A happy evening

Abe has been working like crazy to win a huge deal with Caterpillar, and in about two hours he will give his final presentation/sales pitch in Peoria. Because he has had to work so much for this deal on top of his normal responsibilities (and his normal responsibilities at this point are basically two jobs already: managing his team AND hitting his personal quota), he has been completely and utterly swamped. He also was out of town for a week, and obviously he’s out of town right now for the presentation.

Anyway, Abe was so sweet and got a babysitter so that I could do whatever I wanted Thursday evening. It was the best time ever!

The babysitter came at five o’clock while everyone was eating dinner. That was great because it meant I got to skip out before Ammon threw all of his dinner on the floor and on his head. Those are my least favorite moments of the day.

I started by going for a swim. I love swimming because it’s the only time I don’t have pressure bearing down on my sore hips. After the swim, I went to Aubergine and had a falafel and quinoa bowl for dinner with some cucumber mint lemonade. So yummy! Then I headed to the Aveda spa in the mall and spent a loooong time there. I started out getting waxed, then moved on to a facial, and then ended with a pedicure.

It felt extravagant, but honestly, if I hadn’t done that, I don’t know how I would have survived this night. It’s 5:13am and I have been up since 3am because kids woke up a lot last night. First Mary had a nightmare and came into bed with me to cuddle, and then Ammon had a nightmare and needed cuddles in his room. After transferring a sleeping Mary back to her own bed, I was up for the day, so I ended up doing laundry and trying to catch up on some blogs. But since I had such a great evening, I feel great! I have no idea what this day will bring, but I feel full of energy right now, and I’m attributing that to my extraordinary evening.

After I finished at the spa, I went to the Gap and got outfits for our upcoming family reunion photos. Now I have a lot of returns to do because I had already bought some things for the photo, but the things I got last night seem to be much better.

After the Gap, I drove to my favorite place, Dairy Queen, and got my (unfortunately standard) large chocolate cone. NPR had some interesting shows on discussing the cultural significance of Princess Leia’s gold bikini scene. I never realized she had been sexually assaulted by Jaba the Hut. Apparently that’s obvious to any feminist viewing the film, but that detail escaped me. Anyway, I enjoyed becoming enlightened on that.

Then I came home, paid our wonderful babysitter, and finished off by almost finishing Cannery Row. In our upcoming Highway One trip, we were originally going to go to Monterey, so I felt that I should read Cannery Row. We have since swapped that plan out for Disneyland, but I am thoroughly enjoying the novel(la?? It’s so short!) anyway. It’s full of earthy pathos and hilarity.