Sometimes grown-ups are boring

I started writing a "post" recapping our grown-ups' weekend in Chicago, but I was so bored writing it that I decided you would not want to read it, and I deleted it (because adults always know what's best and get to make the rules).

So we had a good time. It turned out to be "no big deal" leaving the kids for the first time since Jo was 21 months old (and Opie not yet "with us"). I wasn't really gone long enough (like 36 hours) to miss them. My mother, who had three kids in less than four years and was until recently the president of a large state university, was totally nervous about being "in charge." She came armed with new clothes and books for each child, enough stickers to completely recover my couch, and a special "badge" for Jo to mark her status as Grandma's Very Important Helper. But everything was fine including Opie who "slept through the night" two nights in a row which he never does any other time.

Our hotel room was one of the "smallest" I've ever seen. All it needed was an ice sculpture and some shuffleboard courts = instant cruise ship. Everything was mounted on the walls to conserve "space," and the "bed" was so small that my (average-sized) husband couldn't stretch out all the way without his feet hanging off the end.

First stop: Japanese food, something we can't "exactly" get much of in Mayberry. We soaked up the scene and the sake. Next stop, back to the "cruise ship." The sleep was "blissful," it's true, but our neighbors' TV blaring at 7:30 a.m. wasn't, so much. After brunch with some "friends" it was all about the shopping. My final haul was two pairs of shoes, a bunch of socks, a necklace, and a fall coat with a (fake) fur-trimmed hood (because if I am going to live in the frozen North I might as well look the part). We also bought the world's heaviest wedding gift which we will probably have to "hand-deliver" to the recipients in Washington, DC because that will be cheaper than UPS.

Saturday night we had dinner with one of my "oldest" and dearest friends and her husband at a fancy restaurant* that was definitely not "family-friendly." Mostly because you would not want to drop $20 on an "appetizer" that no kid would touch with a ten-foot chopstick.

Sunday morning I split early to get home in time for Grandma to jetset off to D.C. ("dammit! why didn't I give her that gift to drop off?!") for some dinner meeting. Even though I had to leave at 8 a.m., driving solo (chai tea latte) in hand, was the final luxury in a weekend of same.



*This post's "annoying" punctuation brought to you by said restaurant's menu, which was chockablock with unnecessary quotation marks and "irrational" use of bold and italic type. For example, and I "quote":

Salad of Organic Beets, Heirloom Tomatoes and "Upland" Cress, "Easter Egg" Radishes, Cracked Hazelnuts, Kohlrabi and Great Hill Blue Cheese

Whole Roasted "Dressed" Squab with Black Mission Figs and White Peach "Jam", Cipollini Onions and Crisp Potato Cake