As anticipated, all our Sunday outdoor sports did not happen. My 11-year-old and husband went camping on Friday night with the Scout troop, and Friday night was fine, but by the AM it was very wet, and basically almost the whole troop threw in the towel Saturday afternoon and came back.
The 17-year-old had a cross-country meet so I got up with him at 6:20 a.m. on Saturday to see him off (thank goodness he was driving himself). They ran in cold rain but the upside is he did run faster than he had at the meet I went to on Wednesday!
I was supposed to drive up to upstate NY for a baby shower on Saturday but I got 30 minutes down the highway and it was so wet and windy and so slow I wound up turning around. This was going to be a 4-hour trip each way, not a 3-hour one, and I had to get back for my 17-year-old’s birthday dinner. So that was too bad, though I heard from others that the house where the shower was lost power and there were lots or road closures and debris down where they were. It would have been stressful trying to make it back for the dinner.
That at least did happen. We went to Provenance in downtown Philly. This is one of Philly’s new Michelin-starred restaurants. It was great — French with Korean influences. We took one of my son’s friends too and the four of us were in the wine cellar. My husband and I did the “temperance pairing” — all mocktails to match the food. That was an adventure for sure.
On Friday night I took the 14-year-old and 17-year-old out to dinner at an Italian place (I had another mocktail…). Then we went in the hot tub together. This was probably one of our last nights in there — I think we’ll still get next weekend before we close the pool but the season is winding down.
Other than that, mostly the usual stuff. I wish I could say I used the 9 hours I opened up by not driving to the baby shower productively but…I really didn’t. I worked for about an hour. I read some, started a puzzle, made some preliminary versions of the holiday card, and took my daughter to Starbucks. I guess better than nothing. I wrote a draft of this while sitting in the party room on Sunday at a birthday party where my 6-year-old was playing laser tag. It might be a drop off party, but he insisted it wasn’t, so there I was. He now thinks he wants to have his party there so maybe I should just book it and not forget! (His birthday is right after Christmas…so it’s easy to not think ahead about this…)
I hope everyone affected by the storm stayed safe and dry. It’s been sad to see the pictures of flooding on the Jersey shore, such as the Lobster House in Cape May, and apparently the roof at the Stone Pony in Asbury is ripped up too. I saw video of the entire beach in Asbury covered with water and I know there has been some serious beach erosion on that part of the coast too (like pics of Bradley Beach with half of the dunes gone). Here’s hoping for a swift and uncomplicated clean up.
Photo: One of the tasting plates at Provenance. It was kind of dark in the wine cellar so it was hard to get the photos to come out.
