On the down low

My husband and I showed up at a friend's house, stuck the baby on her doorstep with a note tied around his neck and then ding-dong-ditched and ran for the car. We drove at top speed for an hour and checked into a lovely hotel in Pasadena. I'm sure the baby was fine. The note had instructions. It said:

1. Feed.
2. Give juice.
3. Give hugs.
4. Change diapers.
5. Put to sleep.
6. We'll show back up eventually.

See? Fine.

The hotel was lovely but we dropped our overnight bags on the fancy carpet and drove a mile to the Huntington Gardens and Library. Spectacular. There were Japanese and Chinese gardens, Australian gardens, subtropical gardens, desert gardens (full of strangely colored and questionably shaped cacti and succulents [which I'm sorry, but that just sounds like a naughty name for a plant]), candy gardens, Hot Wheels gardens, kitschy gnome statuary gardens, and pink flamingo gardens. Or so I assume. I withstood the heat only long enough to make it through the desert gardens before escaping into the air conditioning of the library.

There's a statue of George Washington and I stared at it while the guard told me to put my drink away and I defiantly swigged it down instead. I didn't get my picture taken with the General or visibly swoon when I saw his actual signature on some documents, because my husband's been slightly testy about the President ever since we watched the John Adams HBO series and I confessed that if Kenny dies first, I'm marrying George Washington.

I saw an original quarto of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and a Gutenberg Bible. And a bunch of other stuff.

It was a good day.

We wandered back to the hotel and I got a Dove bar and a new book from the hotel gift shop and peeked at the people in fancy evening dress that were milling about waiting for various brides to show up. Then I read for a couple of hours, as did my husband, and then we went to the Happiest Place on Earth:

Whole Foods.

I have heard of its goodness and glory. I have even seen brief snatches of its majesty on Top Chef.

But I had no idea.

We wandered the cheese and chocolate aisles in a happy stupor and planned a date night in the future where we do nothing but hang out in the Whole Foods. That's not a lie. We have one only thirty minutes away. I'm sure it's just as wondrous.

Then we ate at a place Charrette recommended (being as this was her old stomping ground) called The Parkway Grill.

Oh, yum.

I had pasta in a Thai sauce with duck and then half a roasted chicken that they imported directly from heaven with a side of goat cheese mashed potatoes too sinfully rich to come from heaven, too. Delicious.

The next several hours are a blur as I spent it in a food coma but we eventually made it back to our friend's house and knocked on her door. She gave us back our baby and they seemed to have followed directions. He gave us kisses and played with us the whole rest of the afternoon. Mainly he made up games, like "stick a pencil in this Indian flute and giggle when it falls out" and then you just kind of repeat that twenty or a hundred times. He also likes "roll this plastic bowling ball under the TV stand and then fish it out with the Indian flute" and "climb on Daddy's back while he reads and then bounce up and down" a lot.

I like weekend getaways.

P.S. I get to hang out with LisAway tomorrow, all you snooty-pants bloggers with your regular Utah bloggy get togethers. *Sniff.