Adventures at Mom's House

Friday.

Run to a friends house to pick up the last bit of Mom's Christmas gifts. Frantically finish packing and wrapping. Wait for the Man to come over. He brings a movie, "The Mack". I fall asleep (I always do).

Saturday.

Wake up early, walk the dog. Man doesn't want to wake up. We have to leave in an hour. I get dressed, shower, and double check that everything is packed. Jenn calls, "Are you awake?" "Yep." Good thing she didn't ask if Man was awake. So I go into the bedroom and sit on the Man. "You gotta wake up!" "Why do we have to get up so early?" "Because we're leaving in an half hour." "Oh."

Knock knock knock.

Jenn's here. Man has gotten dressed just in time, but his shoes still aren't on. He's reading the news. Me and Jenn gather suitcases. Man gets up and puts on his shoes and finally we shove suitcases and gifts into the trunk of her car. Walk Cozmo one final time, then hit the road for the four hour trip to nowhere.

Arrive at Mom's to find a Christmas tree set up. We giggle and huggle, and generally act like children. Our plans are to go to dinner then open gifts. "But," I say, "Mom should open up just one of her gifts. She can take it to dinner." "I'll open one if you'll each open one," says Ma. So we wind up opening all of them right then and there. Then we go to dinner. After dinner we just hang out until we're tired.

Sunday.

Sleep. I'm not doing it too well, I'm worried about Cozmo chewing up Mom's house. At one point, I hear a sound like water and I check to make sure Cozmo hasn't spilled anything. He's asleep behind me. I look down from the loft into the living room, and everything looks okay. The water sound is just the rain. So I go back to bed. 3:30 AM: Jenn gets up to go to the bathroom. She checks to make sure Cozmo hasn't chewed anything and discovers a river of mud in the living room. "Mama! Mama! The house is flooding!" We all run to see. It's horrifying, and we don't have any way of dealing with it. Mom manages to get the flood to stop, but there's mud and water everywhere. And it's COLD. Bone chilling cold. It's melted snow. Mom calls her brother and he shows up with a shop-vac. We get to work. At 5:30 we decide sleep isn't going to happen, so we go straight to breakfast, then to buy a steam cleaner. We clean the carpets all day, until we are due at a party for my cousin who is back home from Germany. I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm tired and getting cranky. I go to bed early.

Monday.

Wake up around ten, Cozmo made a mess but it's my own fault for sleeping late. We were going to go to breakfast, but Grandma wants to take us to lunch at 11:30 so we skip it and go shopping. The store near Mom's has a Christmas tree with gift tags on it that list gender, age, and a gift that the kid wants for Christmas. So many tags. I want to take them all and buy every kid everything they want. I take three tags, and buy a Mickey Mouse watch, a Power Puff Girl doll and gloves, and a model car. It feels so insignificant. There are so many more tags left.

Lunch at the Maple Street Cafe. Wine, portobello mushroom, chicken wrap, potato soup. Head back home. Mom enlists the big strong men to help move the last of her furniture in. Then us young'uns head out to spend time away from the adults. I get cranky again. We have dinner out, and come back just in time to make homemade ice cream. I don't feel good. I just sit there, ignoring everyone. 'Till Cozmo eats all of the other dogs' food and gets sick. Then I apologize to everyone.

After ice cream, we go back to Mom's, and gather everything up so we will be ready to leave in the morning. The Man has a 5:25pm flight, and we will have to really push ourselves in the morning. Mom sets her alarm for 8:00am, and we go to sleep.

Tuesday.

I wake up at 7:00am and walk Cozmo. I decide not to go back to bed for another hour, it'll only make me more groggy. Jenn gets up, too, and so I decide to wake Man up so we can get an earlier start.

Snow is forcasted, but shouldn't start until later in the morning, we shouldn't hit any on the way home. But we do. In Harrisburg, it's really coming down and the roads are well covered. We're all nervous. We have to go slow.

We arrive and my house at 12:30pm and Man and I pile out. He is pressed for time, but shouldn't have any problems making his flight. It's not snowing as bad in Germantown as it was further north, but that doesn't last long. It starts to really snow, and Man heads home to pack up suits, laptop, and other stuff for his business trip. I smooch him farewell, then fall asleep in the bathtub for a couple of hours.

With the snow falling, I want a fire but I'm out of wood. So I grab the yellowpages I've been collecting for three years and make a reasonable fire using those. I fall asleep on the couch and wake up at 10:30pm. I walk Cozmo, then crawl into bed for the night.

An interesting note about our drive home: We passed two roll-over car accidents on the snowy drive home. Both were SUV's.