ye gud olden days

we're back from houston now. it was fun.

i went out to dinner with tricia & mari to van loc. this was such a treasure.. to hang with my girls over a tofu clay pot! and now we all live elsewhere.. austin, chicago & boston, that this just wouldnt happen otherwise. so for a shining hour or two, the outside world just didnt exist as we sat around gabbing.. in person !

& then we trailed to the axiom reunion show at fitzgeralds and saw a bunch of people there. i felt fairly young again except i wasnt nearly as inebriated, and i heard myself and others continually saying "oh my it's been along time!!!" over and over again. to the point it was a bit annoying, but really it had been a long time. i was also very aware of how much i talked about my kids and our moves over the last 3 years. but after we "caught up" i began to feel a bit more relaxed and was happy to move to other topics.

back at my moms house, the kids were familiarizing themselves with the toys gran had found to borrow, when jim had to rush off to the hospital for a week out of our visit. we were all pretty scared, but he came through okay. it turned out to be some backlash from the chemo he had just finished up the week before our visit.

it was pretty lonely there for the days he was up at the hospital, being stuck in suburbia was not the way i envisioned our vacation. and it was 93F/35C, so it was hardly the kind of weather that begs you to be out-of-doors. everyone we know was at work during the day, and the kids go to bed too early to be dragging them out on dinner dates all week.. although i did it once.

everything changed after jim got out of the hospital & philippe arrived. we went out twice on a date! & that was really great. really nice to see the people we hadnt hung out with in years, go to rudz, and eat at the places we'd missed. and as a little bonus, we dropped in to cecils (the bar across the street from my old digs) just to see if anything had changed - and if you could have put your ear right up to my cold bottle of lone star beer, you could just barely hear the theme song to cheers.. "where everybody knows your naaa-ame" haha.

we also went to the old sixth ward historic home tour for a brief visit to catch up with some friends - and we spent an afternoon at the park with my dad playing with the kids, followed by dinner.. and we also went to hermann park to look at the quack-quacks & ride the kiddie train with betty & her grandson.

we didnt get to see a few people or visit a couple of certain restaurants (el rey, in particular).. but overall it was good to be back.

i'll be posting the new pictures next weekend, cuz right now i'm busy making lucas' halloween costume. he's going to be lightning mcqueen (from the "cars" movie).