After driving three and a half hours alone with the little angel on Friday, I finally picked up my beloved at the Des Moines airport.  The little angel, who had begun voicing a disconcerting "There is no more Daddy" in her best Charlton Heston voice the night before, ran screaming to him in a fit of toddler joy, then immediately demanded ice cream.

After we calmed ourselves, we drove another hour or so to my best friend's parents' lake cabin.  I've been visiting this spot since I was about seven - my parents honeymooned here. It's a man-made lake that started off crappy and has grown rather opulent in the past few years.  Going to the lake is one of my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE things to do, which is why we were doing it even though it was supposed to be cold and rainy on Saturday. 

On Friday when we arrived, it was a balmy 85 degrees.  The little angel and my godson, J., ran blissfully through the yard like a baby Ralph Lauren commercial, Millie the Dog hot on their heels (for visualization purposes, Millie looks and acts like the adorable but disobedient Toto).  We grilled out.  We lingered in the golden sunlight, drinking wine.  The children fell asleep exhausted.  All was right with the world, or at least with central Iowa.

Then we woke up.  It was raining and barely sixty degrees.

There is a certain terror that strikes the parents of small children at predisposed times.  They include:

• Airplane rides
• Church
• Funerals
• Weddings
• Show and tell
• Meeting a new babysitter
• Rainy days

Thankfully, my childless friends, smart girls, had brought earplugs and slept until 10 a.m.  We parents were up shaping pizzas out of Play-do for several hours before they graced us with their presence.  At one point, when the pizzas started to include frog legs, heart monitors and suitcases as ingredients, we realized it was time to try something new.

And we did.

And we did.  At about fifteen-minute intervals.  For about fourteen hours.

At times, we braved the frigid June outdoors, swinging the children in bedsheets and showing them how to throw rocks in the water.  We admired the neighbor's statue of an owl.  We encouraged the children to run screaming around the yard.  We did this ourselves, but not for the same reasons.  We did it because it kept us from beating them.  They did it because it felt good.  We pretended we were in New England in November.  Then it started to rain, a pelting, freezing rain, and back inside our 1,000-square-foot playpen we went.

All in all, though, the kids were really good, and my childless friends were really patient, like goddess-patient, though I could see their souls starting to bleed out their eyes a little bit by Sunday morning.  I can't imagine what it must've felt like to them, but I know I was more exhausted from two straight days of trying to keep the little angel happy, quiet and not eaten by Millie the Dog than I was from an entire week of single parenting in the dog-free and childproofed luxury of my own home.  Although, as with most weekends spent with great friends, I wouldn't have given up watching J. and the little angel play together or the conversations we all had after the kids went to bed and we relived the undistracted conversations of lake trips past, when all we had to worry about was the future, not the present.

This morning I left on a two-night business trip to somewhere that is most certainly warm and sunny.  Added bonus:  It's for an exciting new project which should keep me happily getting paid until January.  And I'm writing!  Whee!  Normally, I hate being away from the little angel for more than one night, however now, one day out of my rainy weekend and two days away from my beloved's work "Family Weekend" in the Ozarks, I can think of nothing I need more than a hot bath, an iPod and a room of my own.

With a deadbolt.