Tag: East Coast

The Last Day of Vacation in Seattle

Saturday 8/8/09

 

Last Day

Up and awake and watching Discovery Network Shark Week.  The clock is ticking.  Today is our last day together in Seattle.  Tomorrow The Husband returns to work in New York City and My Kid and I continue on to two weeks with My Parents in Montana.  Last year the husband was able to take enough time to come to Montana with us (but the Seattle leg was cut short).  It’s so frustrating trying to combine parental obligations with a family vacation and also trying to see old friends in the city where we used to live.  We never get to succeed in doing it all.  I think we’re starting to feel that “sandwich generation” squeeze.

 

more Saturday 8/8/09

The pressure mounts on the last day of vacation, the last day of summer vacation for The Husband.  We left the Westin Hotel (the one that looks like 2 round nuclear plant cooling towers) for a walk to Pike Place Market.  I guess I was fantasizing when I thought we could eat them for breakfast every day of the vacation– on that first day when we took our walk from the other hotel through Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market the Nordstrom Rack and the rest of downtown in our relaxed “here we are again in old familiar–and also different since we lived here–traveling home to Seattle city day.

 

Today, we walked again to Pike Place market where we ate crumpets covered with yummy sweet and savory foods and unlimited mugs of tea (and we bought a dozen crumpets for his mother and my mother). We passed Goldmine Jewlery where our wedding bands were made.  I would have stopped but there was a “back in a minute” post-it on the door and as I said the clock was ticking. The thought crossed my mind, wouldn’t it be lovely to have her design a tiny gold ring for our little princess–maybe when she is older…  Then we walked on to Pioneer Square to take My Kid to Magic Mouse Toys.  She enjoyed her time there very much but didn’t find anything she needed to buy today.  Amazing.  My Kid can show amazing restraint.  (I mean come on, we were vulnerable parents feeling the pressure of a vacation ending, we probably would have bought anything if it brought a smile…)

 

We didn’t get to the pool today.  We never made it to the Pacific Science Center.  We never went for a boat ride.  There are friends we’d hoped to see who we never got to see.  Now our time is up.  When The Husband talked to his mom on the cell phone about all she thought still needed to be done there was so much tension that I ended up with significant shoulder pain from carrying the same purse I’ve been carrying around all week long.

 

We went up to The Mother-In-Law’s apartment to work on THE LIST.  We took some old chairs to Good Will and waited in line to drop them off.  We took some stuff to the UPS package express store and paid $100 to ship it to Brooklyn even though we don’t want most of it that is still the easiest way to deal because we are out of time.  (that list had 14 items on it when I looked–just sayin’)

 

Finally…

 

For dinner we had reservations at Etta’s, the Tom Douglas restaurant.  Our kid didn’t like the not-so-great-tasting-of-hamburger-grill crab cakes we got from the hotel room service last night and The Husband wanted to change her mind.  She wasn’t impressed with the Tom Douglas crabcakes either but that’s OK because we inhaled what she didn’t eat.  AND  My Kid ordered half a Dungeness crab for her dinner and ate it all by herself!!!  It was so good that when My Kid and The Mother-In-Law ordered desert The Husband and I split another half Dungeness crab.  It’s so much better than lobster or any other kind of crab even King crab.  Dungeness crab is the best shellfish either of us have ever had and it is not available on the East Coast.  Our meal was over $200.  But it was that time versus money thing and The Husband’s vacation time is so short and so not relaxing, we have to enjoy what we can.  We enjoyed the seafood at Etta’s restaurant in Pike Place Market very much.  

 

After The Husband dropped My Kid and I off at the hotel and drove his mom and her car home and returned in a taxi (more cash up front that seems extravagant to my people of origin who drive their own cars and carry their own food) he said his mom said something that acknowledged that he may not have had as nice a time as he might have had because of the numerous errands he succeeded in accomplishing for his mother.

Googling Randomly

I should be doing a million things (like cleaning–yuck and writing grant proposals–yuck), but instead I am hiding from the heat in our air-conditioned bedroom next to our sleeping daughter googling randomly.  It started with an on-line search for Brownie Girl Scout Try-It badges (because I have to get the requests into her leader today.)  I thought I could find badges she could get for the work she did in preparation for her First Communion or as a member of her school’s FirstLEGO Robotics team (there must be a badge, we saw Girl Scout First LEGO League teams at the Javits Center in April)

Then I googled Cirque du Solelil’s KOOZA because I was still thinking about this weekend.  I had hoped to see the production which was playing in Philadelphia yesterday when we were there and there were matinee tickets available.  I knew this because had the concierge check for me.  (KOOZA was concieved and directed by David Shiner whose workshop I was taking last fall when the seeds for the piece I did last week were planted)   But, My Kid didn’t want to go see the Cirque du Soleil  (Her concept of the show was probably damaged by the Simpson’s unflattering “Cirque du Puree”).   She was there to swim in the hotel pool and we had already dragged her to one theatrical experience not of her choosing. The Husband wasn’t backing me up, and I wasn’t selling it well.  We live on the East Coast, KOOZA will be in the region for months, it was not our only chance to see the production.  Other than seeing Bill Irwin’s show we were just there for a relaxing weekend get away. My Kid has been sick, The Husband was tired and the weather was HOT. So even though we could see the trademark tent from the hotel–nobody but me thought it was a great idea to go there.  Sigh.

David Shiner worked with Bill Irwin in “Fool Moon” which The Husband and I saw together in Seattle.  I googled Bill Irwin because he’s, well, he’s Bill Irwin and I saw his show this weekend.  I enjoyed the fact that his home page hasn’t been updated recently enough to include the current production even though it’s nearing the end of its run.  Bill Irwin led to the name Bruce Hurlbut, who played the piano for “Scapin” on Broadway and also for  the melodrama “The Drunkard” at the University of Montana when I, as a short thin high school student, played the child in the show.  His name led to the website of a new theatre in Washington full of our old Annex friends including Andrea Allen and Allison Narver and Jack Bentz who we had hoped could marry us but who wasn’t quite finished with seminary when we looked into it at the time.  I think he hooked us up with the priest from Seattle U who did marry us.

Gosh I feel so connected.