Weekend of Oct 20

Cheating again. This is hard work! :)

Friday:
I had invited my ex and her gf over to dinner, after we had both said, upon exchanging dogs or the kid, "Let's have dinner some time." Finally set a date and this was it.

I marinated chicken breasts (in some balsamic salad dressing from Trader Joe's, yum) and broiled them. They burnt (they always do) but we peeled off the skin and honestly, they were very tasty. I heated up some peas and baked some crescent rolls and threw together one of those all-in-the-bag salads. It was great! Because I do like to entertain, I got down my china and silverplate and iittala glasses.

They had brought dessert--wonderful, huge cream puffs from Beard Papa in San Francisco.

The next day, G had a soccer game and played well. After the game, we got together with K and went to the SF Zoo. There was a place where you could actually feed birds. I wasn't keen on birds flying around my head just then, so I ponied up the $2 each and sent the two of them in. K got a bird right away and so did G. Someone was taking digital pics and we got a great one of him smiling so huge as the bird sat on his popsicle stick, eating peanut butter and seeds off it. Wonderful! We also saw the Big Cats being fed, one of my favorite things about the SF Zoo. One cat was given a huge roll of paper towels or toilet paper with ground meat smushed into its core. It was licking and tearing at it and SO looked like a cute, cuddly, tiny cat, when you ignored its huge claws. Made me want to go in and pet its mane. Fortunately, a zookeeper and large iron bars prevented me.

We had an expensive, not terribly great meal and packed up and left.

That evening, Liz and Andrea had arranged for an ice slot at Belmont and invited dozens of their closest friends, and terrific Heather to do childcare. It was so fun! I finally got to play with Viv and lots of other folks. And toward the very end, I scored! When I took my gear off, my clothes were absolutely soaked through with sweat. A great workout and way fun.

Sunday:
Sunday was nuts. I went to church and sang an anthem I didn't particularly care for (so of course we'll be singing it again later), then we went to a toy store and I bought a sword to complete my Halloween costume. G brought his purse and carefully selected a little red thing that was sort of like a ladybug and paid for it with $1.04 of his own money. We got dressed and loaded up my hockey gear and headed out to a college friends' kid-centered Halloween party. We both had a great time! There was a game where Hostess donettes were tied to strings and you had to eat the donut, no hands. G enjoyed it, and then it was the parents' turn! It was much harder than I had thought. I had a long conversation with a friend I see only at these friends' gatherings, then had to collect my kid after the balloon-tied-on-one-leg-try-to-stomp-everyone-else's game and head down for hockey practice. (A few years ago, I came to this game as a Hockey Player, then headed to practice. Creative, huh?)

Practice went fine and G hung out in the penalty box, eating apple slices and making paper airplanes.