In five weeks, I went to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Minnesota, and Los Angeles. Of all of those locations, I went to southern california to cool off apparently, because L.A. was cooler than MINNESOTA. Cooler in a few senses of the word, since the Teen Choice Awards parties were happening outside my hotel, and I ran into Clint Eastwood in the airport. I literally ran into a paprazzi photog while trying to find the cabs. I looked on TMZ later to see if there was a picture of Clint Eastwood looking irritated, and me looking like a dumbass in stretchy pants, standing in the background looking for cabs. There wasn't.
While I was wandering the streets of Minneapolis, pacing the streets like a nervous father in the waiting room, my sixth nephew came into the world. I was listening to "Let It Be" on my ipod over and over and over, occasionally crying, and generally looking like a hot mess. If I had seen me coming down the street, I would have crossed early to avoid me.
He was born on the first birthday of my last nephew, L, and I missed his birth too. I remember that one vividly -- he came into the world a few minutes after midnight while I sat on my front steps on a Saturday night watching people have fun and staring at my blackberry.
He's been an awfully sick little boy, but it appears he's on the mend. He's been in the hospital since Tuesday, and he'll be released tomorrow if the blood culture results show he's all clear. I haven't met him yet and he's 17 days old and I am going insane waiting to get my hands on him.
I've been in a weepy mood all week, partly because of that, partly because of other things going on. So last night, I fixed a cup of tea and settled down with a good book. Ya know, about the holocaust. The holocaust. WTF was I thinking? After crying through that, I remembered I didn't HAVE to read the damn book, put it down and decided to watch the Hangover instead. That, and cruising through damnyouautocorrect.com, is my go-to remedy for curing anything that ails me. DYAC -- seriously. It'll make your day.
In just over 3 weeks, I am cruising the hell out of DC for a long, long while. My longtime childhood friend and I decided that since we'd been such good savers of our money for all these years, and neither of us had EVER taken a real vacation in our adult lives, we decided to do something. Something big. And we are. We're going to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain for fifteen days!! I can't wait to turn off my blackberry, get into my stretchy pants, and not even begin to think about anything relating to the health care industry.
I have a feeling the world will go on without me just fine.
