Johnnie and Lisa Back Home

Lisa called me first thing this morning letting me know the flight info for tonight. Yep, they are coming home. But before thinking about any of that I still have to finsih the last leg of this week's Town Hall series. Today we conclude with East 3rd and finally the group has gotten our rhythm and our collective schticks down pat. I, for one, got a bunch of laughs this morning. These guys know me pretty well. I have a fondness for East Third too since I helped build the place from 5 year ago.  Today I celebrated the last time I'm driving to "work" this week, the last time I'm dealing with traffic all week long. I look forward to next week when I don't have to do it anymore. Today's Town Hall was pretty uneventful... as was the de-brief with the entire team right after. We had brunch in the area. I suggested Moles La Tia, my favorite but when we got there it was closed for remodelling. Ooops. Fortunately there was a restaurant right next door. Tamales Lilianas it was called and it was plenty big enough to hold us all. All 10 of us. It actually turned out pretty perfectly. I had huevos rancheros, which was the first time I had eggs all week. I had been eating Porto's for breakfast otherwise. We did our de-brief, patted each other on the back on a job well done all week long and then I headed on home. I still had that Annual report to finish. I wanted to try to take a nap but somehow I couldn't. I did end up finishing my report though. And then I had to do my meeting with the EHR team. Yes I ended up putting in a full day of work. I didn't do the FRB Birthday party. I simply couldn't be at 2 places at the same time. And I didn't do James' performance eval. But at 4 PM, i did knock off to take a nap. I didn't have to be at LAX until 6 PM so I figured I'd get a half hour in. When i woke up it was 5:20 already! Yikes. Time to head on out...

Isn't that what always happens?! I made a stop at Lisa's to drop off my golf gear just in case space was needed in the back seat. It was nearly 5:40 when I was still on Beethoven and I knew their flight came in at 5:55. I got to LAX just as Lisa called to let me know they had already made it out. They didn't even have to wait 5 minutes and finally mommy and son were in my back seat and officially back home. Claire pee'd in my car she was so excited to see Lisa and Johnnie. The ride home she switched from either one of them and kept excitedly going back and forth. Johnnie had clearly and unmistakably gotten much darker. Reminded me of me back in the day when I hung around the beaches of Huntington Beach in the summer. Lisa wanted to stop and get some food and to my surprise, headed us over to Oops for some sushi. I thought she would have been fine with Mitsuwa. But then again we did have the dog didn't we? Lisa talked about still being plagued by some strange infection in her stomach/urinary tract. I wonder if the discomfort I feel myself sometimes is some kind of a tether to whatever SHE is feeling? Talked a bit about Maui. Talked a lot about how she now needs a new fridge and a new stove. Sigh. How am I going to bring up that her health insurance with me is about to end in a month? Maybe I'll wait a bit on that one. In the meantime, she was all for Johnnie spending the night at my place and the dog too... just so she could have some alone time herself. I guess it's something she needs. Or at least she could deal with whatever she wants to deal with without Johnnie around.  Anyway she did buy dinner! Which was a shock to me. I had chicken katsu, Johnnie had his usual tempura udon and Lisa had salmon sashimi. A nice Friday night meal. And I was all too happy to catch up with my son after not having seen him for 3 weeks. We went to the apartment and he and Claire started their play deal since like they used to. I'm sure Claire is tired of just getting stuck with me for the last 3 weeks too. And of course Johnnie started with the Wild Kratts. Although we did end up watching the movie Space Jam Legacy. I was shocked the Johnnie had watched it in Maui and knew LeBron James now. And so we did end up doing movie night after all. I let him sleep a little later than usual to let him get used to LA time again. And when he knocked off and I could hear him softly breathing in the bed, I couldn't help but think all is good again.