A last hurrah

My friend Marina recently had her fifth and called her last big prenatal outing her last hurrah. I decided yesterday that in spite of my large girth and looming due date (one week) I really wanted to accompany my husband to his very first book signing in Washington DC, and bring our daughters along with us. So yesterday we had our last hurrah. It couldn't have been better.

I met up with a dear old childhood friend of mine (wondrous pilgrim) who lives in the city and the day was sunny and in the upper sixties. The folks at the bookstore (Politics and Prose) were very kind and so helpful and down in their lowere level is the best kept secret in coffee in d.c. I haven't had such a good lattè since the leaving Italy. And the pastry were worthy of the coffee too, to put it mildly.

It was such a joy to see Ben give his talk on comics to a group of school age children and while he signed copies of his book the girls and I perused the children's section and bought a book or two of our own. After the booksigning we parted ways with my friend and we headed to Chinatown for dumplings. Zita (who is gluten intolerant ) and I went to a food truck (wow. . . . foodtrucks. . . . .) and ate our food on the steps of the portrait museum, watching the washingtonians enjoying the fine weather on their lunch breaks and Ben and the others went for dumplings. Afterward we visited the museum and headed home on the metro.

One cannot put a price tag on a days outing in February with the sunshine and birdsong of April. Oh. . . . and the vienna metro sure has a lot of buskers now. Whenever we give them money I laugh and think about how all the starving artists are just passing the same money around to one another.