Soak Up the Fun, Part *

Sunday Driver

I'll keep this one short, even though it was probably the longest portion of the experience.

To complete the "let's relive high school" theme of the weekend, I stayed at my mom's on Saturday instead of my dad's.  I got there a little late, as there was some construction I hadn't known about.  I sat in the Primary-turned Relief Society room used as an overflow during sacrament meetings.  Three families were in there with me, and I stayed the whole time.  My train of thought had been "if there's not enough chairs for them, there's not enough chairs for me."  One of my friends there pointed out I'd only have to look for one chair, and everyone else would have to look for at least 5.

I forgot to show my quilting friend the pictures I didn't post of the quilt-themed rest area.  I went back home and recouped after so much social activity.  Turns out my mom's rescue cats like me better than they like my sister and brother-in-law.  Little did I know it would be the last time I would see the cat we got when I was in 7th grade.

I went to my dad's afterward, and found my little sister there.  I chided them for not telling me, or I'd have left my mom's sooner.  We had dinner and conversation while Grapes of Wrath played in the background.

I left Monday morning and made my stop at The Exclusive Company in Janesville.  Nothing outrageously exciting, other than seeing the first season of Psych for a dollar less than I had just paid for it at Half Price shortly before getting fired.

I made it to my friend Janet's about an hour or so before dinnertime.  The rest of the evening played out like a Drew Barrymore movie.
There was a friend of my friend's husband who was back in town for a while because his dad had decided to go off dialysis.  (However, when he got to town, his dad was like, "Nah.  I think I'm gonna stay on it for a while.")  My friend's husband grilled us dinner, which we ate while watching shows like Amish Mafia and Bar Rescue.  I probably spent 20 minutes tickling their 2 year-old son with the pair of gloves my friend uses when she needs to rearrange the kitchen freezer.  (He had pulled them off the dining room table.)  I couldn't tell you why that amused us for so long.

Not even waiting for a commercial break, their friend announces he's been spending the last 20 minutes debating about going out to get ice cream.  Our friends gave their orders, and I admitted it had been so long since I had gone to DQ (the only place still open in the small town), I wouldn't even know what to get.  That's when he told me to come along, saying, "I'll need someone to help me carry it back in the house, anyway."


On the way there, he told me many things most people don't normally tell strangers.  I get that a lot, so I told my friend she should give him my number.  She said she wasn't sure he was interested in dating anyone right now, but that's not why I was asking.  Yeah, it might have been nice, but almost all of the things I could tell he was struggling with was something I had helped one friend or another go through at some other point. 
Since I'll probably never run into him again, I decided to spin it into a story.

I had decided to drive across the state of Missouri on my way home, and drove through the towns that Walt Disney and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) claim as hometowns.  It was fascinating, yet time consuming.  Got cheap gas out of the deal (although so much time has passed between buying and posting that gas is cheaper now than when I bought the cheap gas), but literally spent all day driving home.  Some of that is due to long snooze stops, but most of it is due to driving about 70 miles in the wrong direction on the interstate before I noticed.  And I can't even blame construction on that; it was just Illinois trying to hold me hostage and punish me for planning a route that avoids tolls.