Los Angeles. Day 9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
TZVI: Today was the worst day. I woke up way too early and started to work. It was too noisy to work in the lobby, so I asked if there was a quiet place I could work. The front desk woman told me I could rent out a ballroom if I wanted. Thanks. Helpful. So I sat in the hallway where it was a little quieter. At one point I heard a banging noise come from the elevator, followed by the sound of the help buzzer, followed by people yelling “Help!” A maintenance man walked by and I told him I thought people were trapped in the elevator. He said he knew. Then I saw the firefighters. After that the other elevator stopped working as well, so I had to walk down 7 flights to get Steph a yogurt from breakfast.
I was really hoping that today would be a lighter working day so that I could spend some time with Steph and Hallie. It didn’t turn out that way though. Steph and Hallie and Lisa and Sheldon went to eat lunch at Toast (my favorite restaurant) around 11:30. I said I would join them if I could, but the emails just kept flooding in and I never got out of the hotel. I was pretty miserable, and pretty hungry because I hadn’t really eaten anything at that point. Then around 2:30 PM I finally finished working and decided I could go with Steph to Century City Mall and get something to eat there and at least have a nice time walking around (Hallie was with the babysitter). Except when I went to look for an Epi Pen, I couldn’t find one. I knew there was one in the diaper bag with the babysitter, and one in a little black pouch that I kept a few random things in. The pouch was missing. I looked everywhere for it. I turned over the entire hotel room twice and went through every suitcase. Aside from the epi pen, the pouch had $100 cash and some credit cards. By the time I gave up looking it was 3:30 and Steph had already laid down to take a nap. What a miserable waste of a day.
STEPH: Today was the best day. We woke up but missed breakfast. Thankfully Tzvi got me a yogurt before they closed it. We got dressed and went to Toast for brunch. Toast is the best. I had eggs and we got a side of the coffee cake crusted french toast, which is always amazing.
After lunch we did some shopping in the store attached to Toast and got some really cute stuff for Hallie. Then I Ubered back to the hotel, where Tzvi was throwing a fit about something. I laid down and took a nap, which was glorious.
TZVI: Around 4' o’clock Hallie came back with the babysitter and I left Steph sleeping in the room. I decided I could still salvage the day by taking Hallie to the mall, so we drove over to Century City and walked around for an hour or so. At first Hallie and I thought we’d be fine without a stroller, so we walked the really long distance from the car to the elevator, took the elevator to the wrong floor, walked downs some stairs, and then took a different route back through the parking lot back to the car to get the stroller when we realized we’d made a mistake, all with Hallie on my shoulders. We got hot chocolate from a pop-up shop in the winter wonderland in the middle of the mall, bought macarons for Steph and for Rachel (who loves macarons) and then bought socks at the Happy Socks store. It was fun.
STEPH: Around 6 o’clock I woke up from my nap. We got Hallie bathed and ready for dinner, and then sent her off with Sherry and Mark to go to dinner, while we went to a sheva bracha at someone’s house in Beverlywood. The house was at the end of a culdesac and set about one flight of stairs below street level. It was one of the nicest houses we’ve ever been in. It was super modern, all glass, with the highest-end everything. The backyard had an infinity pool overlooking Century City. It was pretty amazing.
The sheva bracha was very nice. They had BBQ type food set up outside, and tables set up inside. All of the food was good.
TZVI: They had little sliders with pastrami that Steph kept taking in hopes of getting one without pastrami, and then kept piling them onto my plate when it turned out that every single one of them had pastrami. Good sliders though.
STEPH: There was also good dessert. After the sheva bracha we went back to the hotel. Tzvi’s parents were texting us that they were stuck in the lobby because the elevators weren’t working, but by the time we got back they were working and they had made it up to my parents room (they couldn’t go to our room because our room wasn’t wheelchair accessible). We collected Hallie, said goodnight, and went to bed.
Oh, and in case you thought we forgot about her, Babi comes home from the hospital tomorrow.