I went back to Rockville.

Hello, I’m back in Rockville. I flew home on Monday afternoon and Edda, thankfully, had no more seizures while I was gone and seemed to be back to her old self. Jeremy flew from Austin to SF on Monday where he’s networking for a few more days before he heads back to Rockville. I had to sneeze a couple of times on my very full flight from Austin and I coughed after I ate a dry cracker, but I stifled the sneezes with much nasal effort because I didn’t want to be the Chinese person spewing spittle willy nilly. I came home to Edda perfectly fine, Emy staying for a while visiting a sick friend, Vince slightly off kilter from meningitis vaccines he’d gotten earlier that day and Kitachi having stubbed her toe on a chair and icing it.

I want to recap quickly the rest of the vacation for future reference. Friday was Valentine’s day. The boys cooked dinner. On Sat, Jeremy went for an am bike ride, I went for a run. I took a rented Uber electric bike (fantastic! I’ll get one someday…) from the Stricker’s house to downtown Austin and hung around BookPeople and walked to various little stores and finally walked to the Austin Public library at about noon to have lunch with everyone. We walked around the fabulous new library, you can rent a laptop for four hours, for free! And there is a dedicated space for teens where, when we wandered in to check out the space, the librarian gently told us that we had to skidaddle unless we were expressly looking for a YA book.

Then we went home and I napped. I think Josh came by and moved furniture and boxes around. Then the four of us went out again – to ABGB for pizza, then walked to Bouldin Acres to play cornhole (Martins against Strickers), then walked to Golden Goose for a margarita and shuffleboard (girls against boys) and then finally to Tiny Pies for tiny pies – cherry, chocolate mousse and key lime.

Then we walked home – I don’t think I’ve been so happy in a long time. Good friends, good food, some nice weather and a whole evening with nothing to do. You know, never drinking makes drinking 1/2 an apple cider beer and a margarita on the rocks really enjoyable. Scott said they were a bad influence. haha.

Sunday morning we went to Bull Creek park which was Ruby’s favorite watering hole. We spent many, many weekend mornings here with Ruby and her friends – swimming and jumping (the dogs) and chatting (the humans). I remember Hoover – the dog who got large stones from the bottom of the water. I remember gestating Vince while at the park (that’s where we took the only photo of me pregnant with Vince). I was hoping to pet some dogs, but there were none there that morning. It has changed, there is a new bridge and the water pattern doesn’t seem quite the same. But it was nice to see it. I also spent a lot of time on this trip running around town lake on the hike and bike trail which reminded me of my first pregnancy pre-Vince. Ah, that little child. That babe (tucked in my tummy) and I walked around town lake most mornings. I’m so sorry you didn’t have a chance to see it! I missed both the human little one and the doggie little one on this Austin trip.

Sunday lunch we went to Smithville to eat BBQ. You see our sandwiches? That’s half a sandwich each. Jeremy ordered a sandwich and said we were going to share, so the lady gave us an extra bun and split it for us. It was still too much meat. Absolutely delicious, but a lot.

Sheila had a writing group and we took a walk through the trees which were burned in 2015.

Thank you Strickers for hosting! <3