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Feb. 19th, 2007 10:54 pm
CNY in STL: Agley
What I didn't tell y'all about our trip to St. Louis is how nothing has gone according to plan. First of all, a snowstorm had added two white-knuckled hours to our trip down Friday night. Actually, as a backseat passenger, my knuckles weren't so white, but the strain of a nearly eight-hour trip was enough to push my annoying cough into full-blown cold.
We got what sleep we could, and actually made it to the church before everybody but the priest. Then, the waiting began. When the first set of grandparents finally showed up, they related to us how the bakery they had swung by on the way over had lost the cake order. At about twenty minutes or so after the hour, we called the other set to check on their progress, only to discover that they had forgotten the date totally. So another quarter-hour or so of waiting for them before my sister made a command decision to go ahead, guaranteeing that they would arrive at the moment it was all over.
Whatever. Most of the rest of the day went smoothly, up through the party for my grandmother the following afternoon. (This was orchestrated by one of my mother's younger sisters, whose planning ability would make Eisenhower envious.) But just as she was leaving, my mother was struck by some mystery ailment and had to have her sister-in-law drive her home. At her house, my older brother and I stood around feeling useless for a while, until Mom shooed us away lest we catch what she had. Of course, my sister had already made other plans and my BIL couldn't fit both boys into his four-door with me and my brother, so we had to cab it over to their house.
Today I was supposed to spend with my father and stepmother, but between my sleeping all morning and plans with my mother getting rescheduled for tonight, we only had a few hours in the afternoon. The unseasonably-warm temps and unreasonably-rowdy young'uns gave us and excuse to take my nephews to the local park, which was a solid morass as all the recent snow was now meltwater with no place to go. Dinner with Mom was fine, but I could've done without the trip to Hancock Fabrics afterwards to buy wrought-iron. (Confidential to e.: Don't ask. No, really.)
Then I got back to my sister's hoping to fit in a session or two of something fun before I crashed, only to find that (not counting on my early arrival), they had set up a complex strategy game that took a half-hour to explain and three times that to play. I was, of course, in no mood or fit state to comprehend new information, but I felt I had to humour my hosts and spent the whole time praying for an early end to the proceedings. (Gradually failing at a complex challenge is not my forte; it's why I gave up chess.)
Did I mention that our plans to exhaust the boys worked too well and they went to bed seriously early tonight? No? That's because I'm really trying to put out of my mind how early they're going to be up tomorrow as a result.
We got what sleep we could, and actually made it to the church before everybody but the priest. Then, the waiting began. When the first set of grandparents finally showed up, they related to us how the bakery they had swung by on the way over had lost the cake order. At about twenty minutes or so after the hour, we called the other set to check on their progress, only to discover that they had forgotten the date totally. So another quarter-hour or so of waiting for them before my sister made a command decision to go ahead, guaranteeing that they would arrive at the moment it was all over.
Whatever. Most of the rest of the day went smoothly, up through the party for my grandmother the following afternoon. (This was orchestrated by one of my mother's younger sisters, whose planning ability would make Eisenhower envious.) But just as she was leaving, my mother was struck by some mystery ailment and had to have her sister-in-law drive her home. At her house, my older brother and I stood around feeling useless for a while, until Mom shooed us away lest we catch what she had. Of course, my sister had already made other plans and my BIL couldn't fit both boys into his four-door with me and my brother, so we had to cab it over to their house.
Today I was supposed to spend with my father and stepmother, but between my sleeping all morning and plans with my mother getting rescheduled for tonight, we only had a few hours in the afternoon. The unseasonably-warm temps and unreasonably-rowdy young'uns gave us and excuse to take my nephews to the local park, which was a solid morass as all the recent snow was now meltwater with no place to go. Dinner with Mom was fine, but I could've done without the trip to Hancock Fabrics afterwards to buy wrought-iron. (Confidential to e.: Don't ask. No, really.)
Then I got back to my sister's hoping to fit in a session or two of something fun before I crashed, only to find that (not counting on my early arrival), they had set up a complex strategy game that took a half-hour to explain and three times that to play. I was, of course, in no mood or fit state to comprehend new information, but I felt I had to humour my hosts and spent the whole time praying for an early end to the proceedings. (Gradually failing at a complex challenge is not my forte; it's why I gave up chess.)
Did I mention that our plans to exhaust the boys worked too well and they went to bed seriously early tonight? No? That's because I'm really trying to put out of my mind how early they're going to be up tomorrow as a result.