A Brilliant Plan, Except the Part Where I Wore Heels in NYC

Brilliant plans are often a collaborative effort. Ours began with a realization. Several months ago I was reading about a friend going to see Wicked. I thought it sounded like fun and left it at that, until one day it hit me that, living only a couple hours from Broadway, there really wasn’t anything keeping me from going. All I needed was a reason to be in NYC without kids.

(A side note/paragraph: in most things pop culture I am an idiot. I wanted to see this play simply because everyone kept saying how good it was. I went into it having never heard any of the music and knowing only the vaguest of plotlines, which mostly came from reading the first part of the book before I put it down because it was so filthy. I apologize for this shocking revelation, continue with the story.)

The second part to our plan came only a couple days later when Peter called me with a suggestion. His company had planned 2 recruiting dinners in NYC on my birthday and the following night. Since he has to attend a couple dinners every year, why not fly my mom out to watch the kids and make it an extended date/birthday present. Desire to be in NYC kids free plus a reasonable excuse to do so (with the bonus that Wicked has matinees on Wednesdays) meant the birth of a workable plan.

When I mentioned our idea to a couple of friends, they graciously offered to split my kids between them and save us my mom’s airfare for another day. I decided to cut my stay by a night, go to only one of the dinners, the matinee the next day, and then go home. It was a perfect plan.

(Another side note: it turns out that my sister already had tickets to fly out to visit my mom that week so she wouldn’t have been able to fly out to watch my kids anyway. So don’t feel gypped Mom!)

The weekend before my birthday I began to wonder what exactly one would wear to Broadway (and to a professional recruiting dinner). Can you believe that business casual does not make up a large part of my wardrobe? Then I remembered that it this was all my birthday present so I went shopping. Sometime during the shopping spree I decided it would be fun to try the whole jeans with high heels look. A new pair of jeans and shoes were added to list.

So the kids were successfully handed off to friends, the dinner was kind of fun, I like my new outfits, and my very first Broadway play was fantastic!! It was great to have some time alone with Peter and just talk. The only flaw was deciding to wear heels when I know our favorite thing to do in any city is walk around. Aimlessly. For hours. For miles. My feet are less than happy (turns out the prefer comfort over style). But every silver lining has to have a cloud, right?

Extra thanks to my friends for watching the kids- that deserves (and will get) a post in itself! As does the adventures of walking around NYC for a day and a half. As does the conversation at a dinner table full of emergency room doctors.