Apparently, I'm quite the social butterfly these days. Since I can't walk far, people have been really good about visiting me on Shabbos afternoons so that I don't get too bored. So I've had a steady stream of visitors, which is fantastic. I should have tried this "restricted activity" thing a long time ago. Even cooler than that was that weeks ago I made an off-hand comment to
gnomi that she should come down here to re-teach me to knit so that I would have something to do while on weeks of agonizingly boring bed rest. And she did! Conveniently timed with osewalrus and beckyfeld's anniversary shabbos, she came down this past weekend and spent two hours with me Saturday night playing with pointy sticks. She brought me a bib pattern, three balls (? skeins? what do you call them?) of cotton, bamboo needles, and a bag full of random knitting supplies. She rocks!I have now knitted (knit?) 1.66 bibs. It's pretty nifty. I only need about 30 more. :) Nomi wins the prize for going out of her way to come down for a random visit. Thanks, Nomi! And thanks to Michael for having your HS Reunion so conveniently timed as to free your wife up just at the right time!
Visit with Alexis and Family
However,
arosoff wins the prize for number of miles traveled to visit. She and her husband and beautiful, adorable, fantastically cute baby Aliza came from the UK to visit her parents in NY. Since they were planning a weekend trip to DC, they stopped by Silver Spring on their way back up to NY on Sunday to have a nice visit. It was raining, of course, which I figured should make them feel right at home, except it wasn't the lovely drizzle you get in the English countryside, it was pouring buckets, which isn't quite what one would hope for. Thankfully, our roof works quite well. We weren't sure when to expect them exactly, so I figured I'd better make something for lunch that would be easy to accommodate, but easy to act as leftovers if they weren't here for lunch. Conveniently, they arrived just as lunch was coming out of the oven. Fantastic how that works! We had mac n' cheese casserole and salad. Neil, of course, doesn't eat anything green, but we made up for it with cheesecake for dessert. They were absolutely as lovely as I expected them to be and then some and I so hope we get to visit with them again sometime. Alexis' first words when she walked in the house were, "Wow, you really are showing already!" Yep. There's no hiding it. I wasn't kidding. Honest.I even finally got to learn where I got some of my bridge quirks. I mean, I play American Standard, except I learned from my father. So I play a five-card major, except when I don't. Because, you know, sometimes you can't resist the four-card major. Well, apparently, that's a British thing. My dad did, of course, learn American Standard, but played in the UK for a number of years, and apparently co-opted some habits there. Well, at least now I can justify it to my partners. Not that I ever get to play bridge anymore. I've become embarrassingly unskilled at bridge for lack of opportunities to play. Online bridge just isn't the same.
Visit with Jeanne and Rose and bunches of Kids
Yesterday Julian had a half day at school and I couldn't bear the thought of spending the day in the house with him, particularly in light of the fact that Seth wasn't going to be home in the evening. So I checked in with Jeanne to see what her plans were, knowing full well that asking at 11am what her plans at 3pm were wasn't entirely fair. Still, she was all for some extra company (she already had planned to have Rose come over). So I picked Julian up, ran home to grab something to eat because I was starving, threw together a diaper bag, and jumped back in the car. Julian dozed in the car on the way up (it's an almost-hour drive) but not for too long. We arrived just before three. There were Jeanne's three kids, Rose's two kids, my one kid (who's rambunctious enough to equal 2 or 3 all by himself, but honestly? I think he was the calmest one there, with the exception of Alexander, Jeanne's youngest). Plus, you know, the four on the way (Jeanne's pregnant, too).
I hadn't seen Jeanne in a billion years and I've heard a lot about Rose from Jeanne but had never had the pleasure of meeting her, but I'm so glad I did. She's lovely. We had a wonderful afternoon and the kids played very nicely together. Julian was a bit reserved which I think was largely because he was exhausted from a busy last day of school and no real nap, and partly because there was a lot of activity around him. Jeanne even convinced me to get a belly-shot (on her camera, what in heaven's name was I thinking? Now someone ELSE has the evidence!!), which is quite the accomplishment.
All in all, a lovely afternoon. We packed up around 5:40 and piled into the van and were on the road by 5:50. Poor Julian was so tired, he was asleep within about 10 minutes. When we arrived home he started to cry because he was out of sorts from being woken up. He asked Seth to pick him up and told Seth he wanted to go take a nap in his room, and there he slept until 4am, when he came down and crawled into bed next to me and slept for another 2 1/2 hours. Poor tuckered boy.
And in other News...
In other news, I learned today that my client loves me and that I have the power to effect change at my job. But I'll post more on that in a non-public post later.
