This is Diego in my Eleuthera tote. My Eleuthera tote travels with me. Diego does not.
Checking into the hotel yesterday, I was excited to see a tall, rugged man in jeans and boots wearing a huge, huge cowboy hat. Welcome to Omaha, I thought, a real live cowboy.
I turned into the lobby, hundreds more tall rugged cowboys in jeans and boots waited. It was rodeo week, the concierge explained.
I was woken early by a text, buzzing in from the 16 year old: “My phones broken, my computer’s crashed and I need trousers.”
I went to the hotel gym. “That will be a $10 please.” “$10? But I’m staying in the hotel.” “Sorry ma’am still gotta pay.”
It was raining. I hadn’t packed for rain.
Jeanette was waiting downstairs. Jeanette is a complete pro and head of sales for IH Inc. “We don’t have any catalogues,” she said, cool as a cucumber. “They forgot to send them.” The only thing you really need at a Get Together are catalogues. And we were on our way to a Get Together. We got in the car. My phone buzzed: “trousers?!” the text said.
There might not have been catalogues at the Get Together but there warm graceful Midwest women and chocolate beetles… tiny delicate decorative chocolate beetles, sprayed in gold. I ate one. I don’t think I was meant to.
“We’d like to get you to the Antiques show early,” said one of the committee members a little later, “you will be doing a Shop-the-Show event before your design talk and we’d like to walk you through it.” Shop-the-Show? Apparently I was to walk with the major donors and point out interesting antique-y things. Could I point out cool women’s handbags? I kept seeing lots of those.
Alone back in the hotel room I felt homesick, the cowboys were out having fun at the rodeo. I called Claire, our Top Banana. “How’s Domino?” “She’s making a launcher for bunny, out of a cardboard box and a skateboard.”
As I was going to sleep my phone moaned beside me. “Yo, Mum. TROUSERS.” I turned the light back on and went trouser shopping.
Tomorrow the Eleuthera, Jeanette and I go to Detroit, where hopefully we will meet up with some catalogues.
Will our next stop be near you? See a full list of dates and cities here.
I picked this post at random (well maybe I liked the dog) as I am a new ambassador poking around the website. This is such an honest post. I don’t know there’s something about the way it is presented as a list that just makes total sense to me as a mom. We do tend to run down the list…