All of it is happening

I am proud to say I went to the gym this morning. It is a particularly easy thing to do when all it requires is a short elevator ride, plus I am reading Bossypants on my kindle and it was really just an excuse to go read.

When I got back to the room Eric had called Joe, the guy who loaded Roy onto his big car-carrying truck almost a week ago.

"I'm not gonna make it," Joe told Eric by phone this morning.

"Wha-what?" Eric responded.*

"Air bag blew out on me. I'm in New Mexico waiting on replacement parts. I'll let you know when I expect to be getting to Florida."

And that was that. Our car may or may not actually be stolen. If it was, at least we have a video of it happening.

From there, we went to tour some day care centers in Tampa that we are thinking about sending Emerson to until I wrap up at work in the next few months. None of them were bad, they were just so day care-y. I'm sure a 1:6 teacher to 18 month old ratio makes sense when one is regulating this sort of thing, but I don't think I am quite ready for Emerson to be competing for affection and attention with five other children for most of his waking life starting in two weeks. I know there would be good things for him in a program like this and one option could be to do a half-day program so he can have some fun with the other little ones every day, but also still get cuddled plenty at home.

Then we did some house-hunting. We spent a few hours with a new realtor** looking at eight places up for sale. Unexpectedly, we feel a lot less pressure now to find something good than I think we did when we were here before. Which is good, because most of these places were not so great. However, one of them was great and a couple of others were potentially good runners-up. We are thinking about making an offer on the one we liked which is pretty exciting and, in a sign that either I have more fully accepted our move to Tampa or my crazy pregnancy hormones have stabilized somewhat, doesn't make me want to sob uncontrollably.

We also looked at two rentals - one short-term furnished joint that reminded me of the Sheraton in Key West (in case we want to buy), and an unfurnished place which I would suggest to a location scout is perfect for a miniseries about a tropical flop-house (in case we strike out).

I need to get to bed soon but there were a few other highlights from the day as well:

• As we were driving away from the hotel this morning, having driven in this rental SUV for approximately 10 miles coming in from the airport last night, Eric said, "Wow, we've already gone through half a gas tank." I was halfway through saying "Are you happy with your choice?" when I realized what a funny joke he was making. In my defense, I was really hungry.
  
• The highlight of Emerson's day was clear: we stopped at Publix to get a few supplies and they have these special carts for kids where the kid faces away from you and there's a little steering wheel for them to "drive" the cart as you push it around. The only time I have seen him happier is poking at Sarah and Rob's poor, tolerant cats.
  
• We also took him to a park for a little while from 3:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon. It was an adorable park in a family-oriented neighborhood and we were the only people there the whole time. Where was everyone? It might have been the thunderheads and the occasional actual thunder but it wasn't actually raining and in fact the air was noticeably cooler for a little while there.
  
• We went back to the Mexican restaurant where we ate our first Tampa meal ever last time we were here and it was as delicious and salty and greasy as we remembered it. Emerson, who eats no added salt in his food, gulped water after every bite I gave him.
• We needed to get some milk for Emerson on the way home from dinner because the milk we had been driving around in the hot car all day had lost its appeal. Eric's idea: the Krispy Kreme drive through, because apparently they sell milk. ("They have to!" Eric explained to me.) And of course, you can't go through the drive through just for milk, so we got one hot freshly made donut which, I will admit, was incredible. I was one with Homer Simpson for about 15 minutes there.
  

*I don't know for sure how this part of the conversation went because I was at the gym, but I suspect I am pretty close.
**The woman we worked with back in May was a nitwit. This new woman is a lot better.