What a Weekend

Ok, everyone out there who really wants to hear about the exhausting, emotionally draining weekend I had, raise your hands...

(crickets chirp)

Ok, fine. I'll tell you anyway.

Friday night was Parents Night Out at our church, so we made plans with two other couples to drop all our kids off and go out together for dinner, then go back to one of their houses to hang out and play Cranium. So very domestic, yes, but after the past week so very soothing.

Those of you who are local will remember, however, that the floodgates continued to swing wide open and the deluge ensued all day and all night...

I left work a couple of minutes early to pick up some dry cleaning, and began getting the cell phone calls. First letting me know we had reservations at 6:15, then informing me that some of the group might be late, being stuck in the rain traffic.

Myself (always thinking ahead) picks up the cleaning, drops it off at home and heads to the church to meet L. and the kids. My wife was just leaving the pede's office from Tink's checkup, and we get there around the same time at about 5:30. Patiently, we wait for at least one of the other two couples to make it, but 6:00 rolls around and still neither one. I decide to press on to the restaurant to make sure we keep our reservation - braving West Town Mall holiday shoppers, various car wrecks, rampaging rhinos - and get to the restaurant. In time to see one half of the couples is there, waiting, reservation taken care of.

So eventually everyone trickles in, and we have a nice Italian meal.

But there's a 9:00 deadline - I have to drop off our van at the dealer for some work, and they close the gates at 9, which requires a lift back from there. There's no time for going back to someone's house, so we call it a night. One of our friends, David, volunteers to follow me out to the dealership out west while L. takes David's wife back to the church to collect all our kids.

And the rain, rain, rain comes down, down, down...(to be continued...)