Killing Time

When you're forced to kill time and it's raining outside and you're not in your hometown, there are few options unless you are supermom and have the foresight, patience and motivation to do some planning.  It should come as no surprise that I am not that mom.

The kids and I joined Joe in Salem for his Army Guard duty weekend.  The girls and I drove to Newport on Saturday to pick Brendan up from being with his grandparents for a week.  By the time we got back to Salem Joe was done with work and we hung out with him for the evening.  But Sunday brought a summer rain storm and a hotel checkout time of 11:00 am.  So while we hung out at the indoor hotel pool until the last possible minute, it meant packing up the kids and gear by myself and scrambling for something to keep us busy until Joe would be done.  I wanted to make a stop at Great Harvest Bakery in hopes that they would have some good scones for me to take home (oh how I miss Great Harvest scones.) But after driving all over Salem to find the one single GH that was open on Sunday my search turned up only a loaf of apple crunch bread. Not entirely a failed hunt, just not exactly what I had hoped for.  And then I wondered what on earth we would do with the rest of our time as the Great Harvest adventure only killed about 30 minutes.  So, while driving through town en route to the bakery, I spotted the Salem mall sky bridges and tried to sell them to my kids.

"I know you don't want to keep looking for the bakery... but if you just be patient and behave then maybe we can go walk along those bridges!!" I said to them with (feigned) excitement.  They both looked up as we drove beneath one and exclaimed with awe "REALLY?!"

Sold.

Only a mom can make a sky bridge in the mall seem like an amusement park ride.  So we strolled, we got a pretzel, we stayed out of the stores (because one step into one reminded me why I don't take my children to the mall), and we watched the rain fall from the awesome view of the sky bridge.