orichalcum

Friday night, A's parents arrived for the weekend, primarily, of course, to see their grandson. It was a great visit, although I couldn't help but wince when the first words my mother-in-law said Saturday morning were "but don't you think this outfit is a little feminine?" She was, however, persuaded that it was sufficiently cute to be fine with it - and agreed with us about the total impracticality of our two baby outfits with _buttons._

Saturday evening, A. and I went off to his firm's annual Associates and Partners Dinner-Dance, also known as the [Rhymes-with-Tenor] Prom. It was at the Field Museum, which they had rented out, and it was black-tie Now, when I saw black-tie, I had assumed something more or less similar to a formal wedding, where I usually find I'm on the high end of the dress level and there's a fairly wide range.

Not so here. In my red velvet knee-length dress, accented by an elaborate but homemade updo, the family 21st-birthday small pearl-and-diamond necklace, a matching wrap, and lovely ballet flats, I was easily one of the most underdressed women there. Most women were in strapless floor-length gowns. I realized in the shower on Sunday why so many of the more unusual gowns looked familiar - I had seen them at the Oscars last year. Many, in fact, had trains. Men were in a variety of well-styled tuxes.

I didn't really feel bad, cuz, dude, 2 months post-partum! Hard enough to find a dress that fit, let alone spend the time to get ready. And I think people understood that, and I still looked pretty darn good. But if we go next year, I'm going out to a nice store and buying a Serious Dress that costs at least 3 digits.

The party itself had its ups and downs. There's undoubtedly something fun about wandering through a King Tut Museum exhibit in formalwear. The string quartet appeared to know every Broadway showtune in existence. The dinner entree choices were Kobe Wagyu beef medallions or Australian Barramundi, and the dessert buffet was King-Tut centered and featured multiple desserts coated in gold dust. (Which, for the record, sticks to velvet like mad.) Some of A's colleagues were nice and interesting to talk to. It's a wonderfully family-friendly firm - most of the women under 40 have 1-3 kids.

But, that said, dinner didn't arrive to our table till 10, when we had sat down at 8 after an hour of cocktails. And so there was a long, tedious stretch of the evening. One of the consequences of which, along with the continually refilled wineglasses, that I drank more than I wanted to and later than I wanted to. This resulted in one of the first evenings where I did actually want A. to drive home, because I wasn't quite positive I was up to it.

On Sunday, after A's parents left, we watched Galactica (which was great) and then played Presto Chango, an Anonycon playtest, by Skype, which was immense fun, even if my accent wandered enormously due to how tired I was. Then we more or less collapsed. M is on a growth spurt again, which means that the relevant bits of anatomy are always sore and it's difficult to do much else besides feed him. Hopefully it will be over soon...I keep telling him he's plenty tall already. I also had a sequence of bizarre dreams, including one where ladybird97, in-character as a manipulative noblewoman, was trying to poison my old-lady heiress character by giving her 9 different types of drinks at dessert, and one where havenstone was playing Airplane with M. while criticizing me for his lack of language development.

Other cool thing of yesterday - I was wearing a sweatshirt with a Latin phrase on it, and M. kept staring at it and moving his eyes across the letters, one row at a time. He's certainly going to be inculcated fast with an appreciation for the written word!

On the down-side of things, there's been a lot of depressing news as well. A's Granddaddy isn't doing well, and other friends are dealing with unexpected illnesses and injuries. So I'm spending a lot of non-nursing time engaged in hope and prayer.