now that's what I call a weekend

I am off work today - a fact I am grateful for because I need some down-time to recover from my... well, down-time.

M and I went to a gathering at a friend's house after work on Friday. We stayed until almost midnight. It's been a long time since I felt up to that. I am so loving this second trimester energy!

The next morning, we woke up and went out into the freezing cold (literally) to attend our local prop 8 protest. M and I ended up being interviewed by our local news station, and of course we looked like big idiots because (a) we'd been standing in a 20-something degree windchill for 2 hours and had runny, pink eyes and noses and (b) they cut 85% of what we said leaving an uninspired and unsupported sound byte, but what can you do? (Answer: Say no when someone asks to shove a microphone in your face next time.) As we watched ourselves that evening, we tried consoling each other with the fact that no one watches the evening news on Saturdays, right? Right??

That night we went to the symphony. We ran into one person we knew there and the first thing he said was "Hey, I saw you on TV!" Awesome. The symphony was wonderful. It's more M's thing than mine and she said the performance of the most well-known piece was the best she's heard, which is saying something.

On Sunday, we'd planned to go to a working retreat for a group I'm on the board of. M is not on the board, but we'd been asked to invite partners and/or friends who might be willing to give input on some decisions we're making for 2009. I'd been asked specifically to bring M since she's helped out with many of our projects in the past. That morning, I spent a good couple of hours catching up on all the prep work I should have done in the two weeks prior to the retreat and I made M listen to more of it on the 45 minute drive to the retreat site. I packed up everything I thought I'd need for the retreat - board paperwork from the last few months, a notebook, extra pens... When we got there, it wasn't a retreat at all but a surprise baby shower! Even when I saw the cameras and the cake and the gifts and all the people yelling surprise (many of whom are not on our board), my thought was still "Oh, how sweet! We're going to have a little baby-thing on one of our breaks!" Yeah, I was completely clueless, as was M. We were SO surprised and so touched. Just last week I told a friend we'd really only registered for our own shopping list purposes because we probably wouldn't be having any showers. Our friends and family are so spread out, I just didn't think it would be feasible for enough people to be in one place at one time to have an actual shower. We were completely blown away and touched that these friends took it upon themselves to organize something, and it was super fun!

We got so many great gifts, and only a handful of them were off our registry since it's only been up for a week or so - oops! Our friends were giving us grief for not registering sooner (and here I thought we were doing it so early!) and I told them that was just one more indicator that this was nowhere on my radar. Had I known they were all out shopping, I would have been happy to make their jobs easier. Four couples got together (including the organizers) and gave us an A-Z baby basket. It had 26 gifts in it - one for each letter of the alphabet! Many of the gifts could have been used for more than one letter, so one of the shower games was to match up each gift to it's alphabet letter. Everyone had a sheet labeled A through Z and they wrote down the different items as we took them out of the basket. It was a great idea. There was also a gorgeous homemade cake. I have no pictures yet because who brings their camera to a work retreat? Not me. Fortunately, others were more appropriately prepared so I should be able to get copies from them. I'm just glad I showered and wore clean clothes!

We came home beyond exhausted, and beyond touched.

Today I have acupuncture and my 24-week OB appointment. Other than that, I plan to take it easy and maybe start on some thank you notes. Of course, that means I'll have to buy some first. Did I mention the shower was a complete surprise? :-)