Queen of Rambles

In the nine months that we’ve lived in Germantown, we’ve only trekked into DC four times. Two of those times were this weekend. We’re just wild and crazy party people.

Yesterday we hit the road and headed out for a night of Swedish bliss. One of Mike’s old co-workers landed a job in DC, so we went for dinner even though he and his wife are not the type of people we would ever just randomly hang around. They are an extremely nice couple, but much younger than us and very much into partying. I felt quite dowdy by comparison, but at least they didn’t put any pressure on us when we turned down wine (I just don’t drink it, Mike won’t drink if he’s driving). If we would have been in Sweden I would have had a miserable time because I would have felt obligated to speak Swedish and I would not have been able to express myself well thus I wouldn’t have said anything at all. I was going to try to speak Swedish last night, but it is just so hard and they were speaking English so I spoke English and we all got along and it was fun. They have a very typical Swedish meal, though it was not traditional Swedish fare. It was Indian food as only the Swedes can make it: a casserole with a layer of rice, a layer of shredded chicken, a layer of tomato sauce with heavy cream and a layer of bananas and peanuts. It was quite tasty, though Mike thought it would have been improved upon with the addition of more cream and a layer of bacon. As far as I can tell, all Swedes think food can be improved upon with the addition of multiple sources of fat. How do they stay so damned skinny?

Our host couple lives in a big apartment building right by the national zoo. We’ve passed by it several times and I’ve always wondered just what kind of people live there. The lobby was beyond divine and I was sure we weren’t going to past muster with our jeans and baby carriage, but the doorman let us right in. I was in awe and thought Mike needed to get a job at this guy’s company until we walked into the actual apartment. Let’s just say the building management has put all its effort in the appearance of the lobby and none in the apartments. I don’t even think the place had A/C, a must during a DC summer.

I just hope I didn’t bore them with my tales of MisterE. I tried to bite my tongue and ask questions about them and their life here in America, but as soon as they’d ask a question about Erik I’d go into a mama trance and start reciting his wonderful attributes. He crawls! He babbles! He has hair! He has teeth! Isn’t he smart! They were very nice and acted very interested. I liked them a lot.

Even though we had a late night, we had to get up fairly early so we could go back down to DC and meet up with my mom’s group at the zoo. This time we took the metro because the night before we learned that parking is just not worth the hassle. We were about fifteen minutes late and never did run into anyone from our group. It turns out only one other family went and they were even later than we were. In reality it worked out for the best. The zoo was packed and we were hungry so we ended up skipping everything but the giant pandas (the baby giant panda is related to E. He likes to hang upside down). If you’ve ever been to the national zoo, you know that it has a major design flaw. It starts at the top of a hill and continues downward. When it’s time to leave you have a major uphill trek on your hands. We’ve experienced this enough times to know it’s not worth going down the hill if you are hungry and in no mood to look at the animals. We ended up going to a yucky Indian food place, but at least we got to enjoy the beautiful weather.

MisterE was great on the trip. He didn’t fuss a single time in his new stroller so I guess it was worth the money after all even though it has some pretty major drawbacks. Should I be flattered that he gets fussy if he can’t see me? Or just annoyed? He plays really well by himself on the floor, but as soon as I leave his field of vision he starts moaning.

I was in a pretty crummy mood and declared that today was the Day of Thwarting. We saw a cockroach on the subway, we didn’t meet up with our group, we picked a gross restaurant, the restaurant didn’t have any toilet paper or a changing table, we were going to go to McDonald’s for our personal needs but it was down a flight of stairs and we had a stroller, I wanted a piece of cake, and the subway station was renovating the elevators so we had to take the stroller on a five minute escalator ride. I get freaked out enough on escalators without taking my poor sweet innocent baby down one in an unstable stroller.

Once we were home and I was able to get a little rest I felt much better and can even see why Mike was laughing about my Day of Thwarting whining.

We had to go grocery shopping tonight, so I went back to the bakery and bought a single serving of a Triple Chocolate Mousse cake. Yum! We’d taken a whole cake to the dinner party last night, but I didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy it. I had E on my lap and asked our hostess to cut me a slice. She gave me the same size slice she gave herself, which was probably good for me but did not satisfy my cake cravings very well. Let’s just say that if I hired her to portion out all my food my collarbones would be jutting out in no time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.