The Lost Weekend

Yeah, I'm stealing the title from Robbo, but hey, I'm still pooped, hence am lacking in creativity at the moment. Sue me.

Anyway, as mentioned on Friday, the husband celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday that day. This momentous date, of course, demanded a party. The husband decided he wanted to cook for his birthday, which can only be considered odd until you take in the fact that I do most of the cooking around here. He likes to cook, so he looked in the freezer, decided to work mostly with what we had (He does like to clear things out on occasion, even if it leaves us with an empty freezer.) and came up with a fabulous, if not overly meaty, meal of roast pork tenderloin, itty-bitty hamburgers, and lightly breaded and spiced chicken breasts that had been pounded into submission, stuffed with crab stuffing and tied up into little chicken packages with leek strings. We had salad and steamed artichokes, too, just in case you were wondering if we were all going to come down with scurvy for lack of greens. Of course, the Doctor and M.L. came over for supper, and then my sister and her husband and three children, fresh from the lake, arrived, just in time to quaff adult beverages and eat the food. Since this was an "adult" dinner party, we threw the kids into the office, toute suite, which conveniently also happens to have a tee vee and a door that closes, to watch The Incredibles. Not a peep was heard from them until it was time to blow out the birthday candles on the tiramisu. Then they all ran back into the office and waited patiently for someone to start the tape back up. (Whoops! My bad.)

Since we had decided to go here on Saturday afternoon, Christi dragged me out for the obligatory "I need to see if the fabric stores up here have something I can't find in Omaha" shopping trip. Fortunately, Christi is well aware of my general loathing of all things fabric store-y and kept the trip short. Phew. My leg only twitched once during the trip, and I swear, it was completely unintentional on my part. Then we came back for lunch and headed off to the pool for the afternoon.

I must highly recommend the Edina Aquatic Center if you're looking for a kiddie friendly afternoon in the Twin Cities on a hot summer afternoon. It's got everything you could ask for: a kiddie playland for the wee ones in the middle of a zero-depth pool; two waterslides; an olympic pool for swimming; two diving boards; and a zip line that drops the hanger-on into the deep end of the pool after sliding them across part of the width, six feet up. It was loads of fun, and not only for the kids. The husband and I had a great time as well. The intertube waterslide is a blast, and if you have more than one adult in your party, well, know that if you squish two adults onto a tube you can fly like the wind down the slide due to the Laws of Physics. Good fun, no?

Later on we came back to the house, rested for a while, and then shot off for dinner and then went back to the Aquatic Center for a bit of evening swimming. When we got back to the house, the kids were completely wiped out (which was the plan, in case you were wondering) but not so wiped out that they didn't want to give Uncle Mike his birthday treat: fireworks. They know Uncle Mike adores blowing stuff up, so they came well prepared with roman candles, spinners, a parachute thingy, fountains and poppers (those little bits of paper with a bit of gunpowder in them that "pop" when you throw them on the ground). The kids had a great time and the quote for the evening came from James, who after closely examining a little paper tank loaded with fireworks that had become somewhat squished in their travels, scoffed at the husband's concern that something might go wrong, and said, "Just light the thing, old man!" After he finished laughing, the husband was so proud of his little protege he was about to burst. Future Pyros of America, indeed.

Once everyone was settled, and we were all about ready to drop, everyone else received the privilege of dropping, but I had to go over to el aeroporto to pick up Mr. H., who spent last week in L.A. on vacation. Oh, my. Needless to say, I was not pleased with Northworst Airlines. They'd printed on his ticket that his flight arrived at 11:10 pm. And I was there, ready and waiting for him a few minutes early in case they caught a tailwind, which does happen quite often with flights coming in from the west coast. I thought I'd be back home and in bed by 11:45. Turns out, however, Northworst had changed the arrival time from 11:10 to 11:37. OY! By the time he got down to baggage claim (they unloaded the plane at the very last gate on the Gold Concourse, which as anyone who's ever flown through MSP International could tell you is about a mile long and takes forever to traverse.) we claimed his bag, and got back to the Cake Eater Pad it was well past midnight and Kathy was a sleepy girl. Mr. H. however had a great time in La La Land and highly recommends a trip to see King Tut at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art if you happen to visit the greater Lou-Lou-Land metropolitan area.

Yesterday, sadly, everyone headed home and the husband and I decided to decamp to the living room to recover from the whirlwind. We watched loads of crap tee vee and napped. Amazingly enough, the kids did not leave one single thing behind! I'm shocked, but fully expect to find a Hot Wheels under the sofa the next time I vacuum under there. I do have a load of food and a half a case of diet Mountain Dew in the fridge. Christi always leaves me loads of food and drink whenever she comes to visit. After a week in a cabin, she always arrives with enough food leftover to feed an army for a day (or two people for a week). She claims she doesn't want to take it home, but really I think she thinks we're starving or something like that, because our fridge just isn't as full as she thinks it should be. I think she completely forgets we're a family of two instead of five, so it's just never going to have as much stuff in it as her fridge does. So, if anyone wants half a case of Diet Mountain Dew let me know and it's yours.

Regular blogging will resume shortly. Like later in the day.

Posted by Kathy at August 1, 2005 11:41 AM | TrackBack