A Different Saturday

So first off I'm posting a little video of Lisa and Johnnie biking to Rockenwagner for breakfast. Naturally, since I am the one taking the video, it could easily be surmised that I am also riding along and I'm pointing out that i am actually riding on the old Nishiki that I bought for myself almost 13 years ago. This would definitely not be how I saw myself spending Saturday morning breakfast. Usually today was a Lisa work day but she had the day off. She still wanted to have some piano time though so I thought we'd at least have breakfast before Johnnie and I hung out for the morning. That's all I wanted today was to have a nice, fun day with Johnnie. When I came over it was 8:30 and both mom and son and Claire were all still in bed. Nothing wrong with that really. It's her day off, Lisa SHOULD sleep in if she wants. Which would leave Johnnie and I to have breakfast, which is again, all I wanted.  Somehow this is the time where Lisa gets conflicted about going to breakfast with us OR just hanging around the house doing nothing. Which means I already knew I was going to get hijacked this morning doing something SHE wanted to do. I brought up having breakfast together at Rockenwagner since I was hungry and I could see Lisa was simply in too much of a lazy mood to cook for all of us.  She agreed to go but not after we hung around talking some more. Why we couldn't just go to Rockenwagner and talk there is beyond me. But really the game plan was to let Lisa come around to whatever she wanted to do and if we do that then we get to do what WE want to do. And Lisa announced that if we were going to go to Rockenwagner anyway, we should bike there. I did not plan on this. Didn't bring my scooter. Hence I ended up on one of Lisa's bikes, off we went to breakfast, and there's the video. To be fair, it turned out to be a nice breakfast actually. We had a bunch of croissants, Johnnie got his chocolate croissant and Claire surprised us all by running all the way home while Lisa biked next to her from Washington Blvd. Finally when we got back, Lisa got the exercise she wanted, we got breakfast albeit a late one and finally finally finally Johnnie and i drove back to my apartment.  And I gave him a shower first thing, then let him watch a couple of hours of the Wild Kratts, his new favorite show, before heading out again for lunch. 

"Thank you for the conversation", Johnnie said to me on the phone. This was at 6 PM while I was getting ready to eat leftover beef stew from last night for my dinner. He had called asking for directions to Party City. It perplexed me at first since I knew that if Lisa was going to take him there, she knew where it was on Sepulveda. I think she was just letting him go ahead and talk to me and I, for one, appreciated it right back that he wanted to reach out. Already I had given him a hug goodbye when I dropped him off this afternoon, knowing that the next time I would see him was on Monday. I told him that I loved him and when he said I love you too Dad, I thought to myself that him saying that to me would never get old. And it will always make my heart skip. Remember I told myself this morning that my intention for today was to have a nice day with Johnnie and to have some M&M (magic moments) I won't forget. I did just that didn't I? We did just that.  Never mind that Lisa had to pull a Lisa this morning. We had lunch together, even ate in at Panda Express Westwood for the first time in more than a year. When I dropped him off Lisa was bugging again about something, this time the grand piano she will be buying at some point this year. This from someone who talks and acts like she's broke.  Never mind that when I told him Johnnie that it was time to go, he said "why so early?". That's probably why he would call later. He just knows that Saturdays are our time together. And without the dog at that. And you know what? We DID have our time together and it WAS all I could ask. For me I wanted to make sure I didn't stay up all that late tonight and so I wouldn't play such shitty golf tomorrow.  Day 1 of the 3-day weekend may not have been all that different. But I felt like I got some rest and relaxation in and most of all, I had my bonding time with Johnnie. That made it a really really good Saturday after all.