monkeymom's Diaryland Diary
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SLC pt. 1
I'm back at work tonight after a week off, and I'm glad to be here. It's clean, quiet, and I'm wearing dry clothes, so it's all good.
Why are dry clothes such a treat? you may wonder, and I will tell you. Kim and I were going to take a walk tonight, like we try to do every night, and we put on our shoes, got the water bottle, and went to the door, but it was raining. Not hard, but steady, and I didn't want to go for a walk in the rain, but Kim doesn't mind rain, in fact she likes it, so she tried to talk me into going out with an umbrella, but I said no, and distracted her by suggesting we get in my bed and watch some anime on her laptop.
So we got into bed, and I had knitting and she played a game on her DS and we watched a couple of episodes of a show called The Diary of Something or Other-san. After a while, I noticed that I didn't hear the rain anymore, so we got up and put our shoes on, but we could see that it had started raining again, but this time I let Kim talk me into going out in it.
We were walking to Joe and Rondee's, which is near the end of our street, where we usually turn around and start back when we're doing the two-mile walk. Rondee brought a pie to us last week, and I wanted to drop off her pie plate. As we walked, the rain stopped again, and was just barely starting when we got to the house.
Joe was home by himself with their baby, who is about the same age as Soren, so we talked to Joe, and admired Hayden, and when we left, it was raining a little harder! He suggested that we wait a few minutes for Rondee to get home so she could drive us back to our house, but we explained that Kim is hardcore, and forces me to endure the elements (we had an umbrella), and we plodded back home.
And that is why it feels pretty good to be at work tonight, wearing dry clothes.
So the trip to SLC was great! We got there Wednesday afternoon and went right to work on admiring Soren, who is so beautiful and also smart, and likes to listen to the same book over and over, which is fine with me. I could read to him all day!
After dinner, which was Lentils and Chicken, one of my favorite things to eat, and even more so when I don't have to make it myself, we checked into our hotel, and I think we even went to bed fairly early, which for us is about midnight, since we had gotten up at Dark O'Clock to go to the airport that morning.
Our hotel was so beautiful I just wanted to move in and never leave! Ash found it for us when we were planning the trip, and it was perfect. We knew that we would be having Kim's friend Radar with us in SLC, so we needed a room with space for company to sleep, and Ash found a deal for us on a suite with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and we loved it! We were only two city blocks from Scott and Carolyn's place, and a block from the Trax train station, so we didn't need a car.
When we found out how much room we were going to have in our hotel, back in March or April, when we were planning the trip, Diana got excited about it and said she would come, too! Which is really the only thing that could have made the trip better. Oh, except for if I didn't have to fly, but you can't have everything, and anyway, that is what Xanax is for.
Scott was going to the temple on Thursday morning with people from his department to see the new ASL session at the Jordan River Temple, and he had invited me to go, too, so for the second day in a row I was up early in the morning! I walked to the train station and met Scott there, and we rode the train to his office building and from there we went to the temple in vans. It was very moving to see the ASL presentation, and I was wishing my mom could have been there, too. She would have loved it.
When we got back to the office building, Scott's boss told him to take the rest of the afternoon off to enjoy his mother's visit! We had already planned to meet Carolyn and Kim (and Soren!) for lunch, and they were just arriving. We were in the middle of downtown, so we left the car there, and walked the few blocks to the sushi place for lunch. The food was good, but babies who play with chopsticks sometimes poke one in their eye and start crying. They can be distracted by eating all the pickled ginger on the plates, so all ends well. (Old ladies who have walked several blocks in uncomfortable shoes and then sat on the floor to eat lunch find that they are stiff and achy when they get up. Ow!)
When we got back to the apartment, we called Inger's daughter Kate, who lives just a couple of blocks away, and she came over to visit with us. She and Kim changed to their bathing suits and went to sit in the hot tub by the pool, which was inexplicably closed, but I stayed in the apartment to enjoy Soren's company.
On Friday I stayed with Soren, and Carolyn took Kim to the bus stop to pick up her friend Radar, who was coming from Idaho to meet us. They met on an LDS dating website and have been chatting over the internet on their webcams for a while, but this was the first real meeting.
I am happy to spend my entire time in SLC sitting in the apartment with Soren, but Carolyn and Scott like to entertain us. We decided to go to the SLC library, which is really an interesting place to spend an afternoon. It has a glass elevator, and I am not the only person to have vertigo on that thing, but Soren likes it! We went up to the roof garden and looked at the mountains, and the city below us, and then we went down to look at the children's department. It's big and has some special reading areas for the kids. One of them is a Crystal Cave, and the other is an attic, that reminds me of the attic in a house we lived in, only the one in the library doesn't have bats.
Carolyn is pregnant and was feeling a little woozy after the hot sun on the roof, so I gave her a granola bar to raise her blood sugar level, and I took Soren downstairs to look at an exhibit of black and white photos of moms and babies of all nationalities that I had seen from the window of the children's department. Soren looked at about two of the photos and lost interest, but there was no one else in the area, so I let him walk around while I looked at the rest of them. I coaxed him back upstairs with me by offering him tiny bits that I tore off of a stick of Mango chewing gum, and then we gathered up Kim and Radar, who had gone off on their own to look at the library shops, and Carolyn, who was feeling better, and we went to find some lunch.
After lunch (the best gyros I've ever had), we went to the hotel. Carolyn had brought swim suits for her and Soren, and Kim and Radar changed into their suits and we all went out to the pool. I sat in the shade and knitted while everyone swam and jacuzzied. It was a beautiful day.
Diana arrived Friday evening and we went to pick up pizza, riding in the happy convertable. We took Scott and Carolyn with us and left the Kim and Radar in charge of Soren. After dinner we played Euchre! I love that game and there are not enough people in my life who want to play it with me!
I need to actually do some work now, and this is getting too long, so I'll pick up the story tomorrow.
In the meantime, here is a picture:
11:48 p.m. - 2009-05-26
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