Coming Home

I'm back from my week-long work meeting. It went fairly quickly despite being under the weather most of the time I was there. In fact, I had newfound respect for babies' ears when landing. If you've ever flown with a cold, you know what I mean.

Anyway, it was easier to be away when I wasn't feeling so great and had a lot of meetings. Time where I could just focus on me but I did think of Adler and Austen often. We stayed at Hotel Salomar in San Diego and they are a pet-friendly hotel. Upon my arrival, I just happen to get one of their keycards with a Berner on it! Talk about destiny - I checked with our other 40 or so staff members who were also staying there and I don't think anyone else had a Berner on their keycard. So that was my first reminder of home and one that I looked at a few times a day when I went back to my room.

The second reminder were all the babies! It seems wherever I went, there were babies everywhere. Babies being strolled around San Diego, in the convention hall, during sessions and yes, across the hotel hall from me...her name was Beatrice and she was 10 months old. She was rather chipper like Austen even when her "nappy" needed a change as her mother shared with me (they were from London). Last night I was eager to catch the red eye home, especially after I spied a 5-month old with the same bib as Austen during our big presidential reception! Anyhow, I survived and so did Adler and Austen. Tom took great care of them and the house wasn't in shambles when I arrived. But when I did walk in the door at 5am this morning, there was Adler to greet me (for 10 minutes straight) and then I went in to check on Austen. I had good intentions of admiring him sleeping and getting some rest myself but I couldn't resist. Yes, I woke him up and even in his groggy state, I think he was happy to see me. The best is that after I played with him for about 30 minutes, he went back to sleep just like that. My kid is great and so is my dog. It's nice to go away and be reminded of that every once in awhile.