Atlanta Botanical Garden

My little muffin (on the bottom) with her two cousins at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

Since my husband are pretty squarely middle class income earners, we are somewhat limited in terms of living intown in Atlanta. It's a trade off, but we are happy with it. If we wanted to live thirty minutes or so outside the city, we could probably afford a larger place to rent, and maybe even a whole house...! But as it is, our lifestyle at this point is just more practical living closer in. We only have one car, but it's never been a hardship since my husband is able to use the Marta rail system to get to work. And it only takes me about ten minutes to drive to work. These are the kind of commutes we can handle... Justin does not handle Atlanta traffic. We both know this, and so we avoid it whenever possible.

Anyways, one of the drawbacks about living where we live is that we don't really have a yard. I mean, we sort of do, but it's not really our yard, and we wouldn't feel comfortable littering it up with baby toys. Fortunately, there are lots of parks close by where we can take the baby and the dog, and we have memberships to Zoo Atlanta and the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Both are fun options for our family, and definitely make it less scarring that Roxanne won't grow up with a tree fort in her backyard. I think at the moment, the Atlanta Botanical Garden is one of my favorite places in Atlanta. The kid's garden is wonderful, even though Roxanne isn't quite old enough to fully appreciate it. But in all honesty, I love the other side of the garden. The grown up part.

There is a small Japanese garden that looks like the kind of place you could sit and meditate in for hours. There are greenhouses that are full of lovely orchids and one that feels just like the jungle. It's a wonderful place to go when you feel like the city is just dirty and noisy. It's easy to forget where you are at the Garden. Add to this that I just found out about the fantastic holiday assortment of attractions, and I'm just totally sold. On December 6, they have the Reindog Parade, which will feature dogs dressed in holiday clothes parading in the park. I think there is still time to register your dog if you've got the perfect Rudolph-meets-Lassie at home. Then there is the Holiday Ride-on-Train that will start running November 28, and they are even having a "St. Nick," who will be wearing Victorian Santa-attire. You can get your little ones' pictures with a classy Santa in a beautiful outdoor setting! That sounds much better than the mall...but I'm probably biased. I kind of hate the mall. Actually, I just hate some parts of it. There's certainly part of me that thrills in walking around a crowded mall during the holidays, but only if it's over-decorated, playing tasteful holiday music at a tasteful volume, and I'm sipping some kind of fatty coffee drink, like a Gingerbread latte. Mmmm, I'm ready Black Friday!

So anyways, I just wanted to recommend the Atlanta Botanical Garden as a fun place to go during the holidays. They will even be open Thanksgiving weekend! You can waddle some of those biscuits off as you take in the sights.

Voting with baby

Since tomorrow is election day and lots of my fellow Georgians will probably be stuck standing in line for hours, I just wanted to take a moment to gloat. I voted last week! In fact, on Thursday afternoon, I went down to the early voting spot for my district, which is a building in downtown Decatur, and I was in and out in under half an hour. Of course, the line was supposed to be two and a half hours, but after about twenty minutes of waiting, a glorious woman carrying a baby came over and told me that she had heard that anyone with a baby could go through a side door and vote right away. I was a little nervous to lose my spot in line, but I figured it was worth a shot. I sheepishly followed her in pushing Roxanne in her umbrella stroller, and to my shock, we were admitted through a side door and told to wait in some big comfy easy chairs at some tables. Then we could sit while we filled out our voting forms, and hand our ID and completed forms to some lovely poll workers, and wait to be called for our turn to vote, which took under ten minutes. It was fantastic!

The next day (Halloween) my husband left work early to try and vote, and when he arrived at the building, he was told it would be a three and a half hour wait. He called me, and I suggested that he wander around downtown Decatur until I got off work and then use Roxanne to cheat the line. Turns out I got off a little early, and we met at Dancing Goats (delicious delicious coffee) to make the baby swap. It all felt mildly shameful and suspicious, and on some level, we were convinced that one of the employees would recognize Roxanne, or our bright orange stroller, and accuse Justin of cheating and kick him out immediately. Obviously, this did not happen, and Justin was able to vote pretty quickly. Of course, Roxanne threw a fit while he was trying to decipher all of the endless choices for positions he had never heard of, and he ended up tearing his shirt while retrieving a toy that she threw across the room. I got to spend almost an entire half hour by myself at Dancing Goats, sitting outside with a magazine and sipping a Pistachio White Mocha Latte. I called my mom and gossiped with her. It was heavenly.

So yes, I think those 13 hours of labor were worth it. I mean, the baby is nice, too, but this whole convenient voting thing is awesome.