility full of dweebs, germs and long shifts trying to figure out what had gone wrong now with our overly complex software. But, I had a reprieve for the end of the pregnancy and birth. It had been lovely. Alas, the first time back was not terrible (only 3 nights away and the weather there was actually lovely) but certainly not easy. Of course, I got cute pictures of what I was missing, which was the best-slash-worst. Gracie laughing at her reflection.

Pops bonding with his granddaughter.

Nana bonding with her entourage.


Clearly, as they have all along, the grandparents have been dynamite and so helpful in relieving the load. They'll be called on even more starting next week when Kelly goes back to work and I go to part-time.

Anyway, the trip back was fun for me. I went with BWI for the direct flights to Austin and was rewarded on the return side with a brush with Mitch McConnell in the bathroom. There was some weird looking police guy right outside the bathroom and I was busy looking at him while walking in when I nearly ran into the very nicely dressed dude with a perma-scowl on his face. So, yeah, he was leaving; no stall foot tapping or anything like that. Then I stopped at the bar for a beer while the guy next to me literally downed 3 shots and a beer in no more than 10 minutes. Being a fan of the Wire and being near Baltimore, this was quite fun.

When I got back, we decided to treat ourselves and yet again Nana & Pops helped by babysitting while we had a date night at Zoot. It was good enough, but we'd rather stay closer in and hit up Wink instead. In the following days we tried eating out a few more places noting that we needed to step it up with Gracie and get her out and get comfortable taking her with us places. Man, taking kids/babies to restaurants is tricky. We tried this neighborhood place that's kind of bar/restaurant that used to be very family friendly and lots of outside seating. But it had clearly become more bar, less restaurant. That was awkward. You're the people with a baby in a bar. Felt like that scene from "Sweet Home Alabama" (yes, I watch Reese Witherspoon rom-coms!) where she's back in AL and she goes to a bar and this girl's in there with her baby and says something like "yeah, it's hard since she's still on the tit!" Exactly. Anyway, we love eating out and definitely don't want to give that up now that we're DISKs so we have to rework the fav list and cross-check with family friendly. Extra work, dammit!

Of course going out to this bar (let's just call it that now; I'll provide the link for Child Protective Services later) also reminded me that I didn't just physically go on a trip. I've gone away in another sense -- I've started to slowly lose my mind. We walked out of that bar forgetting not only the diaper bag, but also I apparently had dropped my jacket somewhere between the car and the bar (we're terrible parents!) and it was lying there as we walked out. The night before when we went out for date night alone, we got all the way (20 minutes) to my parents' house before realizing no breast milk in the bottle. I had to drive back to the house and get it just in time for our reservation. Then the following Monday, I left my travel bag with my work computer at home. We also got lost in our adjoining neighborhood at one point. Son of a bitch! This is not me. Back in college I smugly (but tacitly) walked around with a bit of self satisfaction about my ability to manage and remember everything without some elaborate datebook. You know, back in "those" days a lot of folk had these thick appointment books with a calendar and they had all their assignments, upcoming tests, etc. in there. We didn't have Google Calendar or widespread use of Outlook with reminders and shit. No, we had thick datebooks and they were clunky and awful and we liked it! Anyway, I didn't use one. I kept nearly everything straight in my head just fine. So to see now that I can't do it anymore and that I need to post reminders all over the house and my office (in addition to leveraging all kinds of digital tools) is a tad depressing. 32 going on 73...

Well, that's all for this installment. We had another visitor in town last week that we'll recap soon. Here's a hint, she loves Big Red. Not just the gum... Oh, and I finally wore and subsequently threw away my last pair of boxer shorts. Saved the gaudiest for the last!

Ciao! Now where's the damn laptop power cord?