Sometimes You've Gotta Go

This week made me a little crazy.  Workers kept me home all day Thursday.  Spanish class was canceled twice, and I didn't know either time until I showed up to an empty classroom.  No school on Wednesday.  Poor Lilly has been sad all week, and little Annika has been a pill.  We went to a pool party on Saturday afternoon, and had a lovely but exhausting time.  We left early for naps.  The whole house seemed overtired.

In bigger news, an American diplomat was killed in Afghanistan while delivering books to a local school.  She had served in Caracas only a year before.  In local news, the election was heating up and major rallies were planned for the weekend, having a major effect on traffic patterns.  The community is sad, and a little tense.

By Saturday afternoon, I was feeling crazy.  I hadn't managed a trip to the grocery store all week, and Saturday afternoon I had no fuel for such a trip.  We got out of the house that afternoon, ending up at an arcade on the rooftop of a local mall.  The girls had a blast and I didn't have to worry about dinner.  But Dave was beginning to feel the crazy as well.  We needed to get out.

So we called up Beth and Drew.  Rumor had it they were headed out to their golf club for the day on Sunday.  We asked if we could tag along.  Thank goodness they said yes.

Their golf club is a simple affair in the hills outside of town.  Its a lovely spot.  This weekend was a bit less lovely, because the dry weather had caused many forest fires.  Some of the hills looked more like charcoal than forest.  Because of the dry conditions, the club had no running water, which made the bathrooms kinda gross and brought about a limited menu.  But the pool was still cold and the food was both tasty and cheap.  We swam, we talked, we ate and we headed home in much better moods.

Sometimes you just need to get out of town.  In Virginia, we spent time at a local farm to get out of town.  Caracas may be more difficult than Arlington, but hanging out at a pool in the hills outside of Caracas is a lovely way to de-stress.