Take me out to the ball game

"Actually, just take me out ANYWHERE! I just need to get out!"
This was my plea to my husband recently when I realized that I've been in "mommy mode" 24 hours a day for the last 71 straight days. I love my girls. I love my girls immensely. But I also love my husband and, as selfish as it sounds, I love myself. And I love me even more when I'm in a somewhat sane state of mind. And lately, I've been a little more on the insane side, so I knew I was in desperate need of a "break". Jim must have seen it too because it didn't take him more than a couple of days to find a solution: Phillies baseball. Some of you may chuckle at this notion, especially those who know my husband's passion for all things related to baseball cards, not excluding the attendance of actual games. And this would appear to most to be a ridiculous suggestion for reviving an over-stressed mommy, but not for this mommy. Nope, going to a Phillies game would be perfect. It would give me the chance to divert my frustrations with life at an umpire and players who can't hear me anyway. (After all, I was a cheerleader for 8 years, so I'm sort of wired to find it exhilarating to yell and scream at games.)

We left home around 5:00 and made excellent time getting to the ballpark, which meant we could afford to stand in the 6 mile long line for food and still see the first inning. We got cheesesteaks and I even decided to splurge and go against my self-enforced rule of no soda for the month of September and get a Coke. We made it to our seats and settled in to enjoy some baseball. Jim had brought a sweatshirt, which I immediately swiped at the first cool breeze I felt. Half an hour later, Jim was getting cold, but couldn't get his sweatshirt back from me. Nope, I wasn't about to give it up. Not just because it was keeping me cozy, but because I was secretly pumping my milk off underneath it's discreet red cover. I had to keep looking down it to check the amount of milk and I'm sure the men sitting to my left thought I had some crazy obsession with my bra or something. But hey, sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do. And it was a small price to pay for a little sanity. We laughed and talked and even got ice cream in the 6th inning. The Phillies were down by a run after the end of the 8th, so we decided to head back to the car early and beat the traffic getting out of the city. It was amazing how fast we made it out of the parking lot. So fast in fact that we missed the turn for I-95 South and instead got on heading north. No big deal, we can take Hwy 76 home.... oops, missed that turn too. We end up driving around Philly for an extra half hour, give or take, before we finally found our way back to 95 South. We made it back home just minutes after 11:00 and I immediately settled back into "mommy mode", but this time feeling more relaxed then I had in weeks. Yes, I had 6 whole hours to just enjoy hanging out with my best friend without having to feed a little person, or change a diaper, or clean up a mess. It was perfect.

This post is dedicated to my brave sister-in-law, Katie and her husband, Declan, without whom this perfection would not have been possible. They graciously took care of our girls and stayed up past their bed time to do so, so to them "You're my heroes".