Getting away
The Webmaster and I escaped for a little while this weekend. We hired Auntie to watch the kids and met up with Friend and Doc for the Mariners vs. Giants game on Saturday. The weather was beautiful, the game was great (we won, and then we continued to win and swept the Giants altogether on Sunday – woo-HOO!), and we were all without kids for the first time in a while at a ballgame.
I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the Webmaster’s shoulder during the sixth inning.
Besides the fact that I can’t remember the last time I got to bed BEFORE 1 am, I had been out very late on Friday night. I was at Friend’s house, holding my very first stamp camp for a crowd of… 5. It was a good experience for me, but it was very different being on the demonstrating end of things than being on the customer end. Instead of getting to sit down, make the cards, and enjoy myself, I was really working. There was a good deal of stress involved, too. I wanted people to like the cards I’d made (they did). I wanted them to understand my directions (they did, when they read them). I wanted people to finish on time (3 out of 5 did). And I wanted people to order things (2 out of 5 did). All these things I never had to think about when I was just a customer! But it was a good learning experience for me (and many thanks again to Friend, who was my willing guinea pig hostess, though she was nicely rewarded with a hostess gift that she got to choose herself). However, the end result was that I crashed for about half an inning while I was at the game, so tired that not even the sound of roaring fans could keep me up.
After my power nap, I felt much more alive and enjoyed the rest of the game. After we won, the Webmaster and I did a bit of shopping at Uwajimaya (we needed more Pocky for the Munchkin, and I was almost out of genmaicha (brown rice green tea), and then we bought a feast fit for Father’s Day from our favorite hole-in-the-wall local Chinese restaurant, Tai Tung. I grew up eating off their menu. My grandfather knew the owners way back when, and he used to call up orders all the time and send my parents to pick it up, and then we’d have Chinese food at Obachan and Ojichan’s for dinner. My Dad was longing for their pork egg foo young, and I wanted their chicken subgum chow mein. We ordered a nice assortment, and while the Munchkin and Baby Boy weren’t that excited about it, everyone else scarfed it down.
It was nice to get away without the kids for a little while. Part of the reason that the Webmaster and I have been staying up insanely late is that it has become OUR time. Once the kids are in bed and asleep, we can talk, clean up, watch TV together, and simply be together without also being Mommy and Daddy at the same time. The best part of the time we spent alone on Saturday wasn’t the game (though it was great) – it was the drive back to my parents’ house. We had bought senbei (rice crackers) at Uwajimaya and were snacking on them while I drove through bad weekend traffic, and we just shot the breeze about anything and everything. The car was full of the smell of really good Chinese food, and there was peace and quiet as we talked and laughed and had an inside joke or two. It’s those kind of times that keep our marriage healthy. We like each other and like spending time together. We love our children, but someday (a long, long, LONG time from now) they will be grown and (hopefully) have families of their own. And we’re still going to be stuck with each other. So it’s good to check in and reconnect, just to make sure that we’re still on the same page. Even if that means that you don’t get to bed until 1:30 in the morning.
And now that Auntie is out of school and her softball commitments are over, I see a little more time alone in our future. So I’d better keep working on this demonstrator thing. I need the cash to pay her to watch the kids. For a kid who promised me (at age seven) that she would baby-sit for free, she sure is pushy about wanting to be paid now. I have witnesses, but I should’ve gotten it in writing.
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