Lingering on the Weekend

This was a wonderful weekend.

I had my first-ever meet up with bloggers, one current and one former, and both utterly lovely. They came over to the house Saturday morning to meet the Landon and then we met up that night for queso and margaritas (and entrees, but for me it was all about the queso and margaritas). It was especially wonderful to meet PT-LawMom in person as she was so unbelievably supportive during the DCFS nightmare. Without even knowing me in real life, she set up and deposited the first amount in our "defense fund" and to this day I'm amazed at her heart and generosity.

[An aside on something that is old and no longer relevant but has been bothering me for 17 months, so I'm going to write about it anyway: PT mentioned that people gave her crap for helping us financially when JP was an investment banker and therefore must be making 6 figures and we must have buckets of money lying around. While JP was an i-banker, he worked for a boutique firm way out in the suburbs, and made less than 1/3 of what I do now (including bonus). We saw him most nights and every weekend and he got to do more interesting things than your average first-year analyst, so it was a worthwhile trade-off. But two people living in Chicago with a baby on a $40,000 salary? We were very, very careful and there were no buckets of money.

That really upset me at the time- that people thought we were rolling in dough and still asking for a handout, but I was too distracted by other accusations to deal with it. As a proudly self-sufficient person, the fact we had to ask for money still bothers me so much I sometimes can't sleep. But as I said then, 90% of our help was from family and close friends; the anonymous ones played a large role because they gave such a boost of hope- that someone who didn't know you would believe you and want to help.

Wow, that was a shitty time. Let's go back to the present that is so, so far removed from that nightmare that most of the time I can barely believe it happened to us at all.]

So, the weekend- it was good. In addition to the blogger reunion on Saturday (is it a reunion if you've never meet before?), I also planted an herb garden! I now have sweet basil, cilantro, and lemon thyme growing in a pretty little planter along our back deck. I have no idea if those were good to pick for a planter, but they're the herbs I frequently buy fresh at the store. The basil smells so good I keep sticking my face in it when I go outside- last night I dreamed dreams of homemade Margherita pizza. I have no experience with these things, but I only killed one of the plants we had hanging on the back deck from last summer, so I'm very optimistic about my little herbs.

Today we worked on a stone path in the backyard (and by "we" I mean JP, Landon and I "helped") and then had friends over for a hot dog cookout. It smelled like summer and I kept having very strong flash backs to my childhood. The smell of a charcoal grill, the sight of colorful bowls of fruit and chips, the sound of children laughing, parents talking- all on a gorgeous sapphire sky kind of day. It was a really, really nice afternoon. Landon and his friend (7 months older) were hilarious- chasing each other and banging on the slide and secretly trying to eat rocks together. I can feel myself relaxing just remembering it. I swear the sound of Landon laughing adds the years back to my life that his first 12 months took away.

And now I'm sitting in the study trying to work on the Complaint I mentioned Friday. I still don't know what I'm doing, I'm still afraid of the blank word document in front of me, but I've got such a happiness hangover from the weekend I'm having a hard time being concerned. I'm sure it'll hit me full force in the form of panic tomorrow morning, but right now all I can think about is Landon and Friend going doing the slide together and giggling the whole way down.