I go months without my train ticket checked at all, and today, it's been checked twice in three stations.

WTF?

Brynne is back in town, on holiday from her East Coast business school adventure, and hosted an "Old Skool communal dinner, inviting the whole crowd over for dinner. I think unfortunately her dinner was less "old school" where everyone brought something and the host cooked only the main dish, and more "new school" where one person does all of the cooking. Well, unfortunate may be the wrong word. She spent a lot of time cooking. If she enjoys it as much as I enjoy cooking, it wasn't really that unfortunate.

What WAS unfortunate, however, was Meter's spectacular nose dive into the coffee table. Except it wasn't really a nose dive, so much as a gum dive into the table, and I feel about 1" tall about it.

Earlier in the evening, I had managed to snag Meter from the ice bucket she was playing in, where she had snagged a giant ice cube and was sucking it down. She was doing a good job of melting the cube in her mouth, losing it only a couple times to dump it down my shirt (brrrrrrr!) or on my pants.

When the ice cube was done, Meter wanted to walk downstairs, so down we went, to find Brynne's mom and toys, toys, toys! Fun! We played with the boxes and the stars for a few minutes until Meter just turned around from what she was doing, and threw herself into my arms, scrambling up my lap and into my arms.

Although I found the move adorable and endearing, it confused me, too. When I set her down, she immediately scrambled back up into my arms and held on tight.

Ohhhhhhh..... kaaaaaaaaay. Adorable kid, you're confusing me.

I took her upstairs to hand Meter to Mark and ask if this was a sign for something, anything, or was she just being cute?

Mark let me know she was just being Meter, and that she was fine. He set her down, and walked away to be social with some group. I watched Meter as she stood up and started walking towards a glass coffee table.

Now, earlier in the evening, I had a conversation with Katie about learned helplessness, and how many children in today's society can't do anything because their parents do EVERYTHING for them. There's no sense of try, there's no resourcefulness. There's only this prevasive helplessness that will be the death of this society.

As Meter started walking towards the table, I had a HUGE urge to pick her up and turn her away from the table. I had horrible visions of her falling into the table. I recalled the conversation from before, and thought, let the kid go, she'll be fine. At this point, she was only about 8" from the table, she'd be fine.

Until she tripped.

And wasn't fine.

Her forehead hit the table corner, bounced and her upper gums hit the corner again. Her arms went just under the table, missing the save.

HOLY CRAP. I swooped in and grabbed her before she even knew she was hurt, and picked her up. She started crying and screaming, I turned and thrush her into Mark's arms, while people in the other room called out to me, "Kitt, what did you do now?"

I felt so bad. Beyond bad. Horribad.

Meter had cut her upper gum and was bleeding a lot. Mark calmed her down, stopped the bleeding and held her for a while. Me? I just wanted to be very, very small.

And gone.

Even earlier in the evening than all of this, I had also managed to break one of Brynne's mother's chairs, when I put my feet on the rung that seemed footrest-ish when I put my feet on them. The loud CRACK! when I propped my feed up let me know how mistaken I was about the chair, with the deafening silence that followed letting me known that everyone else knew it, too.

With the chair incident and Meter's crash, I was no longer in a holiday, social mood, wanting just to crawl under that rock over there (right over there, see it?) and hide, so I left early. Hopefully I'll time my visit at Mark and Megan's housing warming this weekend with Brynne's and have the opportunity to catch up with her.

Received a note from Mom today:

howdy! well, i am beginning to understand what you go thru ... these people want miracles at the museum! what a hoot! i'm learning a lot ... and it's still fun. and looking forward to seeing you in early feb.

She's recently taken a website design/builder contract job, and jumped in feet first. I guess she's learning.

Wow. Talk about a whirlwhind day. I'm quite glad I chose to take the day off from work because I'm 100% sure that I would have been completely unable to cram anything else more into my day.

Kris and I started the day off by having breakfast with Jess and Gab. The drive over was short, and we probably should have just walked over, but really, hitting the snooze button six times really was more important in our not-completely-awake state.

I thought the next part of our plan, the part starting after breakfast, involved taking Jess and Gab out for some brief shopping in downtown Los Gatos, as I watched Meter for Megan, as she managed to squeeze in a haircut.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken, as Jess had a conference call in the morning. No problem, I thought, I'll take Gab.

No....

I let Jess know that I thought her decision to keep Gab in the room for the morning, while she has conference calls, instead of letting her run run run around with me, was a bad idea. It was ultimately her decision, however, so off Kris and I went after breakfast.

I caught up with Megan in downtown Los Gatos, where she handed me Meter and off we went. Instead of the walking tour of downtown, which is what we did last time, Meter and I walked straight through downtown and went to hangout at the small park at the opposite end of downtown.

Meter is totally starting the get the walking thing down. She walked around the park holding my hand, but not really needing to hold my hand. She used it more for a comfort than for a steadying crutch. It's been a long time since I've had so much fun just walking around in circles.

Unfortunately, as is all too typical when I'm not paying attention to the camera, I managed to use up the battery on the camera, without the benefit of my backpack with All Things Emergency™, which includes 4 spare batteries, 4 spare memory cards, 2 GUs, facial tissue, two memory cards, a memory card reader, pain reliever in 4 forms, dental floss, a tampon, two liners, 3 pens, $20, a safety pin, a Mischief button, a sewing kit, eye drops, ear plugs, hair ties, and assortment of band-aids and the last of a prescription that I should probably take out.

All of that, none of it near.

That means, of course, lunch with Megan and Mirabelle, with Meter, too, is undocumented.

The horror.

After lunch, I went back to Jessica's hotel to check in and hang out with the two of them. Apparently the morning was as horrible as I expected it to be, with Jessica relieved that hey, someone new can burn off some of this kid's energy. Please? Thanks.

Gab and I went down to the gym at the hotel and goofed off for a hwile. She had a good time on the stairstepper, while I walked on the treadmill in several directions. We played with the Swiss ball and the medicine balls (a gym hotel with medicine balls? crazy!), and the yoga mats. We would have kept playing, except that a cleaning woman came in and kept hovering over us as we played with the equipment. No fun in that.

After being chased out of the gym, we wandered back up to her room to verify that Jess wasn't done with her current phone call.

Nope.

So, off we went to the nearest grocery store. We were going to try to get a Sobe tea for Jess, and maybe an Odwalla for me. On the way over, Gab had a brilliant idea.

"Let's get ice cream for my mom!"

Internally, I chuckled at the suggestion. Normally, I'd have said, "Hells yeah, let's go!" but the adult in me resisted. Ice cream? At 3 in the afternoon. It sounds like the right time to have some, but, the sugar... eh...

"Does your fridge have a freezer?"

"Yes."

"You sure?"

"No."

We continued to debate the issue of ice cream as we walked to the store. The store itself was maybe 80m from the front of the hotel. However, that straight shot also crossed El Camino Real and its 6 lanes of heavy traffic. We took the long way around to the stoplight.

"It'll be a surprise for her!" Gaby tried the "it's a gift! everyone loves gifts!" approach for ice cream.

"Is that a surprise she'll appreciate?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either," I answered.

"We don't need a freezer, you know."

"Eh?"

"We'll surprise her and eat it right away!"

She kept trying, I'll give her that.

We ended up purchasing three juices, and skipping out on the ice cream. As much as I, too, would have enjoyed the ice cream, I couldn't justify buying it and setting the tone of "If Mom says no, go ask Kitt" for the trip.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on homework. I was a little frustrated by the textbook that Gab had, it neither being well written nor actually factual in some cases, but I chose to ignore that fact for the moment. I tried to remember what level I was learning at when I was in third grade, not quite remembering. Gab seemed to pick up the content quickly, the fact that it was mostly review for her lost on me until we were done.

For dinner, we went to the Cheesecake Factory in Palo Alto. I enjoy going there, and figure Jessica's visit is a good excuse to go to all the restaurants around that I like to go to.

When we were seated, after flirting with the waiter for a short while, we started flipping through the enormous menu selection. At one point, Gab pointed to an item on the menu and declared, "I want this!"

Jessica leaned over to see what she had selected.

"You're eight years old. You don't get filet mignon."

Gab was a little upset when I laughed.

Went to the airport today to pick up Jessica and Gabby, who are visiting the area (and me!) for a week. One of the serious advantages of working a telecommute job is the ability to work from anywhere, including sunny (when it is sunny, that is) California. Jess was stressed about a lot in her life right now, so I suggested a change on venue. Sometimes the change works, sometimes it doesn't. In this case, it was worth a try.

So, out came Jess and Gab, and off to the airport I went. Nothing overwhelming planned for the evening, just hotel check-in and dinner. Maybe a hug or two, too. Oh, and planning for tomorrow.

We ended up going to the hotel (all of 1.1 miles from me IF you go the long way), dropping off their luggage, and heading to P.F. Chang's for dinner. We also stopped by Target on the way home (hey, they're all close to each other), for a swimsuit for Gab, but were unable to find any (in December, imagine that), so settled for shorts and a workout shirt.