Saturday morning, we woke up earlier than usual, showered, and got dressed to prepare for the day's events--sashagee's parents had offered to come into the city, pick all of us up, take us out to their house in the suburbs, and watch Laila to give sashagee and I some time to go on a date! I suggested going to Geneva and walking around the shops, since I haven't been there in years and certainly not since the Plague Year began. After arriving and making sure Laila was all set up, that she was fed and changed and calm and we wouldn't be leaving a screaming sad baby with sashagee's parents, we borrowed their car and set off:


The first priority was finding food. sashagee still can't eat anything too spicy and doesn't want anything that causes gas--Laila had an extremely bad day after the farmer's market dinner on the 10th and it turns out it's because sunchokes can cause gas--and also we didn't want a contemporary American deal because that's where we were going for dinner, so we skipped a few restaurants until I noticed a place called Egg Harbor tucked away in the back of a courtyard plaza. It's a local breakfast chain (and also in Georgia? ) that had a lot of omelets and skillets and so on. That's usually a downside, because American breakfast food is full of either pork, mixed milk and meat, or both, but as soon as I saw they had shakshuka I new what I was getting. It was good, with chunky tomatoes and slightly spicy, and I even appreciated the English muffin they paired it with after sashagee suggested that the English muffin pockets would efficiently carry the shakshuka to my mouth. They paired it with jam so I didn't do that, but maybe in the future I should.

After we were done eating, we went over to Graham's so sashagee could get some coffee. There were very few people in masks--I'd estimate around a third or less, including a third or less of the staff at the stores we went to--and almost every store had a sign saying that masks were optional for vaccinated patrons. I've been fully vaccinated for months but sashagee just got her first shot a couple weeks ago, so she kept her mask on whenever we were indoors. I went by staff practices--if the people working at the store weren't wearing masks, I didn't either.

We didn't have a lot of time because we had left a milk bottle behind but had no idea how Laila would take to it, so we only got to go to a few stores. The first stop was when sashagee noticed a huge collection of plants in the window of a store called GROW. Still mourning the loss of all the herbs we bought, which were devoured by aphids probably blown in from nearby trees the one time we opened our windows on a windy day, she picked out a stromanthe plant for its pink leaves--it's in the office right now, the room which previously didn't have many plants. We left and went further down Third Street before I asked if we could stop in at Harvey's Tales when I saw it was a bookstore. sashagee made a beeline for the children's section and wanted to buy a copy of The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, so our current plan is to get one more copy so we'll have three--the Japanese copy I already own, the English copy we just bought, and a French copy as well. If we can raise Laila to be trilingual, she'll appreciated it--to this day I'm sad that my father never taught me German growing up, back when he was much better at it than he is now after almost fifty years of it being barely used.

By this point is was almost 3:30 p.m. and we had been gone for three hours, so we stopped at Graham's one more time for ice cream--I got a coconut and almond ice cream malt--and checked into a store that had a bunch of small stalls because they promised a tea collection, but didn't find any tea or even the store that was supposed to sell it. Then we went back to the car and drove back to sashagee's parents' house, where we discovered Laila fast asleep on sashagee's stepmom. They said that she had taken to the bottle just fine--when they initially gave it to her she looked incredulous and screwed up her face to cry right until milk came out, at which point her eyes got wide and she devoured it all and then fell back asleep. What a good baby.

We stuck around a bit before going to Hardware for dinner:


Maybe it's because it was talked up to me so much, but I thought it was nice but not amazing. The Brussels sprouts depicted in the picture were good but not the transcendent experience I was promised--though even sashagee's father, who had expounded on their virtues many times, was a bit disappointed in them--and the smoked salmon salad I got was delicious but too heavily dressed for much flavor other than creamy dill to come through. The baked goat cheese, however, was excellent, with a pickled jalapeño compote on top of the cheese and crispy bread to put it on. Amazing.

Then we went back and sashagee's parents drove us home where she immediately collapsed into bed and I stayed up for the spectacular thunderstorm that smashed into the city around 11 p.m., an event which Laila slept through. Not a surprise, though, since it was the first day she'd had a bottle, the first time she'd been away from us for an extended period, the first time she'd spent a lot of time outside (in sashagee's parents' yard)...so many firsts. Anyone would be tired after that.

What a lovely day!