Last night ended up being a night of practically no sleep at all for me. I don’t sleep very well anymore if I go to bed before Dominica so I didn’t really fall asleep until after three in the morning. Then, as Dominica was too tired to wake up to her crying, I was doing all of the getting up to take care of Liesl during the night and it was rather a rough night. We was up more often than once per hour (she actually sleeps through the night but needs pacifier maintenance performed or else she will awaken) so there was almost never a stretch of time when I was able to get any solid sleep at all. So I slept in much later than I had anticipated this morning as it was the only chance that I had to get anything resembling real rest.
The one thing, for which I am very thankful, is that I finally managed to finish writing the article that I have been working on for Datamation (an online magazine published by Internet.com) last night. I was going to be really stressed all day today if I did not managed to complete that before going away for the weekend so I pushed to complete it last night before going to bed. Dominica proof read it for me and I submitted it. So I have the weight of that off of my shoulders today. So even though I have very, very little sleep at least I have one less thing to be worrying about.
Once I was finally up it was time to work. There was a lot of work to be done and I spent many hours working as quickly as I could trying to get enough work done so that we could get on to the road and down to the Philadelphia area as we are planning on spending the afternoon visiting with Jenn and Angelo whom we have not seen since around February. This will also be our first time seeing their new home which they purchased around June of last year.
I was finally done with work really late, around one thirty. I ran upstairs and took a quick shower while Dominica got Liesl and Oreo ready to travel. We were on the road around two thirty.
The drive down to Ambler, Pennsylvania takes us roughly two and a quarter hours. A lot of the drive in reminiscent for us as it takes us down past Newark (where we lived 2006-2008) and then past New Brunswick (where we lived for most of 2006) and down a route that we have used many times over the past several years and then down through Trenten and into Pennsylvania.
Liesl did really well on the trip down and slept until we were in the last stretch of about fifteen minutes or so and then she was starting to get a little fussy. Pretty good considering the length of the drive.
We visited for a few hours and watched the Preekness before going out for dinner. This was our first time seeing their “new” house. I saw “new” but they bought it months before we bought our “new” house and we have been here for over seven months already – and are still moving in, of course. It is a really cute and it, what appears to be, a really neat neighbourhood. They can walk to a lot of stuff from there is “downtown” Ambler.
Dominica and I were really starved. Min had had breakfast and nothing else. I had skipped all food for the day because I didn’t want to take the time away from getting my work completed.
We went to a little Indian place not far from Jenn and Angelo’s house where we got some of the most delicious curry that we have ever had. We were really excited to have a chance to get Indian cuisine as there is not any Indian anywhere near home that we have found yet and Dominica is really, really missing it. It was so good that Dominica and I actually ordered another order of it so that we could take it home to have for another meal!
Liesl had a great time at dinner. She was the hit of the restaurant and the owner and the waiter kept coming over to play with her. She had a lot of fun. She is, as always, our little social butterfly and is all about the attention. She really wanted to try our food too but she just can’t handle solid food yet.
The food was so good that we ate ourselves sick. We got back to the house and took Liesl and Oreo out for a walk around the block on which Jenn and Angelo live. It was a pretty short walk but walking Oreo in the dark is nearly impossible as you have to carry a flashlight to have any chance at all of keeping him from just running into things. It is very difficult.
We visited for another two hours or so and ended up leaving Ambler around ten thirty at night. Dominica was completely exhausted and slept for a good portion of the drive home. I was feeling a bit ill from lack of sleep and it was a very difficult drive especially as it started raining rather heavily. Not a record breaking rain or anyting like that but a good, solid rain that makes it difficult to drive – especially in an all-wheel drive SUV which does not have good traction like a normal rear-wheel drive car. It tends to slip much more often.
It was just a little after one when we pulled into Peekskill. It was still raining so we were running to get everything into the house without getting all wet. Then it was off to bed. Probably were able to get into bed around two in the morning. One of these days I will really get sleep but it is not going to be today.
Tomorrow we will be home all day. I am working the Sunday shift but I do get to sleep in a little bit as the Sunday work is shifted later than the work during the rest of the week.