Long Weekend = Long Blog Entry

Jubilee doing something cute at the zoo.
Do you think it's because my book club read Water for Elephants this month?

After ten months of not leaving home, I was crawling up the walls wanting to vacate. Jon, on the other hand, has one response when I start talking about a trip. "Knock me out and wake me up on the plane. I mean it." There is a theory that our blood types are to blame for our differing needs for leaving home. I'm a type O, the traditional nomadic hunter type, while Jon is a type A, a farmer, who has a physiological need to stay close to the crops. Luckily, we have such a satisfying home life that my wanderlust is relegated to fantasies while I wash the dishes or push the double stroller to the park. Also luckily, Jon enjoys an occasional roadtrip. Albuquerque is a reasonable distance from where we live, and has proved itself over and over again to be a fun place for our family to hang out.

We left on Thursday around noon- timed to coincide with Jubilee's nap. We got lucky, and Zephyr fell asleep as well. They awakened after a couple hours, so we filled up with gas and got out to stretch our legs. Zephyr has lately had an obsession with drying meat. He explains that when he's older, he'll "hunt, dry the meat, pack my lunch, and eat it up." We've even looked up pictures of meat drying on the internet at his request. We were walking through the gas station convenience store when I saw a rack of beef jerky. I pointed it out to him, and told him that it was dried meat. He examined it for a minute. "Gross," I heard him quietly mutter.

Concerned about a 6 pm dinner date, we drove directly to Trader Joe's. Ah, mecca. I know it's not local eating, but I still greedily fill my shopping cart with nuts, maple syrup, vanilla, chocolate chips, and organic ketchup when I'm there. We also stocked up on lunch fixings for our vacation- provolone and muenster, a nice crusty loaf, organic grapes, melon, organic mayonnaise, cucumber, and potato chips. We sped back to the hotel room, unloaded, and drove to May Cafe, my favorite restaurant in the universe, where we met Rebecca and Austen, two of our favorite people in the universe, for dinner. What could be more perfect?

Friday was our marathon day. I hoped the free hotel breakfast would be sufficient to fuel the activities that lay ahead of us, but it was sadly lacking. That's okay. We still loved our hotel for it's convenient location- one block from the Aquarium/Botanical Gardens. Also, Jon liked the "bouquet" of the room, of all things. We walked to the Biopark and were there when they opened at 9, and walked around until the first train to the zoo departed at 10:15. (We took this train two years ago, and it derailed. Jon convinced me that it must be a very infrequent occurrence. I asked our engineer. "It might happen again today," he said. "It happened last week.")

We arrived at the zoo without complication, and rushed to meet our friends Paul, Sadie, and Zeb. Paul is a mostly stay-at-home dad, and the author of a blog I find very inspiring, Carfree Family. I think sometime I'm going to write all the things I really love about his blog (ie the term Redneck Permaculture, which accurately describes our landscaping style), but for now you can check it out yourself. Don't look for updates on his blog until fall, though. Paul is committed to being off-line for the entire summer since his kids are home from school. Sheesh. I barely have the willpower to limit my email checking to thrice daily.

Sadie, Paul, and Zeb

Besides biking all over town with his family and keeping the dogs and chickens in line, Paul is a beekeeper. He presented us with some honey, for which we are very grateful.

Just as Paul, Sadie, and Zeb had to head off for the commuter train back to Santa Fe, our friends Cass, Mason, and Kaelyn found us. They live in the same hometown as us, and happened to be in Albuquerque for Rich's work. It was a fun coincidence. We ate ice cream (and we all witnessed one of Jubilee's worse tantrums to date), watched the sea lions, and took the train back to the aquarium. I met Cass and family through a homeschooling group just a few months ago, and I'm pretty sure we're at the beginning of a long and satisfying friendship.

Zephyr and Mason found a cozy nook for sea lion viewing

I think Kaelyn and I could play the same person at different stages of life in a movie

Upon arrival at the aquarium, our new friends went their own way, and we met up with some old friends- Katie, Scott, Peter, and Andrew. Katie has come up frequently in this blog; her blog is, in fact, the first one I ever read. I met Katie the same year I met Paul. We were all interns in the same teacher education program. When I take a minute to reflect on it, I realize that Katie has been a constant sounding board and trustworthy support throughout all of my post-college life, always without judgement. I think part of it stems from an agreement we made early on: we decided not to get paranoid if the other person took a while to answer an email. Certainly a love for books and similar parenting beliefs have also been keys to our successful friendship.
Peter, Andrew, Zephyr, and Jubilee had a marvelous time playing "Scallywags" in the sand area of the botanical gardens. I asked Jon the rules of the game this morning, since he was the adult whose participation they insisted upon. "I just had to tell them to work harder and faster, or I would feed them to the crocodiles. They were disappointed if I let up."

Jubilee also flirted shamelessly with Scott

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant on our walk back to the hotel, then hung out in the pool until it was time for Scott, Katie, and crew to start their drive home, and for us to head to the Indigo Girls concert- our chief reason for the trip. The Girls would be playing at the zoo. We had seen them at this venue once before, a few months after Zephyr was born, and had enjoyed the relaxed, family friendly atmosphere.

We walked back to the aquarium, where there was a shuttle bus we could take back to the zoo. As we approached, I saw that it was already waiting at a red light just outside the parking lot. "We'll have to wait for the next one," I said. "We won't catch this one." "Spiderman would make it," Jon challenged. We ran and got on the bus.

This is what the kids looked like before the concert

We again met up with Rebecca and some friends as the opening act was coming to a close. The Girls came on, rockin' out with Pendulum Swinger, and I could sort of see the stage if I kneeled. Almost involuntarily I got up and started walking towards the stage, Jubilee in my arms. This song is a special one between the two of us. I must have danced with her in the sling singing along with the chorus, "She is...she is...." 100 times in her first few months, and I always imagine her growing up and becoming a catalyst for change. Okay, I also used to fantasize that she and I were the Indigo Girls. I blame lack of sleep.

There was nothing between me and the girls but the pond. No, the Tecate isn't mine.

Amy and Emily are like chocolate and peanut butter- better together. But Emily's song lyrics have always resonated much more strongly with my life experiences and style preferences.

I spent the rest of the concert on the sidewalk, dancing and (quietly) singing along. When Zephyr started fussing for me, Jon brought him to take Jubilee's place in my arms. "Stop dancing!" he demanded, until I laid it on the table. If he ever wanted to come to the Indigo Girls with me again, he would have to let me dance. I figure I got my workout for the day hoisting my children's weight as I moved.

I have often wondered why I've been listening almost exclusively to the Indigo Girls for the last, oh, 17 years. Every so often I'll buy another album, but nothing gets play time in our jukebox like Amy and Emily. I think it's a combination of fabulous harmony, expert guitar playing, and interesting lyrics that always seem personally relevant. When I think of friends I've had over the years who have shared a love for the Indigo Girls, it's always with a special kinship, as well as a curiosity- are they still listening, too? I called a few of these friends from the concert when the Girls played songs that reminded me of them- Jenn during Get Out The Map, Kamy during Closer to Fine. FGFA, I'd have called you during The Power of Two if I had your number. There was a certain time during the concert when I thought I could feel Zephyr's heart beating against mine, and a song came on that transported me to another place, and I just felt so much emotion and happiness with my life that I started crying. Ah, music.

Can't you feel the bliss?

The kids really were little troopers throughout this mega-day, but by the shuttle ride back, Zephyr was saying in his grumpiest voice, "Why did we have to do so many things today?" He used the same tone in the hotel room as we ate a bedtime snack, "Why does this melon have to be so yummy?" And here was Jubilee at the end of the concert:
The rest of our trip was much more reasonable. Saturday morning we walked to Explora, a children's museum, and met our friends and honorary relatives "Aunt" Mary Lynn and "Cousin" Tecumseh there. We think if we lived in Albuquerque we'd be there all the time. There is so much for children to do and learn there. The boys spent two hours after lunch working on constructing these:

And Jubilee's favorite part was building with the PVC pipe.

"Uncle" Keith joined us that night for dinner, swimming, and double scoop ice cream cones.

We met Mary Lynn at a cob workshop back when Jon and I were still dating. We instantly hit it off, but that might have been the end of it, if we hadn't seen each other again at a potluck a few months later, just after Jon and I married. Keith was there that night, too, and we liked them both enough to invite them over for dinner. An enduring friendship was born, and although we only see each other a few times a year, we remain close. We all live quite far from actual relatives, so we decided we would claim familial titles, and it works. Tecumseh and Zephyr always pick up just where they left off, like cousins. And we adults could easily stay up all night talking. Best of all, we have an agreement that we don't have to clean our houses for each other. I hope you have a friend like that, too.

Sunday was Father's Day, which I already blogged about, so that wraps up this blog entry of monstrous length. Did you stick with it? Take a bathroom break? It took me three days to write, but I'm very glad I did, because so many of the details would have just slipped away otherwise. I'll wrap up with pictures I snapped of the kids on the way home.

There's no place like home!