Washington DC.  It is the week of my annual professional meeting, where 2,000 midwives converge for education and political meetings. It’s the week our estrogen levels rise dramatically.  There’s a lot of love in this place. Working in a solo practice I’ve been professionally lonely for a long time. I rarely miss this meeting as I gorge myself on sharing with my tribe; a frenetic reunion with fellow students and past colleagues. We reminisce, brainstorm, collaborate, party, and nurture each other.  I can’t live without it.

This year I was one of the presenters and spoke about caring for women affected by war.  My presentation was early this morning, and since Zack’s distillery opening was yesterday in Boston, the timing was off, to say the least.  I couldn’t miss either event.  Out of the question.

So early on Thursday I headed to Boston with my–––what do you call boyfriend at this age? (Guess I’ll leave that for another blog post when it’s been a slow week.)  Here’s a quick synopsis of activity since hitting the road: Arrive at distillery and see there is A LOT to be done before Saturday.  Survey the scene and decide we need food before we get our hands dirty. Walk up to fabulous Brazilian bakery for great sandwiches. Throw car keys to panicked son who needs to run to Home Depot for supplies after hearing he has 1.5 hours to fulfill new requirements for the health inspection. Realize we will be eating quickly. Industrial cleaning chores for the next several hours––satisfying but disgusting.  Walk to nearby brewery for much-needed and well-deserved beer.

Friday. Haymarket for cucumbers, mint, and lemons. Nursery for flowering plants. Decorating, cleaning, cleaning, rearranging, cleaning, stocking, cleaning.  Place looks pretty good!

Saturday.  Unavoidable awkwardness with ex-husband having me in the same location. Relief to see this is possible. Chop cucumbers, more rearranging, pick and clean mint, do what we are told. Move operation outside to sidewalk after they hit capacity and need our bodies removed.  Over 500 people with a 49 person capacity. It was a dance.  A bit of a nerve-wracking dance, but wonderful time with family and friends waiting in line, sharing my new love, pulling together, bursting with pride, relishing accomplishment. Short Path Distillery. How thrilling to see this become a reality after all the years of planning and hard work.  Couldn’t have missed that.

Six pm head south to DC.  A seven hour drive should be cake after the week we had.  Just get in the car and drive, listen to music, and rehearse my presentation.  It was a good plan until Connecticut when the torrential rain started. So the seven hour drive turned into nine and a half and I was never so happy to have that GPS.  I’d have been driving around trying to find this place until the sun came up. Find my room after finding the hotel. Crept in, trying not to disturb my roommates, dropped my bags and collapsed. Three hours of sleep, up and shower, find the speaker ready room, get my presentation loaded onto the system, do the talk (oh good! people showed up!), food, meeting, keynote speaker, Capitol Hill lesson for our lobby day (700 of us going there on Tuesday!), and now the final push to regional meeting and an movie about birth trends in America.

Been busy.

Then sleep. Happy sleep.