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.