The D to the C

I'm in the Town That Seems to Get Nothing Accomplished, more commonly known as Washington DC.

Here for work, but during the snore-inducing mentally stimulating conference sessions, I am mentally reliving my days as a mad-cap and carefree White House intern. Running amok with my fellow overachievers in the hallowed law-making halls of the government. Getting shooed away from closed doors ("Who's in there?") by Secret Service agents ("Who do you think?") who had no time to spare for flirting interns. Hey, I challenge you not to get a little weak kneed by those black-suited, broad shouldered gents with the fancy earpieces.

We made some visits to Capitol Hill, and I noticed with alarm at how freaking young the current crop of interns appear as they flit about. I was most certainly not that young, was I?

It makes me even more aware of how much trust my parents had in me not to make a complete ass of myself by supporting my short stint in this town. Granted, they did fly across country with me to ensure that I had a safe place to live, and they did walk me to my first day of work. Oh, yes. They did.

And I love them for that.

As much as the memories are fond, and I've enjoyed visiting some new museums and seeing old haunts, I'm more than ready to come home. I miss my boys.

Goin down to The Winco

My grocery bill has been out of control. When we were figuring how much we could afford to move up and still live below the golden handcuff threshold, I discovered how much I was spending each month on food. I don’t know what’s normal for a family of three, but this seemed a bit abnormally high and made my inner tightwad cringe. I realize I’ve been a bit of a grocery store snob, spending more at Safeway because it was a “nicer” store and I knew where everything was.

For the past few months I’ve been trying to do a better job at meal planning and doing a big shop every two weeks to limit the “can’t get out the store for under $50 bucks” quick trips to the store.

I’ve been having good grocery bill luck at Winco Foods. Rather, I feel I should say “The Winco” because it’s the kind of store where people probably put a capital “the” where there really isn’t one. Like “The Walmart” or “The K-mart.” The Winco ain’t fancy. It’s not a club store, but I don’t know what to compare it to. Maybe a Cash and Carry. They basically cut open packing boxes of goods, and let the shoppers have at it. There is actually a decent selection of fresh items (fresh pizza dough = toddler fun!) and the produce is less bruised because it is barely handled by the stockboys. You do get to wrestle elbow to elbow over the bulk garlic with ladies wearing mint green house coat/sweats combos and shove your cart past clustered (Here, let me move your cart a skotch so I can squeak by! Thaaanks.) families of five pondering the merits of all bean vs meaty chili. You also have to bag your own groceries.

I am actually thrilled to bag my own groceries. I have a little issue when it comes to grocery bagging. Save the “An issue? No shit.” comment Russ Anonymous. When I unload my cart, I group things in the order I want them bagged – this makes unloading easier. Frozen goods with frozen. Produce with produce. Cans with cans, and so on. (This makes sense right? I’m not the only one with this issue, am I?) Then I have to look on in horror as the bag boy throws my scheme all to hell when he tosses things all willy nilly into bags. Bread on the bottom? ARE YOU SMOKING CRACK!!

Ah, but the self-bagging station at The Winco lets me express my grocery OCD in peace. I saved a hundred bucks today. I know because I had priced my list online at Safeway thinking I would have it delivered. My inner tightwad feels vindicated after all the coin we’ve been throwing around after our move.

Colin was my copilot today. He loves places like The Winco. His huggy-heart battery gets charged full. He grabbed a ladies furry hood before I could stop him. She turned with a furrowed brow and her frown turned upside down at his big grin. He says hi to everybody, and most people say hi back. He smiles. I smile. They smile. It’s a regular glad fest! And if they don’t say hi back? He keeps yelling, “hi!”…”Hi!”…”HIIII!!!” until they do. That’s my boy. Persistent in getting the answer he wants – wearing a smile the whole time.

Land of the Lost

Everyone, including myself, assumed that I would get lost – and so, lost I got. Everywhere. My first self-fulfilling prophecy was deeply ingrained in my by the time I was in kindergarten.

I remember being in a large department store with my mom, and I was playing in the middle of a circular rack of clothing. I would pop out to surprise her, “boo!” One time I popped out and she was surprised – problem was, “she” wasn’t my mom, who had moved on to some other section of the store. So I did what I had learned, went to the nearest location that looked helpful and repeated the familiar refrain, “I’m Laura and I’ve lost my Mom.”

Major episodes took place in some of the hottest travel destinations of the eighties. Disneyland, Washington DC, San Diego, Hawaii…

I don’t remember the Disney incident, but I keenly remember the rest. In Hawaii I was on the beach with Angela and decided to go back to the hotel room (or she decided for me perhaps). I got the first step right – the correct hotel. I was convinced our room was that one corner door down the long hallway. Floor and room number? Apparently details that I hadn’t deemed important to remember. I knocked on doors to no avail until the maids took pity on me and let me ride down in the service elevator. My Uncle CJ found me at the front desk, happily hanging out behind the front desk with a shiny shell lei to ease my anxiety. He delivered me back to my bewildered folks.

San Diego was a similar story. By this time I had learned to pick out a landmark to orient myself. Problem was, the landmark in this case was a tower that looked the same from any direction. So when I confidently took off to get back to our rooms (I had a landmark, confidence was mine!) I was actually surprised to find I was not only not at our room, but that I had no idea where in the complex I was. Having by now learned that the service staff was usually sympathetic to those in the land of the lost, I hitched a ride on the laundry mobile and reconnected with my family somehow.

I’m sure the sibs were generally more annoyed than concerned at my frequent departures (this was of course in the pre high-alert danger era), and I think there was some healthy complicity mixed in.

Memory: After being admonished to wait for her at the bottom of a store escalator, they would say, “there goes mom!” pointing up. And up the escalator I’d go (since being apart from mom was not my favorite option since, Hey, lost all the time!) to the chagrin of mom, who showed up just in time to miss their role in it, so I get the verbal smackdown for taking off.

My most fearful lost episode was in Washington DC. We were at the Smithsonian, and closing time approached with voices over the speakers and a generally herding action towards the exits. Now, this next point is a hotly contested bit of history. Mom says that she told me to stay with her. I distinctly heard, “Go to the front door.” By this time in my life, I was officially a freak about staying by mom in public. “Mom,” I’ve argued, “why would I take off if you didn’t tell me to?”

Either way, I shuffled along to the front door, expecting to see the gang. What I saw was dirty downtown DC at rush hour with turbaned men and hostile looking strangers at every turn. I hightailed it back to the doors and uttered my sad refrain. I admit, it was terribly cool to hear my name being broadcast on the radios, and to be escorted through the deserted museum to the other entrance, where the disgruntled family awaited me.

You may think that this never-ending game of lost and found was played for attention? Trust me, there were no thankful tears and warm hugs at the end of my travails. More like dirty looks from the sibs and annoyance from the ‘rents.

Getting lost wasn’t the sole purview of vacations. Since I was more often than not absorbed in a book while we drove about our lives, I didn’t really have any sense of the landscape of my suburban world. When I received that coveted card of freedom, my driver’s license, I discovered that although I had the tools of freedom, I had no idea how to get anywhere I had been going to my whole life. Including my high school, the mall, my grandparents or even home. Here I admit a shameful confession: I got lost in my own neighborhood, not five minutes from my house. So along with the car keys came the Thomas Guide.

My battle with my malfunctioning inner compass hit a peak during teens and early twenties with a near phobic fear of getting lost or turned around. I improved my situation by landing in the cutest darned college town west of the Rockies when I landed in Ellensburg. Lucky for me, there were not so many streets to learn and my confidence in navigation began to pick up.

Somehow, I was able to traverse the crazy streets of Seattle with ease and by the time we hit Portland, with its lovely quadrant pattern and river landmarks, I …still got lost. But at least I knew where I was and which direction I should be going. The compass in my car and the advent of sites like MapQuest certainly didn’t hurt, and my car is usually littered with printouts of my gadabouting.

For Christmas, Santa Parents brought me a gift that helped me put my old nemesis to rest, (or enabled my reliance on directional tools, whatev) – a TomTom One XL! Now instead of calling RobRob in a panic on my cell phone (I’m on Division and 40th, how do I get to the freeway? What? I just passed that street. Now how?) I can punch in a waypoint, an address, or home, and my little friend routes me on my way. Even reconfigures the directions if I miss a turn. Where was this in my childhood? My parent's could have stapled this bad boy to my hand and let me have at it.

Thanks Santa Parents!

It's about time!

I'd be remiss if I didn't share our travel story for the first "due" trip Rob and I have taken since having Colin.

Wonderful Oma and Opa Wieking agreed to come down starting July 3 to watch Colin while Rob and I ran away, er took flight, ahem whisked ourselves away to the Bodega Bay Happy Hideout (read: family cabin on the Sonoma coast) for five days of R&L. We used the cabin as a base and cruised around Sonoma and Napa Valley wine country. Since we scored free flights (thanks, Southwest!) and lodging (thanks, family!) we were able to splurge on the activities. We gleefully upgraded our rental to a Mustang convertible, living to regret the decision, but it made the trip seem more carefree with our hair blowing in the wind and the sun burning our pale Oregon flesh.

Our most extravagant day o' fun was having a town car drive us to six wineries in Sonoma county (Benziger, Chateau St. Jean, Imagery Estate, Kunde, Ledson and St. Francis). The tour included a stop for a gourmet box lunch (same ol turkey sandwich, fancy box). While I loved being driven around and we felt comfortable to taste to our heart's and bladder's content, it was a bit odd to have the driver popping up at our elbows to ask if everything was okay. I'd like to think he was just ultra concerned for our good time, but I'm pretty sure he had to do that to get credit for his company bringing us there. We closed up that day with a lovely dinner at the Glen Ellen Inn. However, a day of drinking wine doesn't lend itself to a hearty appetite! We had more fun laughing at our waiter's curious expressions and phrasing.

Footloose and bumble-free, we slept in, went to a movie, cruised down the bay to the charming Spud Point Crab company for some truly scrumptious crab hoagies, scoured the surroundings for anything that looked like the mermaid and capped off the adventure in Napa for a gourmand's dream dinner at Auberge du Soleil. Ourselves and the 'rents scored a patio table with a view that brought to mind rolling Tuscan hills. Four courses, good wine and good conversation later, we took some crazy-ass windy blair witch road back to the cabin. Hey, mapquest told me to do it.

Knowing Colin was in capable hands eased our minds about his happiness and after we admitted that he probably didn't realize we were MIA, thanks to the never-ending bag of tricks Oma and Opa brought with them, we checked in daily and left it at that. After pondering the horrible logistics of getting ourselves to the Oakland Airport in time to turn in our car and catch our flight, we made the insightful decision to fly out of Sacto instead. We would be able to stay at the Compound and, although still leaving early, have an easier time getting to the airport. This ended up being a wise choice in more ways than we could have realized.

We closed up the cabin and hit the road for one more top-down cruise and pulled into town in mid-afternoon and found the pool beckoning. Rob turned into Kid!Rob instantly and we splashed around to our heart's content. After rousing ourselves at the unholy hour of 5am we rounded up all our luggage and started loading the car. And that's where the fun times ended. Rob got everything into the trunk and we said our goodbyes to my folks and got into the car. Well, when Rob put everything in the trunk, he succeeded 110%. The keys were blissfully tucked away in that locked compartment...with no access from the car interior. So, disaster recovery mode kicked in and I gouged my way through to Budget's shitty complementary roadside assistance hotline to be told that a tow truck would arrive to get the car back to the terminal. All well and good except our luggage is trapped in there! On to Plan B.

My dad took us to the airport, luckily we had the essentials to board our flight, and mom called their locksmith pal to open the trunk. Got to hand it to the ford designers. Even with the correct key code, the trunk wouldn't open. Three hours later the locksmith had to take out the backseat and the top for the motor and grope around until he found the keys. Bless the man. Oh, don't worry, we paid plenty for the effort. Mom sent us our necessaries and we would pick up our luggage on the next trip south, which happened to be set for two weeks in the future.

We had a great time. We were overdue for some R&L reconnecting time without the constant presence of the Bum. The story ends with Rob and I going together to pick up Colin from Donna's. We were nervous as a couple of teens off to meet their big movie star crush. Will he still love us? Will he squeal with delight? Will we be rewarded with the biggest Bumble hugs ever ever? Well, the first is probably a given. But the reunion was a little anticlimactic with Colin screaming (not in the cute eee! sense) to be put down, screaming to be picked up, screaming because he wanted Cookies!Now! Ahhh. The joys.