All By Myself

Recently mornings have been all about daddy/son time in our household. Or as I like to call it, Mommy's extra sleep time. Ryan has been taking Gavin with him to the gym in the morning which allows me to sleep in because our boy still has snack attacks at 2:30 in the morning. Of course the voracious day time eater becomes a leisurely nighttime connoisseur. He is hungry and tired which is such a bad combination; for me at least. It takes him about a half hour to eat; by comparison he can top off his tummy in the day time in under 10 minutes. Needless to say I really appreciate my morning nap.

This morning was no different as the previous night was no different. I brought Gavin in to bed shortly after his 6 am wake up call and nursed him. The little G eventually made it impossible for Ryan to pretend he was sleeping any longer so he hauled himself out of bed and took Gavin into the living room. I rolled over and dozed off until 10:45!

Wow! Almost 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep! That's the norm for uninterrupted sleep I get at night. It was such a treat!

When I finally made my grand debut in the living room there were some lovely flowers and a mylar 'Happy Birthday' balloon waiting to greet me. It was such a nice way to start the day. And to make the day even better I had lunch at Blue Willow in West Seattle with a fellow birthday gal and was able to just chat at a nice leisurely, uninterrupted pace since Ryan had Gavin with him at home. After lunch I visited with some people from my old office then headed to the Department of Licensing to renew my license.

Walking into the DOL I scanned the room to try and get a feel of how long my wait would be. The room was quite large and over half of the chairs were occupied. After examining a board detailing the services offered I pressed the button next to 'first time license/renewal of license'. It spit out a ticket stamped 1:34pm 1/13/2009 #238.

Two thirty eight I said to myself as I held my breath before looking to the digital signs hanging above the employee stations. Staring back at me were some ugly red numbers 176. I felt myself deflate a little.

There I sat in a chair in the front of the room. I knew I was going to be there a long time and I didn't want to spend that time staring at the back of other people's heads so I offered up my head to be stared at.

Thank the good Lord above for cell phones. I was able to talk to my mom while she was on her lunch break at work. I talked to my li'l bro Joel while he was on his way home from work and I talked briefly to my Aunt Paulette. Even with all three conversations which probably totaled 30 minutes I still had an hour and a half of nothing. Nothing. I didn't plan ahead. If I had I would have brought a magazine to read. Two magazines. Three magazines.

Here is the sad part. I didn't start to get antsy until about #220. I was kind of enjoying just sitting there and doing nothing. I enjoyed just having my thoughts to keep me company. My thoughts are great in number if not great in substance. I watched the DOL employees as they helped customers. I watched as they interacted with each other. I tried to imagine how they felt working there, day after day, year in and year out. I recognized a number of the employees from my 2 or 3 trips there in the 7 years I've lived in Seattle. It goes to show that each trip takes such an inordinate amount of time that I'm able to recognize the employees after years of not seeing them.

At least the guy who helped me was really nice and in a great mood. He laughed when I tried to read the letters in the vision testing machine without my glasses. "Try it with your glasses," he said. "Drat!" I grumbled, "I managed to go all these years without needing correction."

"Yeah, you were failing pretty miserably. Sucks getting older, huh?" he said without sounding the least bit mean.

I was out the door at 3:44 with my temporary license but my day was not over. Since I wasn't ready to go home I went to Nail Time and had a manicure and pedicure. I only felt a little guilty that I spent next to no time at home with Ryan and Gavin but only a tiny bit. The only other time I have spent this much time alone was last year at Easter when Ryan took Gavin to his mom's while I stayed home because I was sick.

After I was scrubbed, buffed and polished I walked to the Junction for a little birthday sweet treat. Walking past Cupcake Royale and their superb coffee wasn't too difficult because half way up the block on California Avenue Coffee to a Tea With Sugar was waiting for me with their delectable cupcakes. I picked the baristas brain on the sugary confections and called Ryan to see if he wanted the plain Jane cupcakes or the orange, lemon, raspberry, red velvet or mint cupcake. He opted for the chocolate cupcake with mint frosting. Sounds good but I believe it pales in comparison to the Chocolate Decadence cupcake. It should really be called Death by Chocolate since it is filled with chocolate ganache, frosted with chocolate and topped with squiggles of more chocolate ganache.

Y-U-M.

Today was such a great birthday. Aside from lunch I spent it all by myself and you know what, I ain't half bad company. I love my son but it is so nice, at least once in a while, have a whole day to yourself. And by once in a while I guess I mean once a year.