A Story for Later

As I'm sure I've mentioned, last week was all about Granny getting married. My mother in law is a beautiful fifty seven year old woman who was widowed some five years ago after her husband was struck down by a brain tumor. New Dad is a sixty three year old widower who lost both his wife and his legs to diabetes. As is common in a small town, there are lots of people with opinions about this union. Here's mine: when two intelligent adults fall in love and want to publicly make a commitment to one another, it's cause for celebration.

The wedding itself was all about family. Hubby and his brother were to give their mom away. Her two sisters were the bridesmaids; our girl and her cousin, the flowergirls and boychild was the ring bearer. At the rehearsal the night before we met New Dad's two sons who would be the ushers and his best friend, the best man. The minister felt it very important that there be someone in position as mother of the bride as this person is seated last and makes life a little easier for the organist. In a fun bit of role reversal, that job was assigned to me.

So, the big day came and we went up to Granny's house to get everyone ready. It all went very smoothly. Granny had assigned seating in the vehicles, so boychild got to ride with the men in his uncle's jeep and our girl went with the other princesses in the love bug. I was the chauffeur for the ladies. We waited a few minutes after everyone else left and then drove to the church.

As we were driving along we were chatting and laughing about the balloons wilting in the heat and Granny said, "Well, if anything goes wrong now, it'll be a story for later". When we arrived at the church, I was surprised to see a lot of people milling around outside. They appeared to be looking for something. I parked the car and we asked what was going on...

Boychild had lost the ring.

We searched for a few minutes and then Granny decided it was time to get married and she'd just turn her engagement ring around and we'd worry about the wedding band later. We were reluctant, Granny was insistent, so away we went. I was seated and then the flower girls came up the aisle, followed by the boychild who was trying to smile despite the fact that he was bearing only one ring.

When the bridesmaid got into position at the front of the church, she reached over and plucked something out of our girl's basket, turned to me and whispered, "found it!" She then passed the ring to the boychild who sighed and beamed at me with such relief that the whole church laughed aloud.

That laugh set the tone for the wedding and I hope that Granny and New Dad laugh their way through a long and happy marriage. I also hope that they tell this story at boychild's wedding.

Mama Mia!

So, the first part of our vacation has been slightly more eventful than we would have liked. Everything started out well; after a minor freak out in the car where I convinced myself that my passport had expired, we got to Dublin Airport in plenty of time to satisfy the new and improved security requirements. The boychild nearly melted the xray machine with the stench emanating from his shoes (who knew that a nine year old could smell that bad?) so we were a little famous before we left - greaaat! Found our gate ten minutes before the first boarding call, which afforded hubby the opportunity to drink a lil liquid courage. Apparently, there's nothing like a breakfast pint of Guinness.

Our flight to Rome was uneventful, unless you count that they served us what appeared to be headcheese for lunch. A taxi driver tried to rip us off for the fare from the airport which prompted hubby to make a small scene in the closet that passed for a lobby at our hotel. I was very proud of him; there was a time not so long ago when he would have just paid the bastard. We found our room and freshened up a little (read: the kids discovered the bidet.) By the way, why is it that in a country were everyone is obsessed with washing their ass, the public toilets smell nearly as bad as boychild's shoes? We then headed off in search of a nice dinner.

The hotel was about a block from the beach. Yeah, the one on the Mediterranean Sea. The kids dipped their toes in and then we went to find the restaurant that the desk jockey at the hotel recommended. Not only did we find said restaurant, we found an English speaking waiter who was eager to help us sample as many varieties of authentic Italian pizza as four humans can consume in one sitting as well as help us choose a wine to suit. Niiiiiiiiice. The only glitch was that the restaurant didn't open for another hour or so. It was right around this time that the bar on the beach started calling for me. It said something about needing me to drink a big, big beer and so being the socially responsible person that I am, I answered the call. I know, I know, I give til it hurts. It hurt so good that after the kids finished their hand made ice cream we went back to the bar and watched beach soccer played by Frodo and the boys. At least I think they were hobbits; I got a good look at their feet... yeah, definitely hobbitses.

Anyway, we had a decent night's sleep followed by a much cheaper trip to the airport in the hotel's shuttle service and we were off. Other than taking off about forty minutes late, the flight was fine. The food was not headcheese, much to our relief. After the lunch, we drugged ourselves and the children with anti-nausea meds and had a nice long nap. We all awoke in time for the panzerotti & ice cream sandwich (cruel imitation really) dinner and then it was nearly time to land.

We had gained about 15 minutes on our flight so when the captain came on to say that we didn't have ground clearance to land and we'd have to circle for about ten minutes we weren't alarmed. Some 80 minutes later, we landed in a rather spectacular thunderstorm; so when the captain announced that the ground crew were not currently working due to the weather, were weren't alarmed.

At that point, the woman sitting beside hubby rang her son to say that she'd be delayed and he should wait to hear from her again before coming to pick her up. The son was watching CNN and explained to her that the plane that landed two minutes before us had slid off the runway with some 300 people on board. At that point, we were officially alarmed.

As if on cue, a huge black cloud of smoke rose. We sat horrified as we watched what we thought were hundreds of people burn. Well, all of us but the princess who stood in the front of our section complaining vociferously that due to the length of our flight, we should be made priority and allowed to disembark immediately. How she survived the crash is something of a mystery to me.

When we finally did get off the plane and into the luggage collection area, the staff there was still sticking to the "ground crew won't work in bad weather" story, so we got no news from them. It wasn't until we cleared customs and met our friend that we learned that everyone on the Air France plane had survived. What a fabulous piece of news!

And thus began our homecoming adventure...

Haste makes Waste

Being the forward thinking girl that I am, I updated my link list to include all my favourite daily reads so that I'd have them with me while I'm away. It only took a few minutes to get them all up and have a quick peek to make sure everything worked. Some genius forgot to save the changes!