Tank Day

I woke up this morning still half tired from the afternoon in the heat at the zoo yesterday. Or was it because I got up early again to do Johnnie's Daily pass and lock up a tee time? I did get the tee time, at Penmar next Sunday. I actually wanted to do some cleaning of the apartment and without Johnnie, today would be a perfect day to do that. Except that I actually wanted to go do a mid-day movie just like I used to do when I was still working at the FRB. How many Fridays did I take off at lunch and watch a first-day-out movie at the Regal and come back a couple of hours later to ride out the rest of the Friday?! Now THAT would be a nice tank Friday wouldn't it? And so it was that I went to AMC Century City on what turned out to be another nice warm day and caught the 11 AM showing of the ETERNALS. It wasn't the first day out for that movie but since I couldn't catch it last week, why not today?! I actually made sure I didn't have any meetings and I actually wondered why I even cared. If I were working at the FRB I certainly would not have cared. As it were the movie was typical Marvel but I will admit I'm not as emotially invested in the ETERNALS characters as I was with Iron Man and Thor and Hulk and Captain America whose comics I read when I was as young as Johnnie is today. Still the plot was pretty good and of course now we have the sequence of movies to look forward to for the next decade or so LOL. I wanted to wait for the ending credits with the Dark Knight Easter egg, but I had to pee so bad I missed it. Had to look it up on YouTube afterwards. Anyway by the time the movie was over it was nearly 2 PM. I had a hotdog before the movie started but now I was still hungry. So I stuck around the Century City mall and had me a koubideh kabob at Massis Kabob in the food court. And then walked around some since it was such a nice warm day. Chance to pad my step count you know LOL. All that cost me $7 in parking at the Westfield. Hey it was nice to hang out at the Century City mall again. Nice to walk around and walk into the shops again. I hadn't done that in a while and rarely since the pandemic started and I remembered how this was my go-to activity on many a Sunday afternoon when I was still living on Beverly Glen. Seems like ages ago. Still, I didn't actually realize that there were brick and mortar stores here for stuff I buy online. Allbirds. MeUndies. UnderArnour. How many times did I used to go to Gelson's when we still lived in Westwood even. Time travel reminiscing today I guess. Anyway by the time I got home it was nearly 3 PM and I pronounced myself officially done with the work week. This was my favorite time of the week really. No more work to think about, at least not through the weekend. No Johnnie or Claire so no work there, I could actually have some ME time.

I had the new James Bond movie lined up for tonight too and then a pretty good college basketball game between my beloved UCLA Bruins, ranked #2 in the country against #4 Villanova. I was looking forward to a quiet Friday evening. Maybe take my time to clean the apartment even. Until I got a call from Lisa. Immediately I knew without her saying a word that she wasn't going to able to pick up Johnnie on time. Something about having to call a whole bunch of patients. I didn't care really, I didn't mind. And so by 5:30 PM I picked up Johnnie at STAR. It tickled me that he was wearing the DIY tie-dye shirt I made for him last weekend. And of course he was surprised to see me. I whisked us over to Panda Express to get dinner.  He asked why his mom couldn't pick him up. He's starting to wonder about stuff like that. And so I told him that his mom was still at work and not able to get away just yet. I don't know whether it was the sudden blip in the routine but Johnnie actually expressed concern that his mom was working hard. He said he wanted to help her. And so he actually asked if we could work at her office again tomorrow so we could help. I told him that it was a good idea, but just for him to do it. I had no intentions of doing that again, at least on a non-emergency basis. And so it was that Johnnie spent an extra evening with me and whether it was for just 4 minutes, 40 minutes or 4 hours I was glad. I dropped him off at Lisa's at 8 PM and told her about his idea for helping her at her office tomorrow. I told him he could do it for the morning and that I could pick him up at lunch so she could stick around and stay for as long as she needed to after. And with that I went home and enjoyed a big UCLA win against Villanova. I went to bed gratefully for the TANK FRIDAY. And happy that the weekend is here.

***** SIDE NOTE ******

Today was also one of those not-so-obscure anniversary days. I looked it up.  Seven years ago today in 2014 was the afternoon I got a voicemail from IAC (Independent Adoption Center) letting us a know that a birth mother had chosen us as prospective parents but that I needed to call first because there may be some extenuating circumstances. I smiled looking at the transcript of that message. And I got a little emotional too.  Because the product of all of that is the little boy wearing the tie dye shirt in the pic above. Our little Johnnie. Enough said. It seemed like the Universe found a way that we could spend some time together tonight after all.