Two summers ago Harold and I saw Tom Waits at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville. It was far and away one of the best shows we've ever seen, so we swore we'd never pass up another chance to see him. Lucky for us he is playing the Fox in Atlanta on July 5, so we decided to make a weekend out of it. A weekend without Ben.
It was an easy decision to make at the time. I lived in Atlanta for 4 years and I take every chance I get to return for the occasional weekend. My parents and sister have been offering up their babysitting services since well before Ben was born and they are delighted that they finally get to have him for a whole weekend. So I know he will be in good hands. But now that the trip is upon us I'm starting to feel a little anxious. Harold has been away from Ben pretty frequently, as he's been working out of town quite a bit since March. But the longest I've ever been away from Ben is the 9 or so hours that I am at work each day. So two nights away from him is going to be quite a challenge.
Despite the anxiety, I am looking forward to a bit of a break. Harold and I haven't even been out to dinner together without Ben, so the prospect of a baby-free weekend in Atlanta is almost too much freedom to even contemplate. We have a number of fun activities lined up, a large number of which are going to focus on food. I hope to revisit all my favorite Candler Park/Little Five/East Atlanta spots: I need a black bean quesadilla from La Fonda, brown sugar vanilla ice cream from Jakes, Fellini's pizza, breakfast at the Flying Biscuit, a grilled cheese from the Righteous Room and a cider from the Gravity Pub. It's an ambitious agenda, but I hope to pull it off.
However the thing I am most looking forward to is sleep. Glorious, lengthy, uninterupted sleep.
But who am I kidding? Glorious, lengthy, uninterupted sleep is a thing of my past, at least for the next 25 years or so. I will likely wake up every couple of hours to check the clock to see if it's a reasonable time to call to check in. Hopefully I'll be able to resist making any 4am calls, but you never know.
A girl I work with recently returned from maternity leave and she mentioned how she has to pretend that she doesn't have a baby when she's at work. And it's true - that was really the only way I could make it through the day when I first went back to work (despite the regularly scheduled pumping reminders). So I may have to practice that to some extent this weekend, so that I can enjoy myself somewhat and not drive my family crazy by calling them every 1-2 hours. We'll see how it goes.
1 comment:
I wanted to let you know that we had an amazing weekend with Ben. He was the life of the party. I will say, however, that I had forgotten about those sleepless nights, and boy were they sleepless, for him and the rest of us, even Molly played like she was a mom. Even though Ben had to be dog tired, you would have never known with his happy personality. I hope you and Harold had as much fun as we did.
Post a Comment