(Sam and Dolly)
I was lucky enough to wake up before Uncle Jim hauled out his bagpipes (a little bit of background… every time we visit Jim finds some obscenely obnoxious way to wake everyone up at about 8 am. Once it was fireworks, a couple of times it’s been bagpipes and the others have been too long ago to remember… or maybe I simply blocked it out as part of a mild case of Jim-induced PTSD) AND an old trumpet he managed to scrounge from a garage sale. I still think that if he was going to play the bagpipes in the first place, he should have gone all the way and slipped into his kilt and that little purse that keeps the kilt from flying up and turning the situation into a Discovery Channel experience. He has both, so it’s only fair that if the ear piercing racket he produces has to happen, he should put a little reciprocal effort into the ordeal, eh?
My cousin Tyler made turkish coffee, Poppi and I went on an excursion to Farmway and, after getting more than a little lost on the way home, found some homemade ice cream alongside the road. Now, Poppi has a bit of a soft spot for ice cream. In Pennsylvania his freezer is stocked to rival a supermarket… just in case, you know the mood strikes and it does fairly often.
We finally made it back in time to get changed for the barbeque that was more of an hors d'œuvre-y thing where people chatted for hours. Let me back up a bit, though. Jim has a collection of old cars. For the wedding, he sent out a message asking who wanted to drive one to the wedding as part of an old car parade fiasco. We picked the blue one (of course) which happened to be an old Eldorado convertible.
That thing wasn’t so much a car as it was a land-boat that steered like a whale and consumed more fossil fuel than any car has a right to do. We decided to drive it to the barbeque as a sort of test run. Mom and I were in the back seat and as we set sail the wind (which wasn’t anywhere near what I’d call warm) started to swirl around the back seat turning into an icey-tornado. We thought “haha, this is ok!” We clambered out to brave the party. Between four and five hours later we finally hustle back to the car. It’s night time, dark, we can see our breath in little clouds as we scamper across the gravel parking lot. Open the door, put my hand out for balance as I prepare to wiggle behind the front seat and horror begins to spread through my brain. “Ohhh no! It’s SLIMEY!?” My face scrunched up in confusion while I tried to comprehend how my hand could have betrayed me by coming into contact with that kind of texture. Who knew that dew falls before 9? Or that when car leather gets wet it becomes a freezing slimy version of Moby Dick? All I could think about was “Haahaa, who in their right mind buys convertibles? Bwahhahaaa, I’m FREEZING!” By this time the temperature had fallen well into the low 30’s and none of us had dressed very appropriately. After a good toweling and some gritted teeth we climbed back into the car for a MUCH colder version of our earlier drive but THIS time we missed the turn back to the house. Mom and I had been crouching in the back with our heads between our knees trying to avoid the near arctic conditions so we had no idea what had happened until mom popped her head up and cried “WHERE ARE WE!? THIS ISN’T RIGHT!!” Turning that beast wasn’t easy either and the maneuver took up the entire parking lot we’d pulled into complete with a little bit of tire-squealing for maximum effect. We finally made it back and I spent the next 30 minutes shuffling around the house trying to build up some friction between my frozen feet and the carpet.The next day, Saturday, was the wedding day. Hairs were done, dresses donned and shoo fly pie consumed.
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