a)  taking a toddler to DC Coast, or
b)  wearing jeans to DC Coast?

I couldn't find anyone to watch the Boo Boo Kitty today so I ended up schlepping him to my lunch date with my friend Dave.  Dave owed me a lunch because I convinced him to play hardball on salary with his new employer and the suckers bought it--giving Dave a sizeable raise that will promptly go to his child's $35,000 college education next year.

As I cruised into the restaurant 15 minutes late, I was greeted with thinly-veiled looks of abject horror.  Who brings a baby to a lovely restaurant for lunch?

If I was Britney, they wouldn't have looked at me that way.  Or Gwynth.  Or Katie/I mean Kate Holmes.  OK, maybe they would have looked at me like I was crazy if I was Katie/I mean Kate Holmes.  The Boo was asleep in his $14 stroller, but this did not stop the hostess from asking if I would like to put the stroller away.  I had a Diane Keaton/Baby Boom moment when I wondered if I could "Check" the baby in at the coat room.  

K:  No, no, no.  He'll be FINE.  Just wheel him under the table and he'll never know what's going on.

But I went WAY out on a limb and asked if I could take the baby AND the stroller to my seat.  

H:  Well you are seated upstairs.

Hostess clearly did not have children, so it is unfair to blame her or mock her for not realizing that a stay-at-home mother who is no longer generating a paycheck will walk through FIRE to have free crab cakes as an appetizer and the pasta special with pancetta, mushrooms and red onions in a spicy tomato sauce, and that a set of stairs is small potatoes--a veritable bump in the road when it comes to obstacles.  So I shlepped the baby stroller right up those stairs.

It was only then that I realized that maybe people weren't looking at me because I was carrying a baby in a baby stroller up the stairs of a fine dining establishment but maybe it was because I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  Everyone else was wearly suits.  

Suckers.

My jeans might have cost $900.  Would that have made it acceptable?  So they really only cost me $29.99 (a fact that has been bugging me since I bought them because I don't have $29.99 to spend on jeans--my husband brought it to my attention, however, that it was money well spent since I have worn them 6 days a week for the past 3 months).

The kid was extremely well behaved, and didn't create much of a ruckus (except for the snot bubbles--who takes a sick kid to DC Coast for lunch?).  It's amazing how giving a kid a knife will keep him busy.  

Before you freak out, it was a DULL knife.  It's not like I was gonna let him run with it.