As the kids and I boarded the plane last week for our end of summer East Coast adventure I was hit with a number of emotions…”Phew, we made it through security okay.”, “Crap, why didn’t I get a prescription for Xanax before we left, I hate to fly!” “Please God don’t let that woman with the 2 screaming kids and overflowing backpack of junk sit near us” and “By cocktail hour today I will be on EST with a Kir Royale in hand…aahhh”. Fortunately, by now, you all know I think and emote as fast as I talk so all of those fragments of thought zipped through my brain in the time it took me to pour my small (too small) bottle of Bailey’s into my pseudo Starbucks coffee cup. First sip down and we were off…to a land where I relax more, talk slower (and with a little more sass in my twang) and believe one day I will end up living again.
As this was a trip the kids had been talking about for months, we definitely had agendas filled with must see items in our nation’s capital city. The kids have been a few times so we continue to check things off our list while also ensuring we have time to visit family and friends. Granted, the time is never long enough and the visits never frequent enough but I have found this year that combining sweet tea fixes with new adventures at home has made me miss Alex much less…to the point of being almost ready to handle the impending marriage announcement I know that must be in their future. To assure you I'm not completely naive, that announcement will also require a trip to BevMo but really, so does a conversation with my mother so in the grand scheme of things, not so bad. However, my point is, while my bank account could probably handle less trips, my psyche has definitely benefited.
Of course, my life wouldn’t be my life if there weren’t a little unreal thrown in so the adventure of getting a phone call at 11pm on our first night from my brother and his family who had gotten a flat tire leaving DC after dinner with us started it off right. My dad and I left the kids with my stepmother and took off in his upscale SUV to rescue the stranded crew. By rescue I mean he had his AAA card out and was prepared to use it. As I had already climbed into bed by the time the call came in, I threw on a pair of sweats, my “Basketball Mom” t-shirt and blinged out flip flops and we were off. When we arrived at the Secret Service check point in front of the White House (yes, this is where they were stuck) my nieces were in great need of a bathroom. We sent my sister-in-law and the girls off to the 4 star hotel across the street and we waited with my 18 month old nephew sleeping in the stroller. To add to the excitement, my youngest niece had broken her flip flops and I decided walking into the Willard hotel barefoot at midnight looking for a bathroom could send the wrong message so I now was sans shoes. At dawn on the day in question I was dressed to kill in a white halter dress, jeweled and Farah-haired out and now I was barefoot, in sweats and pushing a stroller along Independence Avenue…my, how the mighty have fallen. I have to admit though I was a little distressed that I obviously was not pulling off the destitute mom act as not one person walking by threw me any change. It could be that I was pushing the stroller right next to a new model Infiniti but still, a token contribution would have just added to the evening.
As anyone in my family can attest, we don’t know how to fix things, we know how to get things fixed so with a hit of the hammer and a quick tire change by Pongo (yes!) from AAA, crisis was averted and I was ready for the next adventure…with my blinged out flip flops, of course!
Again, I’d have nothing to write about if my life weren’t, well,…my life!
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