Stepping out!

Inaugural fever has hit DC like a ton of port-a-potties. Years ago, I envisioned there one day being someone I was excited to go see at an Inauguration Parade; that day has arrived -- but now I have a three-year-old and, wouldn't you know, presidents are inaugurated in this country in the cold. As such, we have generally been avoiding Inaugural mania while the warning keeps popping up that the city will quadruple in population for this event and that all forms of transportation, including passenger pigeon, will be overloaded on the day of the event. A quiet day at home, we thought, watching it on TV.

Then, a few days ago, a colleague sent us an invitation to the local Takoma Park Inaugural Ball. This seemed super-fun: our crunchy liberal hometown with a potluck affair, complete with dancing and childcare. What's not to love? This sounded pretty neat. He mentioned this at a meeting and wondered what we were doing in the morning. I said we were probably just watching the event on TV -- but that maybe we should all watch it together? Brunch! An Inaugural brunch for those of us with kids too chicken to brave everything! Sold. My menu developed easily:

• vegetarian breafast tacOs
• cherry-whole wheat scOnes
• cheeriOs (or the equivalent from trader jOe's)
• bacOn
• dOnuts
• cOffee
• Orange jOOce (with champagne to make mimOsas)
• bagels (this, requested by Xan when we told him what the theme was)

Fabulous. Then all we needed to do was get the tickets for the Takoma Park ball! Angela had been hounding me to get them, if we had indeed decided to go. She, the antisocial one, had left this decision up to me; I, in my inimitable manner, had procrastinated.

At Xan's gymnastics class, our friend KC told me that she was trying to procure Inaugural Ball tickets. "Really?" I said. "Yeah," she said. "Would you want to go?" "Well, I think we're going to the local Takoma Park one," I said, realizing I still hadn't gotten tickets yet. I came home and hopped online to get the tickets.

Sold out.

Damn.

Our one chance to get decked out and hang out with the neighbors. Ah well. A quiet evening at home, then. No big deal.

And then -- KC calls Angela, wonders if I've told her about the Inaugural tickets. Tells her that she's secured four. Wants to know if we'd like to accompany them.

Really?

Really?

Within the span of about an hour, Angela in particular goes from being totally blasé about Inaugural Day brouhaha to joining the madness, pulling a U-turn the likes of which I haven't seen since we got engaged (at which point she-who-had-never-thought-she-would-get-married all of a sudden bought a trunkload of wedding-oriented magazines). She happens to be at the second-hand store when she gets the call and lands a beaded evening gown for $35. I use Facebook to procure childcare. We spend hours at the mall today looking for sundry items (control-top pantyhose, platform stilletos, a nice dark shade of lipstick -- and then Angela needed some things as well). We come home, Angela finds that the beaded dress is too long, but then she comes out in a black, slinky thing that she had in the back of the closet and I say, damn! and insist she only think of wearing that. Xan, getting into the spirit, puts on an elephant costume; we worry that this is the first sign he might turn into a Republican and contemplate therapy. Angela does a dry-run of fab makeup for the evening, comes out in full get-up, I say damn!! and hurry Xan to bed.

We don't even know what time the shindig begins.

We're a little excited.

More to come...