DC BABY

I really wish I had pictures to go alongside this. I would love you all to have a visual, but not today, not this morning, I am still waking. Maybe tomorrow......... I have to admit, I was a litte ambivalent about jumping in the car with two kids and my father to travel ten hours to an unfamiliar city, even if that city is dc with all its kid friendly activities. But all those fears are long gone now. We are having a great time. yesterday was great and our plans for the day are just as good: union station, swimming, museum, zoo and then home. We have jam packed our tourist outings in, and we even made time for me to see my long lost, much loved, room mate from freshman year of college. Our friends would call us "the odd couple" back then, because we are, in many ways, extremely different. She is histrionic and outlandish, always theatrical with make-up and hair to the nines. I came in country with a couple pairs of jeans and sneakers and the same hair style, no make-up. She was loud and boisterous, hollering out our window at all hours of the night into the green. I was more laid back and liked my sleep. And did I mention that she is black and I am white, even though we both marked "other" on those ethnicity boxes when they asked. Neither one of us thought it was that important to be defined by a race or a color. I think this is how we ended up together. God doesn't make mistakes. But this equation worked out. We would play off each other and pick up where the other left off. We would play practical jokes where we would convince our group of friends to pretend that a casual bystander was a celebrity. We would scream, yell, and snap pictures like crazed teenagers seeing usher or justin timberlake until a new mass believed us and started in. Then, we would run away, consumed in giggles that some unsuspecting person is getting mobbed for pics and asked for autographs. . On one particularly silly saturday at the mall, four of us decided to wander nonchalantly towards our car until a motorist desperate to find a space would begin following, tracking us at our heels. We'd all walk to the car, grab the handles like we were going to get in, and then make a break for it, watching the drivers face fall in devastation as we te-he-hed all the way out of there. So wrong and yet so fun. When Cheryl got to our room to meet up last night one of the first things to come out of her mouth was "somethings don't change" and you know what, they don't. I had ordered her cheese pizza and fruity bottle of chardonnay before she got to the door, but still gave her the menu so she could pick it out herself. She quickly plopped herself on the bed in front of x and preceeded to tell him that she was "his momma's freshman roomate, and maybean he doesn't think that means anything now, but it does.". We were consumed by giggles in the cab ride when she tried to tell the cabbie x was 4 to get cheaper fare only to have lexi boldly announce, "no, he is not!" With x following "yeah, I am six!" Stubborbly. Way to blow up our spot with honesty kids. DC gets expensive. The jokes started rolling then since the kids would just not let the age thing go and we had our first big glass of wine into us before going to see "up" in 3d.      . "No getting down before we see UP!" Cheryl admonished the kids before the giggles escaped. The same cabbie we tried to get cheap kiddie fare out of over paid cheryl her change, giving her $25 instead of the $10 that was deserved. He was a good sport as cheryl returned the cash and joked about our honesty. When we entered the cineplex I was greeted by a big wall of keys and in a moment of thoughtlessness I stated, "great if I lose my keys I know where they are. They just hang them right here.". Wrong-o hillary. It was a display against drunk driving. The keys were those of dead drunken driving  teens.there should be a rule against drunk thinking. I would not be finding my keys there.  Again, the giggles. Somethings never do change, kike cheryl and I being lightweight cheap dates. Giggles again when "aaron" the movie theatre guy thought we were cute enough to get a discount. Giggles againa as we tried to figure out how we looked: if we looked like a PC family with lexi as our love child and x coming out pigmentally challenged or if we looked like the nannies or two moms taking are kids together to the movies. Giggles again when I busted out the coffee cups with lids in the theatre and she picked the wine from her bag (waste not, want not) and watched up with x and lex while enjoying our grown up drinks. We laughed about how we did this in college, how we're doing it now with the kids, and how we will behave when we retire someplace warm in the caribbean. Somethings, especially the good things, don't ever change.