I am intoxicated…then validated.

The last 48 years of my life were completely validated by two events today. That seems a sufficiently compelling opening line to keep you reading to the end, don’t you think? Good, because having said that I have to back up to yesterday’s blog. In literary circles this is done as a suspense builder. In my case, I’m just doing it to be annoying.

So, the culmination of my Zen railroad experience last night was very short lived. At about 4:00 a.m. the conductor led an odiferous and obviously intoxicated woman to the seat next to mine and apologetically advised me that she needed to seat the woman next to me. She had apparently become so intoxicated that she made a huge scene in one of the club cars, shouting that someone had stolen her baggage, when, in fact, she has merely left it beneath a different table in her inebriated stupor. Each time she breathed on me, I felt my blood alcohol level rise another two points. She would let out a large sniffly snort and then slowly drift over until her head rested on my shoulder. At this point I would sit and reel from the smell of alcohol and pray that she would eventually lean over the other direction…until she fell into the isle. Yes, that would work. She snuffled and snarfled throughout the remainder of the night. I felt myself getting unhealthier just being in close proximity. I’m fairly certain she gave me swine flu.

I arrived in Denver at exactly 7:30 am as predicted and was met by the entire Knieser contingent. A three second, full on exposure to Eden’s beaming smile upon seeing me made the entire night worthwhile. The day was spent visiting, playing and shopping all punctuated by frequent cries of “Hey Nana”. While riding in the car, Eden asked me where Nebraska was. I told her it was North East of here and was far away. She replied “I know, I had to sleep a very long time for you to get here”. I appreciated and acknowledged her efforts on my behalf.

We spent a lovely day playing and shopping and visiting. We went to the mall so Eden could play in the large play area there and against my better judgment, I crawled all over the place with her, sliding down miniature snowy mountains and traversing trees and cabins, knowing I would regret it later when my muscles cooled down and started tightening.

We stopped for dinner in the food court of the mall and there, my sweet little Eden looked up at me with a beaming smile and said “I need you Nana, a whole, whole bunch”. Life validated. Everything else is just icing from here.

Later in the evening my good friend Laura came and picked us up to go for a late night snack at Village Inn. The food was more an excuse to get out and visit than a meal. Our waitress was either sick, very sleepy, drunk, or just the worst waitress to ever serve a meal in the history of waitresses. She was distracted, flakey and got pretty much every aspect of our order wrong. Laura and I suffered in semi tolerant silence. Samantha wrote the waitress a note thanking her and wishing her a good night. She finished it off with “you have a beautiful smile”. I smiled indulgently as I saw her writing the note. It was one of those “pat, pat, pat…oh how sweet” smiles.
We finished our meal (no more than 15 minutes after closing…oops). As we were waiting to pay our check, I noticed our waitress clearing our table. She picked up Samantha’s note and read it, then very gently, she folded the napkin and with her beautiful smile plastered firmly on her face, carefully placed the note in her pocket.
I smiled at my daughter. A life validated twice in one day!