1.20.2009 : We Were There...For an Hour

A miscommunication with our nanny left us with a squirmy little redhead to bring to the Inauguration, so we strapped her on and headed down to the Mall. The bus deposited us on the D.C. side of the 14th St. Bridge. We marveled at the crowds and dove into the fray.

That's when we hit the wall...of people. Shoulder to shoulder. Hip to hip. Cheek to cheek. It was intimate.

Rodney grabbed my hand and blazed a trail through the crowd (what he lacks in brawniness, he makes up for with height, elbows and knees), but we ran smack into a Jersey barrier. It was like human pinball when the machine is full of pinballs.

Zora, cheeks flushed and fat little feet frozen, began to protest. And so we left the "thongs" of people and trudged across the bridge (which is where we were, checking out the ice floes on the Potomac, when our 44th president was sworn in) to the Pentagon; from there we caught a bus to Shirlington and dove into the cool depths of a martini at the Carlyle Grand

Thank God for YouTube, because that's where we'll have to catch Obama's inaugural address. Zora can't wait to see it, either, because she thinks Obama is the Alpha and the Omega: