The Mandelbear's Musings

From the moment we met and hugged in the baggage claim area of the Sea-Tac airport late Friday afternoon, our only plan for the weekend was to enjoy our weekend visit to the Big Green Monster and its inhabitants: acrobatty, cflute, jenkitty, pocketnaomi, and the two kids. We did, in spades. Thank you, folks, for an absolutely wonderful visit.

Not having a plan wasn't a matter of lowering expectations but of simple necessity: in a household of that size anything can happen, and usually does. Equipment malfunctions, meltdowns, power failures, medical emergencies, missed connections, schedule overruns, household drama,... the possibilities for disaster are endless, and you can't always count on avoiding them, as we did. So are the possibilities in the other direction: good friends, good conversation, good food, music, people, joy, beauty, love, hugs (especially little-kid hugs)... We got all of those.

Sunday's part of the visit began and ended with potential disasters. The morning started with a sudden shortage both of bread and of conscious adult household members for kid-watch duty: this was easily averted by me making a trip down the hill to Albertson's, the location of which I remembered from a side-trip Friday.

The afternoon ended with a household project: "We have a third person, let's move the new music-room carpet into position!" Followed by "OMFG, how much did you say that piano weighs?" -- but by that time the rest of the furniture had been moved, and it would have been hard to turn back. We did it: by the time we left the carpet and pad were down in their new position, the piano (actual weight over a ton) had been tilted back to slide carpet and pad under the front legs, and by the time we left cflute and jenkitty were trimming the pad on the side by the window.

In between were brunch out at Barlee's with cflute and pocketnaomi (I picked up the tab and declared it a business expense, since the conversation was mostly about CD and music planning), more conversation and music. I concentrated on songs that pocketnaomi hadn't heard (she'd gone to bed early on Saturday night). The interaction between C and N is a joy to watch.

My back and left shoulder didn't start hurting until we were well on our way to the airport, probably due to a too-heavy backpack rather than any of the weekend's activities.

We got to the airport with time to spare, though a combination of a second round of raw oysters at the restaurant and the fact that they were nearly finished boarding the plane by the time printed on our boarding passes as the start time made things a little more hectic than I like.

We came home, finally, to a clean house and a happy, proud super_star_girl, and woke up to the sound of a running clothes dryer and fresh pots of coffee and iced tea. Wow!

Thanks again. We had a blast.