Summer Catch-Up: Halifax, Part One

About two weeks into the summer, Matt said he had a fuckton of airmiles and Eve and I should go somewhere while he and Angus were busy with Goddamned Baseball. I looked at the calendar, and the next time I was on Facebook, I asked Hannah (HI HANNAH) if she was around the last week of July and not only was she around, she was on holidays from taking care of a passel of small children that week. Hardly daring to hope, I then asked Anne Marie (HI ANNE MARIE) if she was around that week and she was too, so I told Eve we were going to Halifax in a week and a half. She said "cool".

Then I had a massive panic attack about traveling alone with Eve and flying and getting around and packing and sleeping in strange places and possible sea monsters and a bunch of other stuff and thought "maybe not". Then my wonderful husband talked me down from California or Asia or wherever the hell he was at the moment and booked the flight and rental car on points so I couldn't chicken out. He is a good man.

So we got to the airport and through security without incident (okay, that's not strictly true, I walked through and beeped, so I went in the big scanner and then the guard said "I'm sorry, you alarmed in the chest area ma'am" and I said "story of my freakin' life" and then I got a little action from a woman in uniform), and got on the plane. Then something went wrong with the plane and we sat on the plane for a long time while maintenance people got off and on and turned things off and back on again, but they left the air on and gave us water, which is not always the case as I understand it, so we were okay. Then we got off the plane because we needed a new plane, and got sandwiches and Starbucks with the vouchers they gave us, and Eve was okay because hey, Free Starbucks. In the end the delay was longer than the actual flight, but we weren't really on a tight deadline and had no connection, and we had books, so no biggie.

We landed and went over to get our rental car. This was my first time renting a car without another driving adult and having to figure out directions. I told Matt to get me one with a GPS. I love my GPS. I have a close, intense, possibly co-dependent relationship with my GPS. He said "no cars have them anymore - everyone just uses their phone." SAY WHAT? That's just STUPID. You're not supposed to be looking at your phone while you're driving, you're supposed to be sitting straight, with your hands at ten and two (or nine and three if you want to be all crazy and newfangled) looking at the road listening to the calm, reassuring voice of your beautiful GPS telling you when and where to turn.

Fortunately, I have Eve, who is in many ways more like my sister than me. I handed her the phone and started driving. She said "Mom, you're CRUSHING this" very reassuringly, but I told her to maybe wait until we were out of the airport parking lot before she laid on the praise.

Also fortunately, as Hannah had said, the road from the airport into Halifax and where Hannah lives is a nice, uncrowded, twinned highway, not a "bonkers six-lane Ontario monstrosity".

We got to Hannah's at about nine-thirty at night. Pay close attention here, because this is important: Hannah welcomed us into her house and cooked us lobster, at nine-thirty at night on a Wednesday night of her one week of day-care-freeness of the summer, on a day when she had spent hours laying a new floor in her downstairs bathroom, two days before her oldest son's birthday.

*excuses self to go send Hannah a nice gift*

She did make me sleep in the nap room, surrounded by empty cribs and creepy dolls, but still - above and beyond.

Thursday she took us to Peggy's Cove during what was apparently the busiest Peggy's Cove season in recent memory. Hannah and I enjoyed the ocean view and Eve and Hannah's three boys enjoyed looking for Pokemon with Eve's phone.

Thursday afternoon we drove into the city to find our hotel, which was fine until the very last minute when we ended up in a you-can't-get-there-from-here situation and possibly went down a one-way street the wrong way and finally found the hotel parking lot and decided that the rental car could stay there until we drove back to the airport. We also got briefly lost in the huge, airless parking garage before we figured out that we should have driven a little further around before we parked. Once we got into the elevator, Eve confessed that she'd already been texting for help.

We checked into our room and then went down to walk on the Waterfront. Apparently there are a LOT of Pokemon hanging around the Halifax Waterfront. We found what Eve pronounced the most perfect fish and chips ever.

We went to Anne Marie's house for dinner and met Sheila - the three of us went to high school together an unmentionable number of years ago (my general rule for this time of life for most things is Never Do the Math, which come to think of it is a rule that's been in play through a lot of my life). It was half of our usual girls' week-end group of six, but still very nice.

Anne Marie finished the night proving what a loving mother she is by finally going out on the porch and allowing her son to put his "tarp full of water on the second floor to be released while someone is out on the porch admiring the plants" prank into effect. He later allowed that ping pong balls might have been a better way to go.

We went back to the hotel, where I had jacked the air conditioning up to arctic. Eve said she'd be fine with an extra blanket. I got out of the shower and found her like this:

She's sensitive.