will I escape?

First: the Sober Husband has requested that I inform the readers how he did shopping for Lola (I asked him to run out on her birthday and pick her up a couple of extra gifts). He did very well indeed, bringing home a nightlight and a Barbie sporting a pink and gold gown with some accessories. Lola loves this Barbie and likes to fuss about with her tiny plastic accoutrements.

Poor Lola evidently was too miserable on Sunday to grasp what was going on with her party. It wasn't until Tuesday that she asked me, sadly, why her friends didn't come to her party. "Because I called all their mothers and told them you were throwing up" helped her to shake her belated feelings of rejection. She worried that we'd eaten too much of her birthday cake to have enough for her friends, but again the promise of a new birthday cake cleared up her sorrows.

Until... I remarked at the dinner table, "You do know I'm going out of town this weekend, right?" This was met with sullen acknowledgment from the Sober Husband and outright astonishment and woe by five year-old Lola. "No Mommy World, no Mommy love??!" she said pathetically.

I'm planning to leave Friday to go on an annual camping party held in the Mendocino hills each year by friends. I haven't been to one of these since Lola was a fetus, and somehow it would never have occurred to me that I could brazenly drive off and attend by myself (children are persona non grata, and the Sober Husband doesn't care for this sort of thing much). My friend Abs, a more dynamic sort of mommy than me, proposed that I attend, pointing out that she was leaving her two children with her husband for the weekend. Thinking about it, I couldn't see a valid reason not to go (aside from Lola's hurt feelings). The husband has escaped back to Chicago and other points back East to attend various weddings, poker games, funerals, business trips, etc.. without us from time to time (indeed, he'll be off on a conference later this month), but since I procreated over eight years ago, I've only gone off on my own three times (twice on quick trips to see my best friend from high school, and once to drive seventy-odd rats down to L.A. to go up for adoption).

Currently I'm waiting for a shoe to drop or a child to vomit, causing me to stay home. It feels impossible that I can just drive off. We'll see. We will also see whether I have a good time off on my own. I'm very much looking forward to this, but the sad underlying reality is that I've become very unaccustomed to prolonged conversations not involving children. Can the Drunken Housewife resuscitate a bit of her former personality, one which was allegedly witty and vivacious? Or is she going to be one of those sad, sad lifeless parent-losers who keeps telling pointless anecdotes about how cute her children are? ("And then Iris called her father 'Dorky McDork of the Dorks!', and Lola and I laughed and laughed").