July Trip'in

Busy week, but here is a short recap.

After a few days in Marlborough, my friends daughter recovered from a very frightening condition brought on when her bone marrow was suppressed and stopped making new blood. Small detail, but important one, ya know? So she was fine. I left there in Friday and headed into Southie for a 4 day, 3 night city adventure.

Day 1 in Boston: what should we do? Sail Boston's in town! OK, let's go hop on the T and make a plan when we get there. It was great, I'll try to stick some photos in here somewhere. In this one day we rode the Red line, the Orange Line, a bus, the Silver Line, got an impromptu tour from a T driver, Go all DAY, FUN FUN, get moving, push the stroller, drag the kids, Ride a Ferry, walk again, walk some more, oh look it's a park! Play some more, get soaking we in a fountain and grab a taxi home... and, by the end of the day we were beat.

Day 2 in Boston: Drag myself out of bed at 5:45am when B decides it's time to wake. C is disgusted by the early wake up. By 6:45 we can't contain B any more and she wakes Jay, H's sister. Jay is graceful though, and doesn't seem bothered by the wakeup call. We eat cereal and plan our day. "Today," we say, "Today we will be home by 4pm at the latest. No need to stay out past then, we'll be exhausted if we do." Right. The best intentions. We went to the science museum. Have you ever been to the Boston Science museum? It's about 10 acres. Seriously. So, we stayed for hours, ate lunch looking over the Charles river, and still only saw about 2% of the things available at the museum. On the way home we swung by the Grocery store for a few things needed for dinner... made it home close to 4:30ish... I say, "ish" because we staggered in like drunks, exhausted, starving and ready for bed.

Day 3 in Boston: WAKE REFRESHED AND READY FOR THE DAY!!! Oh wait, nope, that's was B's point of view. That wasn't exactly what I was thinking when she woke me. But since I was up, and Jay was up. and C was up. and G was up. I figured I could go for a run. So I did 6.21 miles. It was not a PR, but it was the COOLEST run. Super views, nice breeze, cool people to look at, tall ships exiting the harbor, a revolutionary fort, the city streets. Yes, it was a cool run. I got back "home", took a shower and we headed out for the day. We went to the Boston Public Garden to see the ducks and ride the swan boats. Our ride on the swan boat was fun, uneventful, until I noticed a shoe in the water just ahead of our boat. It was purple, and a little bigger than B's shoe. I could hear a 4 year old girl crying on the side of the pond and I felt bad for the mom, figuring it was lost. I even thought, if we went close enough, I could reach it. Sure enough, the onshore crew starts yelling at our swan driver to steer left, and I knelt down and scooped it out of the water just as it went under the pontoon. I hefted it into the air for the child to see. And the crowd on the bridge over looking the pond goes crazy, the swan drivers all cheered, and life was good and pure. I was a hero. And the Swan Boat manager (someone in charge) gave us 4 free tickets as a thank you for my heroic efforts. After we had a quick lunch in the city, we caught the T back to Jay's neighborhood, packed the car, and headed to Norfolk, MA.

So, we've been in Norfolk for a few days, and they've been low key. Lots of hanging by the pool, bike rides, walk the dogs, a miserable hilly run, etc. I didn't run, ride or swim today. This was a change for me. A true rest day. I thought about it and decided that maybe my horrible run with leaden feet was the result of pure exhaustion combined with not enough rest.

G Senior is still in the hospital (H's father). He's now about a week "over due" to be released, and we saw him tonight... and I can tell you that he won't come home for at least 36-48 hours. Since he's been there all this time, the kids hadn't seen him. We finally caved and brought the kids over to see him. After visiting for about an hour, we took the kids over to the mall to eat dinner... and they have a rainforest cafe. Too bad we didn't have the camera. That place is unreal. Totally over the top. It was like a destination. You walk in the door, and you've arrived in a whole new place. Amazing. The food was OK. The Margarita was expensive. But the waiter, was McSteamy. Even H said, "oh wow, it looks like there really is something here for everyone g, even you get something to look at!" Too funny, but he was right. McSteamy... oh wow.