All About my Hot Date And I Do Mean All

[katemn]

The title of the hot date was: an Evening with My Husband at the Opening Ceremonies of the National Space Symposium.  It involved me driving 3 1/2 hours there and 3 1/2 hours back to make school at 8am the next morning.  I really didn't give much thought to what I wouldn't be doing, and that was sleeping.   It involved us realizing how out of practice we are going on these kinds of big dates.  Or any dates at all.

I left school at around noon and went to nurse Chloe one last time and leave her with Cora, and she was smiling and happy as a clam as I left, and so I just made a decision not to worry about leaving my six-month old daughter overnight.  Andrew was going to be picked up by his grandma and spend the night and he always loves it there and she's good with him.   So I was driving over to the main road and Daniel called, he was just 1/2 hour ahead of me!  He convinced me to go over the southeast pass, and I'm glad I did because the roads are straighter and it's really pretty.  The sunlight leaving was fantastic and I got to appreciate our eastern mountain range for a little while, as I don't often do.  Despite our lack of what sensible people would consider spring, it really is quite beautiful, in a majestic kind of way.  I got over the pass just fine and headed up the highway.  Daniel stopped to buy a shirt (because he couldn't find his white dress shirt) but he still got there ahead of me.  He was staying at a little tiny motel next to a Big-O Tire store.   He wanted me to iron his new shirt so I got going on that and somewhere between ironing and pumping we realized we were running late and the doors closed at 5:45 so we started moving really fast.  That's also about the time that Daniel realized he forgot his suitcase, which was only sitting RIGHT by the door.  It had undies and ties in it.  Luckily his toiletries were out and his shoes were out of it, so he got dressed in his suit but we still had to get a tie on the way to the event. (The dress code was “tie or sweater vest”).  While I dressed he looked in the phone book and found the nearest Target.Cue the hurry-up music.  We dashed out the door.  I put my makeup on in the car while he drove to Target.  I realized that the low-cut black top I brought did not cover my ratty old nursing bra (from the FIRST baby) so I was going to require a new bra.   We screeched into a parking spot at Target.  My door was open before he stopped the car.  We ran, really ran, to the entrance.  Must have been a sight, us dressed to the nines running like track stars into the store.  He headed for the ties, I headed for lingerie, and began uttering probably the funniest prayer God's heard in a long time:  “please God! Let me pick a good bra and let it fit without having to try it on!” Utter blasphemy, both to God and to bra-trying-on women everywhere.  I also dashed through purses and grabbed an evening bag without stopping.  Seriously, I did not stop.  I was done at the register before Daniel came back with his tie and we ran back to the car.  He put his tie on and I gave the poodle in the car parked in front of us a show when I took my nursing bra off and put the other one on, breaking the tags with my teeth.  It fit!  I put my ID and lipstick and an extra pad (since, you know, my period had the effrontery to arrive the day before the first really Hot Date with my husband in months) in the little bag but I had to take the clip off my cell phone for it to fit.  Meanwhile Daniel was praying to find the hotel, and luckily a Broadmoor van was driving just in front of us so he followed that.  When we got there and parked the car in the garage three stories below the immense hotel complex, we came up and there were suited people everywhere all kind of headed the same direction, so we joined the flow.  That’s when we noticed the protestors.  “KEEP SPACE FOR PEACE!” the signs said with little hand-drawn peace signs and rockets with the red circle & slash over them.  The people looked quite earnest, all ten of them, but also kind of hunched over in their spring jackets.   I said, we must be at quite an event if there are protestors!  How come there weren’t protestors when I came here for the Colorado Music Educators Association conference?? (Because it would be in bad taste to protest music education: “DOWN WITH TROMBONES!  KEEP SCHOOLS FREE OF MUSIC!” Nope.)On our way into the auditorium a suited server offered us wine on a linen-covered tray.  Elegant people were milling around everywhere, drinking wine and looking collegial and making us feel a little out of our league in our ten-year old suit, thrift store skirt and WalMart top with the handbag I’d just bought at Target for $11.99 dangling from my un-manicured hand.  The auditorium was immense.  There were gigantic TV screens everywhere, with one bigger screen in front with a view of the Earth from space.  The stage was draped and lit and chairs filled the auditorium.  It was like being at a national political convention, except the banners said Space Foundation and had pictures of planets and stars and rockets.  We found seats.  On each seat was a glossy program and a card for a free gift at booth #202 in the exhibition hall.  Since part of Daniel’s purpose in being there was to get free loot, we determined to get to booth #202 at the earliest opportunity.  Soon the festivities began.  The speaker was a funny personable guy and he first honored the astronauts sitting in the room   Buzz Aldrin.  The first woman in space.  The first African-American in space.  Holy crap, I was in the same room with Buzz Aldrin.  Not something that happens to us every day.  I had to kind of pinch myself while I was clapping for Buzz Aldrin and the other astronauts’ sheer amazingness.  Daniel just had a goofy look on his face.   Then the speaker said he wanted to honor another group of important people, the Teacher Liaisons.  He had the Teacher Liaisons stand up.  That meant that Buzz Aldrin was now clapping for my husband.  I was so proud that a tear fell down my cheek and I felt like I was going to burst.  When he sat down I whispered, seriously, all you did was fill out an application and write an essay???” Daniel whispered back, “you wrote the essay.”  After the recognition and awards were done, the band played.  Not just any band, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, complete with five-member brass section and a frontman that looked like a 50s gangster, and he had the chest hair to go with it.  They played and sang so well, I wanted to get up and dance and show off my Teacher Liaison husband.  But they had staged dancers that did all kinds of crazy moves and then dragged the astronauts up to dance.  The band was so good!  They did their own stuff and a few numbers by Cab Calloway, of 40s and 50s swing fame.  Such great brass playing and bass playing and drumming.  So very fine, so fun to watch.  I was so sad when it was over, but we realized that our free gift at booth #202 was waiting.  So we made a beeline.We had no idea the wealth of giveaways these companies can afford.  If you’re building rockets funded by the government, you’re loaded.  We rationalized that our taxpayer dollars were paying for this stuff so we dove in.  The free gift turned out to be an awesome t-shirt that I wore to school the next day.  Other loot we got included posters, pens, and office doo-dads galore, a teddy bear for Andrew, and tons of other stuff. Daniel grabbed about five free books on Six Sigma and as he was shoving them into the bag he asked me, do you know what Six Sigma is?  The only reason I even know that Six Sigma has to do with quality control is because I worked for that engineering firm in document control for nine months.  Anyway, it was kind of overwhelming the stuff that was on display and the companies that engineer and build or handle the most amazing spectacular stuff that has anything to do with rockets and space exploration.   We even got solid glass beer mugs from one company, and yes, they came with beer (the dark good stuff).  The coolest thing I got was my light-up ice cube.  It was a plastic cube made to look like ice with circuitry and a bulb inside, and when you put it in water the water completes the circuit and the bulb lights up.  I forgot to mention the cash bar and the carving stations.  The food was little sandwiches, which Daniel wasn’t that impressed by, but I love well-made sandwiches with roast beef and mustard and good pickles, so before you could say “Cora’s tamales were about eight hours ago” I had downed five little sandwiches.   The last two were from the carving station and I got some to-die-for fruit salsa to go with it.  I’m going to make it at home—rolls with golden raisins in them, the melon-scallion salsa, and baked ham.  One company was giving away ice cream so I went and got a little tiny cup of Bailey’s Irish Cream-flavored ice cream.  Then an announcement was made to head over to the main hotel building and go to the terrace to watch fireworks.  Yes, fireworks. So we dumped everything in the car and headed over.  There was electronic music playing over loudspeakers and people milling around everywhere, and the fireworks were really great and lasted about fifteen minutes.  Daniel hugged me while we watched because the breeze was cold. I had the presence of mind to remember that somewhere a while back, Daniel and I were lovers and friends and that despite also now being co-parents and economic partners we are still lovers and friends, we just have to act like it from time to time.  After the fireworks I saw someone with a plate that looked like dessert so we headed in in search of dessert, which happened to also have free champagne to go with it.  I stood in a long line and eventually got a plate of strawberries and other fruit that I then was able to drench in chocolate sauce from a gi-normous vat.  I would have given anything to dip my cupped hands into that vat of sauce and just slurp it up.   We found seats in a lounge room decorated in Victorian Southeast Asian Colonial with oversize chairs and talked and just felt simply decadent. On a trip to get more champagne Daniel found pizza so we ate pizza with our chocolate-drenched fruit.   After that we figured there was really nothing else to do but head back to our hotel room, and then upon returning we found that the little motel room really was about the size of one of the oversize chairs where we were just sitting.  For decency’s sake (get your mind out of the gutter, I had to pump breast milk again) I’ll skip forward to the alarm going off at 4 am and me leaving at 4:15 to drive back to school with a mug full of motel coffee and three packages of peppermint gum at the ready.  I listened to the BBC (broadcast from the CC public radio station) til the mountains obscured the signal.  The sun didn’t come up until I was completely over the pass but it was just gorgous, going down the road in the early morning sunshine, feeling very surreal and sated and lightheaded with lack of sleep, but also feeling that the whole endeavor had been gloriously worth it. 

Tags: date, travel

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[cutecowgirl]

Apr. 10, 2008 at 2:54 AM Gongrads..Sounds like a wonderful evening

[MommaK2007]

Apr. 10, 2008 at 7:08 AM Wow, Kate!!!!  Sounds amazing!!!!  And your ability to describe it in such an entertaining manner is incredible (just like you; have I told you that lately? lol).  Thanks so much for taking time to share.  I'm so happy for you two.