I’m at this moment riding home in a van, rather than a limo, being driven by a man in a uniform rather than a suit. While on the trip I received the receipt for the trip to the airport and realized that our travel department must be on the take from the limo company, and arranged my own ride back for 1/4 of the cost. I figured it was only fair after the overpriced steak dinner I expensed. My body thinks it’s 1:20am, and I’m sure I’m going to wake up at what my clock thinks is 3:30am. Plus, I should do some double dad duty to give Jennifer a break after eight straight days of being single. Oh, and I’m sure a have a big backlog of work and increased expectations at work that I’ll put my expensive new knowledge to work ASAP.

That’s all ok, though, because I’ll be home.

I’m glad to be going home today. Yesterday was a brutal day of sightseeing; we started out at 7am so that we could get to the Capitol and be in line for tour tickets. The tour was somewhat disappointing; while the building itself is absolutely staggering, we only saw a tiny portion of it because the post-911 tour has been so truncated. We then walked through several museums until we were totally wiped out. After six hours of walking around, we were both completely wasted. We probably only walked 6-7 miles, but with the temperature around 100 very humid degrees, and having done a lot of walking the night before, we were done. It was about 4pm when we got back to our rooms and we simply agreed to meet this morning around 10-11am. I was up at 6:30 after a long rest but I’m already starting to feel tired again. Maybe I should lay down again before our last shot at a museum before we go home this evening.

Tonight I went to a mindfulness class led by Tara Brach. It was only about 10 miles from my hotel, and I left early in case the traffic report was in error or I made a wrong turn. The class, held regularly every Wednesday, is held at a Unitarian church. As I pulled into the parking lot, the cars were pretty much what I expected: small, eco-friendly, and bearing bumper stickers such as “My other vehicle is my mind.”

Inside, there were tables set up with flyers and books and CDs for sale. People milled about and chatted with each other. Chairs were set up in the church arranged around a small platform and some candles and a statue of the Buddha. Off to the side, a smaller group of chairs were set up below a sign saying “Newcomer Orientation.” At seven o’clock, people gathered in the chairs for orientation. A volunteer whose name I forget gave a short talk about meditation, the class, schedules, logistics, resources… most of it I was already aware of through my own practice or from the IMCW web site. I did learn that Tara Brach pronounces her name “Tar-a,” rather than “Tear-a” like we do.

After orientation I found a seat and watch others chatting, sitting quietly, or doing yoga. Eventually the lights dimmed and the crowd quieted. Tara entered and took a seat on the platform¹. She led a sesshin of about half a hour, much like many others I’ve heard. Then, she gave a dharma talk on the anxiety of feeling imperfect. Like in her recorded dharma talks that I’ve heard, she quoted such varied luminaries as the Buddha, George Carlin, modern Buddhist teachers, and Maurice Sendak.

After the class ended, there were a number of people waiting to talk to Tara, and I waited in line while people introduced themselves. Coincidentally enough, the girl in front of me was telling Tara Brach about how her name was also Tara, and my jaw dropped when I saw her point out her mother and her twin sister Anna[1]. While her mother was talking to Tara Brach, I mentioned the coincidence to the girl. Soon, the girls and the mother departed and I spoke with Tara. I felt clumsy and nervous and I probably came across as a total nutcase, but I told her about the time I first heard Radical Acceptance on tape and the profound effect it had on me. When I got to the point of telling her that we named our daughter Tara she stopped me and said “I just need to pause and appreciate this.” She took a breath and I could see the joy and awe her eyes, and I continued. She asked my name and Jennifer’s name asked me to pass along greetings to the rest of the family, then she gave me a hug and thanked me for telling her. All I could to was to thank her and smile.

¹ The volunteer had explained this was so we could see her. She’s a tiny little woman.

² Actually I suspect it was Ana; she said it was short for some Persian name.

On day two of my week in DC, I managed to go do some sightseeing. The traffic in the city is just crazy insane, so although the freeways weren’t bad, it look a long time to find a place to park, and I just walked around to the Lincoln Memorial and new WWII Memorial. I’ll come back on the weekend for some other sights and museums. The traffic on the way back was just horrendous, and I spent nearly 1 1/2 hours on the roads driving the 17 miles back to my hotel. Unbelievable. Traffic in San Diego is nothing compared to this.

I do have to give a big shout out for technology, which has been very beneficial. As the years go on I’ve become less of a gadget user than I have been in the past, but this week I’ve been up to my elbows in gadgets. I’ve been getting a lot of use out of my laptop and EV-DO card, and last night I used Skype and the new webcam to videoconference Jennifer and the girls. We had also planned to have me listen in on the nanny #9 interview on my cellphone during class and googletalk with Jennifer to provide my input. However, after postponing four times, nanny #9 stood us up. Oh well. She was so promising. Tomorrow, I will probably do the phone/googletalk thing from my hotel room (or rental car, depending on traffic) for nanny #11 after the Tara Brach meditation class.

A mere half-hour ago, I was arguing with a five-year-old over why it is not a good idea to make an aquarium out of her toy shopping cart while trying to convince a one-year-old to drink milk out of a sippy cup when she wants the bottle.

At this moment, I am riding in a limousine driven by a fellow in a black suit¹, writing a blog post on my kickass laptop with EV-DO broadband access. I’m headed for a weeklong business trip in our nation’s capitol, and I will not be checking any luggage, thank you very much.

I will miss all three of my girls, though, so the other night I bought a webcam so that I’ll be able to Skype them with video during the week. Everyone send your positive vibes Jennifer’s way; she will probably need them.

¹ I on the other hand am wearing a t-shirt and gym shorts. It’s frigging hot.

It’s less than a week now until I take my business trip to Washington DC. This is significant for several reasons.

• I’ve never been to Washington. I’m really looking forward to it from a tourist perspective. Even though I think it’s a den of thieves, there’s some cool architecture and history, and some poignant monuments.
• It will be my longest time away from the kids in, um, ever.
• It will be Jennifer’s longest time solo with the kids, by a long shot.
• It will be a warm-up for a possible trip to Spain that I’m trying to work in before the end of the year. Don’t get all weepy for poor Jennifer, she’s already been to Singapore and is also trying to work a trip to Germany. Plus, we’re still working on getting a nanny¹.

Considering the uniqueness of this opportunity, I’ve been figuring out how much stuff I can pack into my seven days. The five days will be spent in class, and I got a kickass new laptop so that I can stay well connected during breaks so that I’ll have my evenings free for touristy stuff. Two weekend days will definitely be spent checking out museums and monuments. One weeknight I will be visiting the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, in hopes of getting my Zen on with Tara Brach². Since it’s a big city, I’m sure there will be a lot of good food to be had; I’ll have to try not to let my Nebraskan co-worker slow me down.

There’s also some big performance art event called Capital Fringe³ which goes on the entire time I’m there and offers a variety of performances every evening throughout the Penn Quarter. Further, it would be cool to just go out in a city and see and do stuff on my own schedule. My hotel is walking distance from where the class will be held, so I should be able to stay out late and roll out of bed at 8:45am in plenty of time for the class.

In any case, I’ll be bringing my snazzy duds, my kickass new 24-105 lens, and a pantload of aspirations for what to make of my time.

¹ Interview with Candidate 7 is still pending.

² Less icky than it sounds.

³ Either this is some play on words or performance artists aren’t up on their homonyms. Both are equally likely from the art crowd.

Jennifer and I were not planning on Tara staying home sick this week, but she made new plans for us anyway. She started out on Monday with a fever, followed by a cough, followed by a running nose, and a couple rounds of vomit. I suspect there’s going to be some diarrhea involved in the finale, but don’t let me spoil the ending for you. It could be anything.

Jennifer stayed home with her on Monday, her usual day off, and we split Tuesday through Thursday, trading off at lunch each day. Today was also supposed to be a split as well, but Jennifer decided to cheat by not eating lunch and thus spending the whole day at work while I busied myself with cleaning blort off the crib sheet, the baby, and myself. Combine that with some night waking and it’s business as usual here at We’re So Tired. I guess I don’t have to worry about changing the name of the blog any time soon.

Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting another nanny; I think this is the seventh prospective nanny, but who’s counting. She looks great on paper, sounds great on the phone, and hopefully will be equally great in person. It would only figure that we find a good nanny now that Anna is all accustomed to going to ESS. This morning there was some bargaining, but no actual tears shed at drop-off time. She was cheery as could be when I picked her up, and she seems to be very attached to the “teacher” there with the piercings and the big tattoo on her chest. One of them anyways.

I’m glad we don’t have a whole lot going on this weekend; after this week of being housebound, and with my trip to D.C. coming up, the last thing we need is to be scurrying around from place to place with a sick baby.

I remember that Anna slept poorly for a good two weeks before she started preschool. Thinking back, I’m wondering why I remember this as an unusual circumstance, because she was always sleeping poorly for some reason or another. Anyway, Anna has difficulty with change, and the switch from preschool to ESS (extended student services) has been no different in this regard.

ESS is essentially a before- and after-school program in which young folk keep an eye on younger folk. I’m not sure how old the ESS people are–I’m getting increasingly bad at guessing people’s ages, especially those of Generation iPod. Anyway, during the summer, ESS kids go on a couple field trips each week; parks, movies, the beach, etc. You’d think this would be cool enough to entice Anna to go, and in fact she was excited at the prospect during the couple weeks after preschool and before returning from vacation. Nevertheless, dropping off Anna at ESS has been very rough each day, and I’m hoping it gets better soon. I’ve never been into soap operas, and I don’t intend to start now.

Hopefully Anna will adjust soon and make friends with her fellow students.

Over the last couple weeks, Tara has learned a lot of new words. I’d have to put her vocabulary at 20 words or so. She already knew mommy, daddy, outside, door, no-no, all done, night-night, and a few others. More recently she has added apple (meaning “some food I would like to eat”), please, here, ball, Anna, Augie, and she continues to learn new words every day. Also, she can sing “woah woah woah” (your boat), and “E-I-E-I-O”, and sometimes count as high as nine. I’ll have to look back at videos of Anna at this age and see how well she was speaking; I bet she’s on track to meet Anna’s benchmark of 7-8 word sentences by age two.

Somewhere on a bureaucrat’s desk in the Department of Homeland Security there is a note to add my children’s names to the no-fly list.

We left Detroit Metropolitan Airport¹ at approximate the girls bedtimes. I seem to remember thinking, when I booked the tickets, that the girls would probably sleep on the plane, despite the fact that Tara didn’t have her own seat and has never slept well outside of a bed in a darkened room, and Anna is very finicky about her personal comfort. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking about that. I’m almost positive I wasn’t thinking about the fact that our plane would be landing in downtown San Diego right about the same time as the finales of every fireworks show in the city, meaning that we would be trying to drive our travel-weary family 30 miles home at the absolute peak of post-fireworks-watching traffic. It took about an hour to get to the freeway.

In short, here are new entries to the list of things never to do again:

• Travel at night
• Attempt to commute between 9-11 pm on July 4
• Assume my children will sleep outside of their own beds
• Leave the house

For the most part we are recovered and quickly adjusting to west coast time. We have resumed the nanny search, and hope to have Mary Poppins in place before my trip to D.C. in a couple weeks.

¹ The Slowest Place on Earth