Long weekend has ended!
Wednesday: picked Sophie up, drove home, took a nap about it, and then we walked to the farmer's market! Our specific purpose was to grab things to make dinner with, but mostly to enjoy the vibes because it was nice and shaded by trees and dog-friendly and there was a local jazz lady doing jazz lady things. Notably we took Baby Dog in her wagon, which is the furthest I've ever taken her in it. I got it because she loves to Go Places but especially in the summertime it just hurts her too much to walk very far, so I've been working on training her to hang out in a wagon that I pull. She did really well! Still needs a bit of work, I had to give her a "stay" command a few times when she got antsy and then we did have to stop once or twice to just let her hop out and pee/sniff for a moment. But I was able to take her all the way to the farmer's market and back and she had an absolute blast, which is the important part.
Thursday: Museum of Science and Industry! There's a Pompeii exhibit there and that specifically + Roman culture in general is a huge passion of Sophie's, so she was delighted. To appease her himbo girlfriend (that's me) there were CHICKENS! BABY CHICKENS!!!! PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP!!! Then I had D&D, which Sophie listened in on while she drew on her tablet.
Friday: we had planned to go see Barbie Movie but honestly after my work week + two days of Many Things I was really tired. I had actually decided to do an after-action with Sophie requesting that next time we have a weekend together we plan slightly fewer things, or otherwise try to plan a day to be a Rest/Chill at Home day, but was gonna do Barbie Movie and whatnot anyways 'cuz I didn't want to be a buzzkill. Anyways it turned out Sophie was also very tired so we did a good communication and stayed home; she played A Little to the Left on my Switch and I flopped down to finish reading one of my library books. After we recovered some spell slots we ended up summoning the Toes to all play Jackbox together and made many immature jokes and had many snorting belly laughs.
Saturday: botanical gardens! I have never been to the Chicago Botanical Gardens, but I pass it every time I drive to Milwaukee, so I had suggested to Sophie rather than take the train back I could drive her back and we could make a pit stop at the botanical gardens. I'm glad we did, it was absolutely lovely! It was also massive, and will definitely take multiple trips to fully explore. After that I drove Sophie back to Milwaukee, which included a pit stop to get her keys from her friend who works at a cat rescue so there were KITTENS!!!
then we hung out in Sophie's apartment for a bit where I bothered her cat, and after that I drove back to tidy up the apartment and be a slug for a bit.
Today is a work day for me but I'm taking it easy, routines-wise, and am going to get groceries and finish a few chores rather than do my normal writing/exercise/etc stuff. Tomorrow I'll get back to "normal," and then after that I only work one more day before I get another weekend which will probably be spent doing as few things as possible because I can only handle so much excitement at once.
It was a wonderful long weekend, though! We both needed the girlfriends time and also a bit of a genuine vacation from life/stress, and it's nice to be able to explore things with someone you love.
