Another weekend home
Jul. 6th, 2004 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hkellickI'm back. Exhausted, but back. It was.. definately better than the last weekend I was back home, but not perfect.
Kristen and I got into Buffalo about 6:15 after a long 8 hour drive. Halfway during the drive, I'd called mom and she had invited the two of us out to dinner at any place of our choosing.
So we get into town, get into the house and the house is completely torn apart.
Actually, this is a GOOD thing.
See.. for those of you who have been in my old house in the relative past, you know that there are some problems there.. including a leaking ceiling, the carpet coming off the stairs, desperate need to finish wallpapering the bathrooms, retile the kitchen and hallway etc.
These things are finally being worked on.
At the very least, they've started on the ceiling and the stairs.. Marc has been coming by pretty much every day to redo the ceiling. We came in Friday and all it had was primer, but it was SO much better looking.. no more holes. :)
Josh has been stripping the stairs of the remnants of the carpet. The plan seems to be once he's done they might sand it, finish it, maybe stain it.. but leave it wood instead of rugged. Which is fine, as long as it looks good.
So Kristen and I arrive and Marc is putting the last bits of primer on the ceiling for the living room, showed us the ceiling and, as I said, it really looks so much better. I am so happy that that was taken care of.. and somewhat shocked and thrilled Marc has been DOING this stuff that so desperately needs to be done.
So, since Marc had been working hard all day, mom invites him along too and Kristen and I decide to go to the Original Pancake house, because we knew everyone could find something to eat there and I do sorta miss it.
Dinner was good. I caught up with what was going on with people (Josh has a new second job he, so far, enjoys as a dishwasher at a restaurant called Dandelions).
And then, near the end of dinner, Marc had some suggestion for Josh on what to do with the stairs (both in terms of keeping them clean since all the dust and paint is doing HELL to mom's breathing), but in how to make it look nicer. Josh, for his part, completely blew Marc off. Obviously and completely blew Marc off. Wasn't even willing to listen.
Marc left (he had to, I think, get back home so we could go to work.) and Kristen, mom and I all tried to gently talk to Josh about how he behaved, but he wanted nothing to do with us about this subject and was ignoring us too.
From there, we all go back home and Kristen and I go to her parents house to be sociable there. I was sociable for about 45 minutes, but I was exhausted and it showed, so by 9:45, Kristen drove me back home and I collapsed on the couch to sleep... until 3:30 in the morning when Gershwin started whining and pouncing on me. Mom says he wanted me to play. I wonder if he wanted me to feed him. Whatever it was, it was not welcome.
Go back to sleep after an hour of whining, but wake up too early. So I watch TV (what else was I supposed to do? Didn't have a computer, didn't have a car.. so.. I vegged.) Josh goes to work (he had a 9:30-11:00 shift) and I shower and wait for people to decide whether we'd go to the Beach or not. The weather was grey and not so lovely looking, so mom decided we'd just show up for dinner. So she comes down and the two of us watch "50 first dates", which you can tell she absolutely loved and was dying to share with me. It was a CUTE movie, and, at Kristen's request, I'll watch it again with her, but.. it was soso. I would never want to buy it.
After the movie, we look out and the sun is trying to come out and Josh is home, so we head to Canada... to find out it had been a decent beach day after all most of the day and we hadn't brought any of our stuff.
Ah well.
So we end up going to the beach anyways, but sit up on a second floor patio looking down at the beach instead of the beach itself. We talk for a bit and my grandma goes down to talk to my uncle and aunt, who invite Josh and I down to a boat ride.
I love boat rides. So I'm game. Mom and grandma sorta push Josh into going too (despite the fact that he's wearing pants (Josh is an idiot. Wearing pants in July. Ugh!)). I get to the boat, hop on and it's my cousin Josh driving a couple of his friends and Josh and I and they plan to go tubing. Josh calls from the water because he forgot to take his car keys (he drove) out of his pocket and give them to mom. So he tosses them to me and while I swore I gave them back to him, I must have put them in a back pocket instead.
So Josh drives and his friends go tubing together and they appear to be having a blast. Then Josh asks if Josh and I want to go tubing. Josh isn't interested.. but, hell, I never went tubing EVER because they never had a tube that could hold my weight.. so I was game.
So I get on the tube, my shorts hanging into the water at the bottom of the tube and Josh goes.. and gives me a real wide ride (Josh is a great driver and I trust his driving ability.. so when I was finding myself flying in and out of the wake, I figure Josh knows what he's doing. Of course, what Josh is doing is trying to kill me (not really).. and I go flying in and out of the wake and over huge waves that has my entire tube hopping up into the air before flying down with a large splash.. only to have me up in the air again.
After a while, though, it lose it's thrill and just made me started giving me a huge headache instead, so I started screaming "STOP!" (I was afraid to give the stop signal, putting a finger across my throat, because I was hanging on for dear life.) He eventually stops and that's enough for me, so I crawl back into the boat, managing to flip the tube over and soak my shorts as I go (remember, at this point, I must have had Josh's car keys on me.. well.. not anymore.) Cousin Josh's friends go for a bit more on the tube and meanwhile I'm getting dizzy as the boat circles around and around and weaves around the lake... but finally the fun stops and the boat ride is over. I hop out of the boat and Josh is all "OK. I'll take the keys back."
.. I don't have them!
I pat all my pockets.. nothing.. no keys.
Now, let me back up a little bit to explain the significance of this. Thursday, Josh finds his FIRST set of keys missing. He can't find them and can't find them and can't find them. So he gets mom to give him the spare pair and he'll use that.. and he never calls for a new spare set of keys to be made.
So.. of course.. when I lost the ONLY set of keys into the lake Josh was.. rather upset.
So Josh is frantically searching the boat and I help for a while before going back to the second floor patio to tell mom and grandma what happened.
Eventually, Josh comes in shore, looking sullen and upset (duh).
We all go home (it's starting to look like rain) and Josh goes into the TV room to be alone and mope in front of the TV.
I sit in the front porch with grandma and mom (grandma moving in and out of the porch since she's also making dinner) and figuring out what to do (grandma decides we can borrow her car to go home to Buffalo in.. and someone has to tell the head of the Beach Center about the car before he has it towed and this detail and that.)
And then it starts to rain.
Did I say rain? I meant typhoon. With thunder and lightning special effects throughout most of it.
It was just raining through dinner, but by 7:00 it switched from a storm to suddenly buckets of water dropping down from the sky... looking out at the shutters (grandma has shutters that open out and up, not just move to the side).. it was like looking through a waterfall. I mean it was raining HARD.
So, of course, the site of water makes Josh need to go to the bathroom. And then mom after him. And then, I kid you not, Josh as soon as she got out again.
The rain starts to slow down and mom is all "We'll wait five minutes and go." We wait five minutes.. and then mom goes to the bathroom. And then Josh goes to the bathroom. And by the time Josh is out of the bathroom it's started typhooning again.
So we wait.. and I mention, only half (or a quarter) jokingly that if the rain stopped, no running to the bathroom, just run to the car.
45 minutes after we planned to go, the rain finally slows down again enough that we run outside and into the car and the rest of the journey home, despite being nervous because apparently all the bridges have been backed up going INTO The US for miles. So we're back home about 9:00.
I call Kristen (despite the fact that (and no I didn't mention the four phone calls. If she wants to, I'll let her discuss her bee sting and subsequent drama of the day) and tell her to come over when she can and veg in front of the TV for a little bit. Meanwhile, Josh finds his lost pair of keys in the living room and so he wants to go back to Canada Monday (yesterday) to pick the car up so he could have it again.
At 9:30, I start hearing fireworks outside. Despite the fact that the weather had been so lousy all day, it had stopped raining and UB was going to have their fireworks show. So I ran outside and watched it. Alone. Which was weird because I kept looking to my left (towards the front) to see if someone would join (Josh or mom or Kristen would get to the house and join me.)
Kristen DOES pull in, halfway through the grand finale. Since she knew the fireworks were almost over and had no bug spray (neither had I. I had just gotten eaten up :p ), she meets me in the house.
And we collapse and go to sleep.
Monday, we get up early, get packed and ready and Kristen realizes she left her water bottle at her parents house. Unfortunately, whether because of the tubing or trying to sleep on my mom's couch (or both), my neck was SERIOUSLY stiff.. like.. couldn't move it to either side without pain stiff :p Also, Gershwin woke us up at *2:30* for attention. I threatened to lock him in the bathroom and he behaved for a little bit longer.
Also, during the night, both parents had called surprised and shocked that Kristen had left already (apparently, despite her telling them that she was going to crash with my family for the night so we could get up and run, they thought she was going to stay with them.)
So we run to Kristen's house, get the water, talk to her parents for a few more minutes and then I drive to Rochester (since, between the two of us, Kristen is the less awake).
Rochester was... good. :)
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blackfelicula made waffles. hbbtrbbtbcnbt made scrambled eggs. kolys made cranberry juice and, for a couple of hours, the FULL Brain (including kidlets) got to all hang together. News was exchanged. Hugs were exchanged. (*eg* Poor Dawn and Beth. I bet they're still having nightmare of me runpouncehugging them ;D) and Games were played (all I have to say is Poor Stepmother. What did she do to deserve all that?!?!?)
Sadly, the fact that we had such a wonderful time made it all the harder to leave and head back to Washington. :(
But it was a great time and it was so good to see everyone!
The ride home was fairly quiet in terms of nothing really transpired. Neither of us were fully awake until later. We stopped at Wendy's and the food there was actually pretty bad (for Wendy's). Got home just after 8, unpacked and called our respective parents.
Let me remind the viewers about the weekend for Josh. (As I've written alot and the details may have gotten lost)
Thursday.. Josh loses his first pair of keys.
Sunday.. Josh loses the second pair of keys, ends up leaving his car in Canada and we take Grandma's car home. Josh finds the first pair of keys.
Monday.. Josh hopes to run back to Canada to get his car, but mom figures the traffic we'd missed Sunday WOULD hit Monday (Turns out mom was right. Grandma had called the peace bridge number to find out that the wait to get into the USA was *3 hours*)
So.. what does Josh do upon hearing that mom wants to wait until Tuesday to get his car back? Does he yell? Does he beg? Perhaps he tries cool logic? Nope. He picks up a plastic container holding all of mom's bills and throws it at her.
No. I'm not joking.
So mom isn't sure what to do. Neither am I.
Kristen has a few ideas including councilling not just for Josh, but for mom (since, well.. as I said last time, mom does tend to make these arguments worse, mostly without thinking about it.)
And that was my weekend.
Back to work goeth I.
Kristen and I got into Buffalo about 6:15 after a long 8 hour drive. Halfway during the drive, I'd called mom and she had invited the two of us out to dinner at any place of our choosing.
So we get into town, get into the house and the house is completely torn apart.
Actually, this is a GOOD thing.
See.. for those of you who have been in my old house in the relative past, you know that there are some problems there.. including a leaking ceiling, the carpet coming off the stairs, desperate need to finish wallpapering the bathrooms, retile the kitchen and hallway etc.
These things are finally being worked on.
At the very least, they've started on the ceiling and the stairs.. Marc has been coming by pretty much every day to redo the ceiling. We came in Friday and all it had was primer, but it was SO much better looking.. no more holes. :)
Josh has been stripping the stairs of the remnants of the carpet. The plan seems to be once he's done they might sand it, finish it, maybe stain it.. but leave it wood instead of rugged. Which is fine, as long as it looks good.
So Kristen and I arrive and Marc is putting the last bits of primer on the ceiling for the living room, showed us the ceiling and, as I said, it really looks so much better. I am so happy that that was taken care of.. and somewhat shocked and thrilled Marc has been DOING this stuff that so desperately needs to be done.
So, since Marc had been working hard all day, mom invites him along too and Kristen and I decide to go to the Original Pancake house, because we knew everyone could find something to eat there and I do sorta miss it.
Dinner was good. I caught up with what was going on with people (Josh has a new second job he, so far, enjoys as a dishwasher at a restaurant called Dandelions).
And then, near the end of dinner, Marc had some suggestion for Josh on what to do with the stairs (both in terms of keeping them clean since all the dust and paint is doing HELL to mom's breathing), but in how to make it look nicer. Josh, for his part, completely blew Marc off. Obviously and completely blew Marc off. Wasn't even willing to listen.
Marc left (he had to, I think, get back home so we could go to work.) and Kristen, mom and I all tried to gently talk to Josh about how he behaved, but he wanted nothing to do with us about this subject and was ignoring us too.
From there, we all go back home and Kristen and I go to her parents house to be sociable there. I was sociable for about 45 minutes, but I was exhausted and it showed, so by 9:45, Kristen drove me back home and I collapsed on the couch to sleep... until 3:30 in the morning when Gershwin started whining and pouncing on me. Mom says he wanted me to play. I wonder if he wanted me to feed him. Whatever it was, it was not welcome.
Go back to sleep after an hour of whining, but wake up too early. So I watch TV (what else was I supposed to do? Didn't have a computer, didn't have a car.. so.. I vegged.) Josh goes to work (he had a 9:30-11:00 shift) and I shower and wait for people to decide whether we'd go to the Beach or not. The weather was grey and not so lovely looking, so mom decided we'd just show up for dinner. So she comes down and the two of us watch "50 first dates", which you can tell she absolutely loved and was dying to share with me. It was a CUTE movie, and, at Kristen's request, I'll watch it again with her, but.. it was soso. I would never want to buy it.
After the movie, we look out and the sun is trying to come out and Josh is home, so we head to Canada... to find out it had been a decent beach day after all most of the day and we hadn't brought any of our stuff.
Ah well.
So we end up going to the beach anyways, but sit up on a second floor patio looking down at the beach instead of the beach itself. We talk for a bit and my grandma goes down to talk to my uncle and aunt, who invite Josh and I down to a boat ride.
I love boat rides. So I'm game. Mom and grandma sorta push Josh into going too (despite the fact that he's wearing pants (Josh is an idiot. Wearing pants in July. Ugh!)). I get to the boat, hop on and it's my cousin Josh driving a couple of his friends and Josh and I and they plan to go tubing. Josh calls from the water because he forgot to take his car keys (he drove) out of his pocket and give them to mom. So he tosses them to me and while I swore I gave them back to him, I must have put them in a back pocket instead.
So Josh drives and his friends go tubing together and they appear to be having a blast. Then Josh asks if Josh and I want to go tubing. Josh isn't interested.. but, hell, I never went tubing EVER because they never had a tube that could hold my weight.. so I was game.
So I get on the tube, my shorts hanging into the water at the bottom of the tube and Josh goes.. and gives me a real wide ride (Josh is a great driver and I trust his driving ability.. so when I was finding myself flying in and out of the wake, I figure Josh knows what he's doing. Of course, what Josh is doing is trying to kill me (not really).. and I go flying in and out of the wake and over huge waves that has my entire tube hopping up into the air before flying down with a large splash.. only to have me up in the air again.
After a while, though, it lose it's thrill and just made me started giving me a huge headache instead, so I started screaming "STOP!" (I was afraid to give the stop signal, putting a finger across my throat, because I was hanging on for dear life.) He eventually stops and that's enough for me, so I crawl back into the boat, managing to flip the tube over and soak my shorts as I go (remember, at this point, I must have had Josh's car keys on me.. well.. not anymore.) Cousin Josh's friends go for a bit more on the tube and meanwhile I'm getting dizzy as the boat circles around and around and weaves around the lake... but finally the fun stops and the boat ride is over. I hop out of the boat and Josh is all "OK. I'll take the keys back."
.. I don't have them!
I pat all my pockets.. nothing.. no keys.
Now, let me back up a little bit to explain the significance of this. Thursday, Josh finds his FIRST set of keys missing. He can't find them and can't find them and can't find them. So he gets mom to give him the spare pair and he'll use that.. and he never calls for a new spare set of keys to be made.
So.. of course.. when I lost the ONLY set of keys into the lake Josh was.. rather upset.
So Josh is frantically searching the boat and I help for a while before going back to the second floor patio to tell mom and grandma what happened.
Eventually, Josh comes in shore, looking sullen and upset (duh).
We all go home (it's starting to look like rain) and Josh goes into the TV room to be alone and mope in front of the TV.
I sit in the front porch with grandma and mom (grandma moving in and out of the porch since she's also making dinner) and figuring out what to do (grandma decides we can borrow her car to go home to Buffalo in.. and someone has to tell the head of the Beach Center about the car before he has it towed and this detail and that.)
And then it starts to rain.
Did I say rain? I meant typhoon. With thunder and lightning special effects throughout most of it.
It was just raining through dinner, but by 7:00 it switched from a storm to suddenly buckets of water dropping down from the sky... looking out at the shutters (grandma has shutters that open out and up, not just move to the side).. it was like looking through a waterfall. I mean it was raining HARD.
So, of course, the site of water makes Josh need to go to the bathroom. And then mom after him. And then, I kid you not, Josh as soon as she got out again.
The rain starts to slow down and mom is all "We'll wait five minutes and go." We wait five minutes.. and then mom goes to the bathroom. And then Josh goes to the bathroom. And by the time Josh is out of the bathroom it's started typhooning again.
So we wait.. and I mention, only half (or a quarter) jokingly that if the rain stopped, no running to the bathroom, just run to the car.
45 minutes after we planned to go, the rain finally slows down again enough that we run outside and into the car and the rest of the journey home, despite being nervous because apparently all the bridges have been backed up going INTO The US for miles. So we're back home about 9:00.
I call Kristen (despite the fact that (and no I didn't mention the four phone calls. If she wants to, I'll let her discuss her bee sting and subsequent drama of the day) and tell her to come over when she can and veg in front of the TV for a little bit. Meanwhile, Josh finds his lost pair of keys in the living room and so he wants to go back to Canada Monday (yesterday) to pick the car up so he could have it again.
At 9:30, I start hearing fireworks outside. Despite the fact that the weather had been so lousy all day, it had stopped raining and UB was going to have their fireworks show. So I ran outside and watched it. Alone. Which was weird because I kept looking to my left (towards the front) to see if someone would join (Josh or mom or Kristen would get to the house and join me.)
Kristen DOES pull in, halfway through the grand finale. Since she knew the fireworks were almost over and had no bug spray (neither had I. I had just gotten eaten up :p ), she meets me in the house.
And we collapse and go to sleep.
Monday, we get up early, get packed and ready and Kristen realizes she left her water bottle at her parents house. Unfortunately, whether because of the tubing or trying to sleep on my mom's couch (or both), my neck was SERIOUSLY stiff.. like.. couldn't move it to either side without pain stiff :p Also, Gershwin woke us up at *2:30* for attention. I threatened to lock him in the bathroom and he behaved for a little bit longer.
Also, during the night, both parents had called surprised and shocked that Kristen had left already (apparently, despite her telling them that she was going to crash with my family for the night so we could get up and run, they thought she was going to stay with them.)
So we run to Kristen's house, get the water, talk to her parents for a few more minutes and then I drive to Rochester (since, between the two of us, Kristen is the less awake).
Rochester was... good. :)
blackfelicula made waffles. hbbtrbbtbcnbt made scrambled eggs. kolys made cranberry juice and, for a couple of hours, the FULL Brain (including kidlets) got to all hang together. News was exchanged. Hugs were exchanged. (*eg* Poor Dawn and Beth. I bet they're still having nightmare of me runpouncehugging them ;D) and Games were played (all I have to say is Poor Stepmother. What did she do to deserve all that?!?!?)Sadly, the fact that we had such a wonderful time made it all the harder to leave and head back to Washington. :(
But it was a great time and it was so good to see everyone!
The ride home was fairly quiet in terms of nothing really transpired. Neither of us were fully awake until later. We stopped at Wendy's and the food there was actually pretty bad (for Wendy's). Got home just after 8, unpacked and called our respective parents.
Let me remind the viewers about the weekend for Josh. (As I've written alot and the details may have gotten lost)
Thursday.. Josh loses his first pair of keys.
Sunday.. Josh loses the second pair of keys, ends up leaving his car in Canada and we take Grandma's car home. Josh finds the first pair of keys.
Monday.. Josh hopes to run back to Canada to get his car, but mom figures the traffic we'd missed Sunday WOULD hit Monday (Turns out mom was right. Grandma had called the peace bridge number to find out that the wait to get into the USA was *3 hours*)
So.. what does Josh do upon hearing that mom wants to wait until Tuesday to get his car back? Does he yell? Does he beg? Perhaps he tries cool logic? Nope. He picks up a plastic container holding all of mom's bills and throws it at her.
No. I'm not joking.
So mom isn't sure what to do. Neither am I.
Kristen has a few ideas including councilling not just for Josh, but for mom (since, well.. as I said last time, mom does tend to make these arguments worse, mostly without thinking about it.)
And that was my weekend.
Back to work goeth I.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 05:28 pm (UTC)Glad you had a pretty good weekend. :)