Weekend Recap

On Thursday night, one of my brothers, Steve, called up in the middle of the service of an elaborately prepared lasagna. I don't make lasagna every day, so when the phone rang in the middle of dinner, I was annoyed. I was less annoyed when I heard the husband exclaim, "Hey Steve!" when he picked up the phone.

Steve's one of these high-falutin' business types who flies all over the country at least twice a week. Since he lives in Billings, Montana, if he's flying to Detroit (he's in the "automotive sales industry"---read he's a dealer), he's generally reduced to flying Northworst, and if he's got a decent layover, he generally gives us a call. Generally this means schlepping it over to the airport, where we hook up in baggage claim and have a nice visit for about an hour or two. The past couple of times he's called, I haven't been able to make it because, as he's one of these 'fly by the seat of your pants" types, he usually only manages to call me to let me know about his layover when he's taking off from Billings. This doesn't work out too well, even with my flexible schedule. But, we do get to see him from time to time and this past Friday morning we got to see him again---and this time he brought his wife with him!

Shocking, no?

Well, you're probably thinking, "whoop-de-freakin' do. Kathy got to see her sister-in-law. YAWN!" Hold up there, my devoted Cake Eater readers, because it was new and unusual, because I hadn't met this particular sister-in-law yet, and they've been married almost a year. Weird, no?

To make a long story short, for many years, Steve was married to---and there's no way to put this politely, so I shall simply be blunt about it---a bitch on wheels. I won't name her here, but my family obviously knows who I'm talking about. They married when I was ten or eleven, and she fell out of love with him somewhere around the time when his money dried up. Steve is a resourceful guy, and he managed to rebuild his fortunes bigger and better than before, but she never let him forget about what happened way back then. And that's not just a turn of phrase, either. She really NEVER let him forget what happened. She brought it up constantly. She never cut him any slack, because even though he was seeing to her every wish and desire, it was never enough to overcome what had happened when I was a sophomore in high school. I loathed spending time with her, because she never let us forget how he'd let her down. She nagged. She whined. She regularly retired to her room with migraines whenever we visited. She was, in general, an overwhelming pain in the ass, and we couldn't stand her. Which was fair enough, because she couldn't stand us, either.

So, when my mother announced, about two years ago, that the witch had filed for divorce just shy of their 25th wedding anniversary, the majority of us silently cried, "Hallelujah!" We were, of course, worried about the kids, but we thought this was a good thing. He'd given it his best shot. Really and truly he had. He'd done everything possible to save his marriage and it wasn't enough for her. He moved out, bought his own house, and settled in for life as a single dad. He was doing pretty well with this, although I know for a fact he was lonely, but fortunately God smiled upon him and brought him in contact with his new wife, who was not new to him, because she was the mother of one of his daughter's friends. They fell in love and got married quickly---yea LDS Church----but they kept the wedding small, with just their respective immediate families, so only one of the sibs had met her beforehand. That particular brother told me she was the "Anti-{Insert Ex-SIL's name Here}" so that was good enough for me. But I was still curious to meet her. And I finally got the chance on Thursday.

And she's SO nice. And NORMAL. And smart. And easy to talk to. And I am SO glad my brother married her! Woohoo! While the situation was a little weird, because you usually meet your sibling's intended before the marriage, not after, I'm glad of the outcome. The ex-SIL has remarried, as well, so it looks like everyone's getting on with their lives. (And apparently she married a gold digger, so maybe, just maybe, there's some justice in this world and she's just going to get hers.)

The only thing about Steve's visit that bugs me is that the dingbat left his credit card at the restaurant where we had lunch. This meant I had to go back down there three times---first to announce the loss to them and to see if they had it, second to check and see if they'd found it yet, and third to actually pick it up when it turned up---and the bugger didn't even say 'thank you.' He just called, told the husband about it, the husband told me about it, and I was dispatched to take care of the problem. Hmmph. When we called to say we had it, he never called back to say, "Thank You for saving me a shedload of trouble!" Hmmph. It would have taken him less than a minute to do so, but he didn't bother.

Stupid brothers.

I'll drop it in the mail today after I "forgot" to do so on Saturday. If I can make it to the post office today. You know, with my busy schedule, it's hard to get make time for petty errands like this one.

The rest of our weekend was fairly uneventful. Fortunately, we didn't get pounded with the storms they got to the south of here, so this meant, despite the threatening weather, we packed a picnic dinner and meandered over to the Lake Harriet Rose Garden for a little Shakespeare on Saturday night. The Cromulent Shakespeare Company put on Love's Labour Lost, which was not a play I was familiar with, so my expectations were not high. I have to say, however, they were very good. Both the husband and I were impressed. Usually, when you go to Shakespeare in the Park, it's usually a wash of an experience: you get the cheap thrill of sneaking a bottle of wine without getting busted for open container violations, but the acting is usually substandard, and the language, usually, gets completely lost in the trees (or in the case of the Lake Harriet Bandshell, the noise of the jets coming in for a landing at MSP). Not here, though. The staging was simple (no sets, no stage, they simply used a hill to seat the audience and set up on the flat in front, with a magnificent bank of trees as a backdrop.) and the actors, unlike the people they usually get to populate free plays, had a respect for the language, and actually---gasp---developed their characters. It was, by far, the best Shakespeare in the Park experience I've ever had. If you have the opportunity to go to one of their performances, I would highly recommend it.

Yesterday, we didn't really do much at all. Sunday is the husband's one day off per week, so we usually try to keep it simple. Too much activity ruins it. Yesterday was no different. Because we'd been around the lake the night before, we decided not to go over there again, and stuck around the neighborhood instead. I'd been bugging the husband for a couple of days now to play Scrabble with me (The chemo brain pops up every now and again if I don't keep rewiring my gray matter by doing crosswords and playing Scrabble and I've been lax in this lately.) and we decided to be that couple. You know, the one who hangs out at the coffee shop and plays a game to while away the time? Yep. That's us. And it was very pleasant. We sat outside, and the husband kicked my ass by fifty points! ARRRRRGGGGGGHHH! Again, in case you missed my Master Class in "How to Win At Scrabble", if you get stuck with the 'Q' at the end, you're fucked. No if's, and's or but's about it. Then we watched some tee vee, had dinner, went for a walk, and watched some Sunday night tee vee. We have two recommendations for new summer viewing. First off, we like In Plain Sight on USA. The plot revolves around a US Marshal in Albequerque who is assigned to look after people in the Witness Protection Program. She's a bit dysfunctional, but a highly inventive character. I think the program's still finding its legs, but it's pretty good on the whole, and sure as hell beats reality tee vee. Also, the Discovery Channel (ah, my beloved Discovery Channel, how I love thee. Let me count the ways...) started airing When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions last night, and if you run across the reruns of the first two episodes this week, and are something of a space junkie, I would highly recommend watching. It's not the most expansively researched piece I've ever seen on NASA (Werner Von Braun isn't even mentioned when they start chatting about the Mercury and Gemini rockets), and is very astronaut-centric, but it is interesting nonetheless. NASA has opened their film archives and there's all sorts of footage that's never been seen before. The first two episodes deal with the Mercury and Gemini programs, respectively, and they're jumping head first into the Apollo missions next week, so catch up while you've got the opportunity. Gary Sinise narrates and does a very nice job with it.

Posted by Kathy at June 9, 2008 09:56 AM | TrackBack