For example, we've known for weeks that Margot was going to be spending last Friday at her first ever overnight sleepover camp (run by Sparks at Camp Woolsey). We had planned to drop her off and then head to a nearby pub for a couple of drinks with friends. Unfortunately on Friday morning our friends had to cancel at the last minute. ...And that's when everything changed!
...
7:00 pm.
Normally rush hour in Ottawa is over by 6 pm. However, for some reason last Friday the highways were still clogged at 7:00 pm. This disrupted our planned route to Margot's camp. Frustrated with the bumper-to-bumper traffic I took a chance, took an off ramp and decided to get to the camp by a back route. The road I chose is full of traffic lights and I had little hope of getting Margot to her camp in time. However, by some miracle I caught every green light. Faster and farther I drove. It seemed I could do no wrong! My car had other thoughts.
Unbeknownst to me one of my hubcaps chose this night to fall off my car, fly through the air and hit the car behind me. The driver, startled, tried to warn me that parts of my car were now sitting in the road. So as I flew through traffic and lights he followed me and tried to catch my attention. He finally caught up with me a few kilometres down the road and motioned me to roll down my windows. Confused, I rolled down the window and he explained what had happened. Later I would learn that, fortunately, his car had no damage. Props to that driver by the way. He didn't freak out - I'm sure a lot of people would have.
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| Hubcap Down! Hubcap Down! |
8:30 pm.
Glosette Girl reminded me that it was Soirée Orange, a fundraising party for parents of Margot's school at the nearby Orange Art Gallery. We had no idea what to expect as this is Margot's first year at the school.
So even thought we hadn't eaten dinner yet, we threw caution to the wind, raced home, changed into something relatively funky and then headed into the night.
The Orange Art Gallery is just under 20 minutes from our house (by walking). So no problem there. We walked up to the doors, paid the cover and were welcomed into an atmosphere of wine drinking, modern art, multiple silent auctions, music, conversation and laughter.
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| Photo taken in the light of day rather than the decadence of night |
11:00 pm
We blew off dinner.
Soirée Orange was fun! We met lots of other parents, I ran into a friend whose daughter goes to Margot's school, we drank inexpensive wine and beer, bid on the silent auction* and fended off starvation by munching on the hors d'oeuvres.
Our plan was to head into nearby Chinatown for a late night dinner but figured everything seemed closed and we headed home.** I did stop in at a nearby convenience store to grab my salty fix - a bag of Sour Cream and Onion chips! Yum!
12:00 am
Glosette Girl had crashed by this point. I burned the midnight oil munching on my chips with some Mad Max: Fury Road. Go Tom Hardy!
9:00 am
Groggy wakeup. Laughter at the previous night's events. Eventually we went out for a late breakfast at a diner in the east end of Ottawa and bought a rain barrel from a Scout's fundraiser (bet you didn't see that coming). Happy Earth Day!
Ahh now I know what people without kids do!
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| And we picked up Margot...safe.... |
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| ...and sound! |
** We learned later on that one Vietnamese place stays open until 5 am! Good to know.
I laughed right out loud that you won paint. So by extension...you BID on paint??
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