Superlatives

When we've had a fun weekend (and really what weekend isn't fun?), I sometimes have to restrain myself from giving into hyperbole and superlatives to declare it the best weekend ever. Maybe it's just Mondays and my ambivalence about my job, but when I sit back at my desk at work and remember all we were able to cram into 48 hours, I feel like we will never again experience so many highs, so many great things in a single weekend. But that's of course never the case, and when I manage to trudge through a work week I'm always rewarded with another best weekend ever. I can't decide if this is an optomistic thought or a pessimistic one (because maybe they all just feel so great because my weeks are so crappy...?), and before my head starts to hurt I'm just going to revel in the weekend past while working on my plans for the weekend future when my mother, who wrote me a very formal businessy letter announcing the plans for her visit, will be here.

On Friday we went down to the Detroit Institute of Art to see Mexican Elvis impersonator El Vez and his Merry Mex-Mas show. It was fabulous, most especially because Clementine was just tired enough to go totally crazy, dancing all over the place and running through the precious gems of the art museum like she was at a demolition derby and needed only focus on taking that guy waaay over there out. We were supposed to have pictures taken with El Vez, but instead we ended up in the basement portrait studio taking very fun pics of our blended bizarro family with the Lambertis. Clementine looked elfin, and she tried out to be the new got milk? spokeschild.

We've decided to become members of the DIA again since the winter is definitely here and our daily trips have been put on ice (excuse the pun). It's great for her to have a place to run free, though I swear we aren't those obnoxious parents who leave their children running through the galleries while they swill wine in the great hall. Clementine did get a little crazy and kept falling down to lick the shiny floor, so we bundled her up pretty quickly and headed home.

On Saturday we braved weekend holiday shopping traffic and all the mom jeans an madness that come with a kids concert to see Ralph's World in Ann Arbor. We've been pretty lucky with kids music so far (meaning Clementine is happy listening to lots of our tunes and doesn't require insipid baby music that gets stuck in my head until I'm in a work meeting humming "My mom has got a pig on her head, my mom has got a pig on her head..." for hours at a time), and Ralph's World is about as close to it as we get. He is a very cool rocker who still plays with the Bad Examples but is enjoying a lucrative career as a kids performer. I was worried about the show since he recently sold out to Disney, but it was very fun and friendly and not commercial like the terrible Radio Disney fiasco we stumbled into after Thanksgiving. Clementine had a blast, though she was a shell of the dancing queen she was the night before. She inched her way, song by song, closer to the kiddie mosh pit and just stood looking at other kids. There were lots of cute moments where the kids were a wriggling mass of dancing bodies and she a lone, still figure watching in amazement. Then, she discovered the stage and stood riveted in front of each band member in turn. I hope that doesn't mean she's thinking about her life as a future groupie. That's her in the middle:

Nate was a trooper at the show because I think kiddie rock offends his sensibilities even more than mine. He wore my favorite T-shirt ever, which took guts in the crown od mom jeans. I actually tried to photograph a pair of them that were especially bad, but the woman caught me doing it and I had to pretend I was trying to take a picture of a kid behind her. It was awkward to say the least. Luckily I didn't have to worry that Nate was going to make off with some other mama.

We made a dumbass novice mistake on the way home from Ann Arbor and let Clementine have a bite of the yummy chocolate we bought there. The girl screamed "More! More! More!" for 30 minutes straight until in desperation I pulled off the highway to find a place for dinner. As it turns out we ended up near Marvelous Marvin's Mechanical Museum, a very cool little arcade that hosts a huge collection of vintage video games and machines in addition to the cutting edge Japanese video games that make you feel like you're a rock star or on a roller coaster. How could we not further overstimulate our child by a quick run through there? Although she loved most of it, some of it was a bit too much:

On Sunday we decorated the Christmas tree, which was as fun as I secretly always thought it would be when I was very busy being dark and too cynical to enjoy traditional holidays. Clementine was very eager to help, and she's so damn in love with the finished product that she stops whatever she's doing every once ina while and runs over to marvel at it and the Christmas stockings.

And as if that isn't enough, I went on a blind mom date with a woman who lives very close to us and has a very sweet and funny daughter who is a little older than Clementine (nevertheless, I think they hit it off...as much as you can say two small children can do so). Because I was involved and it was social, it was a little awkward and I was far to obsessed with not being cool enough, but below all of that was a real sense of relief at knowing it's not that hard to make friends when you meet the right kind of people.

I got to talk to some old friends this weekend as well, one of whom accused me of trying to get fired by blogging about my troubles at work, so I'm going to be a bit more circumspect this week as I just try to make it to the holidays and a much-needed break.

Phew!