"I love our happy moments!"

We had a nice day last weekend. Nothing too special. Jen and Lily and walked to Dunkin Donuts and had some munchkins and chocolate milk and iced tea. We held hands on the walk and played 20 questions and stopped to rest under a tree and at a playground on the way back. We all took pictures of each other and while we were doing that, Lily suddenly exclaimed "I love our happy moments!"

It seems like you never really recognize the moments that shape your life until they've come and gone. The past couple weeks had been really good. My contract work had been winding down and I had not yet begun my new job. Lily was done with school for the year and we spent every day together, going to the local playgrounds and playing games and watching cartoons. One day, when we were doing the last one, she said, completely unprompted, "Daddy, you're my BFF. That means best friend forever."

Lily cried when we told her that I'd be going back to full time work. I have mixed feelings about it myself. I was bitterly unhappy at the last office job I'd had before this one. The IT guy, who departed shortly after I did, called the place "A black hole of shit." And I liked the freedom that came with freelancing, and it's good work while it's there, but I knew it was limited duration from the beginning, and I don't have the network of contacts I'd need to make a go of it full time. So it's back to the office.

It's strange returning to the real world after so long out of it. I tried to keep a routine while working from home, but waking up and getting dressed to take your daughter to the bus stop is a lot different than the ritual of getting dressed for work.  I'm really enjoying the new job so far. It's a lot closer than the old job that I hated by ten miles, and since those are highway miles, the trip is a half hour shorter. It's challenging, but I'm good at it. It pays better, and the cafeteria is ridiculously good. I had a curried chicken sandwich on naan my first day and a bacon and jalapeno melt the next.

My biggest problem is that when I had my picture taken for my ID badge, I had both a pimple on my forehead and grey hair visible in my beard. That combination should not be possible. I wound up shaving it off, and Lily pretty much reacted like the girl in the second half of this comic from the Oatmeal.

Today, Lily and went out with my friend Frederick and his son and had a really good time. We hit a comic book store, a toy store, an Army/Navy store, a Five Below and a local mall. I think Lily's favorite part was the escalators. She gets really excited about the strangest things, and if someone let her spend an afternoon riding escalators up and down, she would do it. She was really impressively well-behaved. When we were at the Barnes & Noble, she reached right past the girly Spa Science kit to get the Disgusting Special Effects Make Up Kit, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit happy about that.

She wants to use the kit to make up Jen so she can star in a movie called "Zombie Mom". (The mom gets bitten by a zombie, but doesn't eat her family because she loves them so much)  She also told Frederick "If you're going to be a vampire, can you be a romantic vampire and not a scary vampire?" She's a funny kid. We were out for a good seven hours and she was good and sweet practically the whole time. I love our happy moments too.