Life After Odyssey. . .

Saturday afternoon, Cassie and her teammates competed in the regional Odyssey of the Mind competition.  They had been working since November to write and perform an original drama.  They did a fantastic job and had a lot of fun. Les prepared a luscious meal of crab legs to celebrate.  I'm not sure whether he was celebrating the team's wonderful performance, or the fact that we were finally finished.  But, it was quite the jolly meal.  Midway through dinner, I asked Lacey if she was happy.  We are working hard to help her understand happy situations that involve more than the receipt of toys or candy.  Lacey smiled and said, "Yes, I'm happy for Cassie!"  That statement was music to my ears and made the Odyssey experience even more valuable.

For the past couple weeks I was steadily overseeing the production of scenery, props and costumes; filling out paperwork for the competition; and supervising rehearsals.  I thought that once the competition was over, I would have a lot of time on my hands. Well, life after Odyssey hasn't really been much different, except that Cassie keeps telling me how much she misses being able to focus on Odyssey.

Sunday afternoon I did the grocery shopping.  I hadn't shopped in about 10 days, so my cart was pretty full.  I was happily and quickly placing my groceries on the belt.  I grabbed the extra large container of blueberries and discovered that it wasn't closed.  Whee!  Blueberries went bouncing and rolling everywhere.  This might not seem very funny to you.  But, given the pace of activities during my last couple weeks, this was about the funniest thing I'd ever seen.  To make things funnier, it was as if the other customers could smell the blueberries.  Soon, there were squashed blueberries everywhere.  Meanwhile, I was trying to get the cashier's attention to explain what had happened - as though he couldn't see.  He had to call for a manager, who had to study the situation for a few minutes before he decided to call someone for a "dry cleanup."  Before the guy with the broom could arrive, Cassie returned from the produce department, new container of blueberries in hand, and managed to mash the few berries that remained whole.  The guy with the broom made a valiant attempt to sweep up the blueberries that were just about embedded in the floor tiles by this time.  As we left the store, I felt compelled to apologize to every store employee we passed on the way out.

Sunday afternoon, we journeyed into Washington D.C. to meet up with Ken, who was in town for a conference.  We had a very pleasant meal with him at the Dubliner restaurant.  We wished that we could have spent more time with him. 

To get to D.C., we had driven to Pentagon City Mall.  We were going to take the Metro.  But, because it was pouring rain, we had the doorman at the Ritz Carlton flag down a taxi for us.  The rain persisted, so we returned to Pentagon City via taxi.  Of course, Cassie had to use the restroom.  We left Les and Lacey by the escalator and wove our way through the food court, across the mall to the restrooms.  I was tired and disoriented by the number of yellow plastic cones lining the hallway outside the restrooms.  I should have taken all those plastic cones as a warning sign.  First, I walked right into the men's bathroom.  I don't mean that I headed in the direction of the men's room or started to put one foot inside the doorway.  No.  I was about 8 feet into the bathroom before I realized that the loud noise in the background was Cassie hollering at me to get out of the men's room.  Yes, there was a guy in there and no, I didn't see a thing.

Next, we walked into the women's restroom.  The first thing I saw was the attendant.  She was wearing large, black plastic trash bags over her shoes.  The trash bags were secured by several layers of toilet paper that she had wrapped around her ankles.  That would explain why there wasn't any toilet paper in the stalls.  The attendant had a long-handle floor mop and was using it to wash the bathroom counter and mirrors.  Whoa!  We walked gingerly toward the stalls.  Lucky us!  The selection included a stall with a flooded toilet, a toilet swathed in black plastic trash bags, a stall covered with what looked like toenail clippings, and a toilet with no seat.  As we fled the restroom Cassie said, "Mommy!  This is supposed to be a nice mall!"  I reassured her that next time, we would not only take advantage of the doorman at the Ritz Carlton, we would check out the hotel's bathrooms too!