Strange

"To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. " -Robert A. Heinlein

We took a family trip to Kansas City, MO this weekend to see a good friend of mine tie the ol' knot.  None of us had been there before, and it was strange, indeed.

Maeve was the first to be hit with the strangeness of it all; she awoke in a strange hotel room while I was at the rehearsal, with only her Daddy and blankie feeling familiar to her.  She sat on Daddy's lap holding her blankie for a good twenty minutes or so, my husband reports, looking very concerned and jittery about her environment.  Then she and Dad explored, slowly, the hotel room, touching the blanket, the carpet, the strange furniture.  

The next day we took a walk to a nearby grocery store to get our lunch and dinner taken care of.  This was the strangest part of the trip for DH and I.  All of the store's carts had been "liberated" from Wal-Mart, and the liquor laws are apparently quite different in Missouri; we saw Capri Sun-looking containers of strawberry daiquiri by the checkout counter - just freeze and stick in a straw!  Yeah, here in Colorado, you can't buy anything above 3.2% alcohol in a grocery store, so that was some culture shock!  

Finally, on our way home, we saw Budweiser for sale in bottles at the Kansas City International airport (I think they fly to Mexico from there, that's about as international as it gets...), and people drinking from open containers right there in the airport!  Totally different from Colorado, where the only places in an airport you can buy liquor are the bars and in first class on the plane.

Maeve tuned out all of that, of course, and didn't even seem weirded out by the plane ride.  But those first few moments awake in the hotel were probably all the strange she needed for a month!

At the reception - that's our strange little family in the background, I'm handing Maeve to DH