In Which Nothing Really Happens At All

Recently Ren tagged along with me to a conference. Most people take vacations. We go together to my conferences in exciting places like Madison, Wisconsin, where I can be busy and stressed out and he can kill 8-10 hours waiting for me by playing video games on the iPad and shopping. There's nothing relaxing or refreshing about it except the fact we get away together from the kids for a couple of days and spend the night in a hotel room where no one wakes us at 5:30 a.m. to describe the latest issue of Lego Club magazine in excrutiating detail (that actually happened this morning). This go around, my conference was well-timed to immediately follow 72 hours of Sky-rific meltdowns, including three in one day. (Some time, once I have steeled myself for it, I will write a detailed blog about meltdowns since I'm pretty sure you can't imagine one unless you've experienced it, and if you have experienced it, you will feel better knowing you're not the only one who feels that way).

Anyway, we took a three-hour drive to an equally small, equally cold, grey, and dismal town for my conference. In fact, there was very little there that seemed at all different from here. Except for one thing: no kids. No Sky to fall apart. No Pink P to cry her way through an entire box of bandaids. And no Stow to break free, wreak havoc, get caught, repeat.

On the last day, when Ren picked me up after my hours of meetings, he looked completely reinvigorated. He'd found sushi at the grocery store, and a whole foods selection unlike anything we see in our own town. Plus, he'd been shopping.

"I bought a new laptop, some camera equipment, and a DS-3D," he said. The side of his nose twitched slightly, so I was pretty sure he was lying. 

"Really?" 

"I told you I was going to buy a lot remember?"

Yes, he had said he would shop, and he had threatened to spend a lot of money. But, I was in the midst of prepping for my presentation, so I assumed he was blustering for attention. I didn't care if he spent a lot of money or not. I just needed to know whether our credit card bill was going to knock my socks off, so I asked again.

"Did you really buy all that?" 

"See, you always complain when I shop," he replied, attempting to lure me into an argument that he hoped would distract me from my current line of questioning. 

"I don't care what you buy. I just want to know if you're telling the truth. Besides, you twitched. When you lie to be funny, you twitch."

I'd never pointed out that I knew about the twitch before, and when I did, he gave up the ruse and admitted that he'd only bought a few minor things on sale. I think he was disappointed that I didn't fall for his story. To be honest, though, I was just glad we could have a conversation in peace and that things were calm enough for me to notice the twitch.

The moral of this story is most certainly that we need to get out more. It's hard with my work, his back, our special needs kids. But, hey, we can always hope. And, if not, I guess we'll always have Madison (or some place like it).