Soup Is Not A Finger Food

What to wear

LET'S SAY YOU ARE a 40-something, somewhat pudgy, suburban-dwelling working mother of three. And your husband has scored tickets to a casino night event in DC, for which the requested dress code is "cocktail attire." And that your current, seasonal leaving-the-zip-code wardrobe consists of boring but comfortable, conservative dark neutral pants (always pants, never skirts), with which you most often pair with a cotton twinset and Sensible Shoes, and that your current, seasonal not-leaving-the-zip-code wardrobe consists entirely of cotton capris and T-shirts, none of which you ever bother to tuck in, and flip flops. Because they don't hurt your hammertoe. And let's say that your fashion sense tends more towards Frumpy Conservative than Fashionable Cocktail.

Let's say the event in question is scheduled for this Friday Night - as in THREE NIGHTS FROM NOW. This does not give you nearly enough time to lose the 40 25 pounds it would take in order to fit into anything you already own that could remotely be considered "cocktail attire." And it barely gives you time to do anything other than Emergency Shopping, the kind you wedge into your schedule during the 25 minutes between the when you get off the commuter train and you have to shuttle one of your kids to taekwondo. But, shop you must! 

Let us further say that - forget the current state of your body - you have longstanding issues with dressing appropriately. That you are still, amazingly, dragging around BAGGAGE from 7th or 8th grade, from that one time when you begged your dad to take you to a sports award banquet, because hey, you played junior high girls' basketball, where "played" equals "wore a uniform like all the other girls", and doesn't that make you an athlete?, and that in selecting attire for said banquet, your logic was, these are athletes, no one will be wearing dresses, only when you arrived - late - you weren't and THEY ALL WERE (the girls were, anyway) and you immediately, tearfully, asked your dad to take you home where you could bury your mortified head in your pillow and figure out how you were going to show your pathetic, underdressed, preteen face at school the next day.

Let's just say that's you. What do you do, given this set of circumstances?

Naturally, you turn to Facebook! You ask your friends if they were you, where would you shop for sassy, stylish cocktail attire that is age-appropriate and flattering, yet won't break the bank, owing to your recent cash outlay for a new refrigerator and near-future ones for some electrical work, repairs to a vehicle, and the possible replacement of two of your stove burners (since buying a new stove is financially out of the question right now)?

Your friends, bless 'em, will provide all kinds of helpful suggestions. Dress Barn. (Why is it still called a "Barn"?) Lord & Taylor. Chico's. (Chicos??) Coldwater Creek. Go the off-price route - Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Ross. Or try Ann Taylor or Talbott's.  This is helpful stuff! And you live in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area, so you have access to all of these stores! The only thing you barely have enough of - besides money - is time.

Some of your fabulous Facebook friends will make style suggestions, too. They'll say, why don't you dress up a sexy blouse with some chunky costume jewelry and wear it with your favorite black skirt or dressy pants and fabulous shoes? Which sounds like a good approach, until you remember that your bunions and hammertoe preclude fabulous shoes and mandate comfortable ones. 

And while you are considering The Shoe Dilemma, another quirky hang-up rears its ugly head: Whenever you wear chunky costume jewelry, you feel like Wilma Fintstone:

Or Marge Simpson.

Clothing and accessories are only part of this equation. We haven't even discussed the fact that your hairdresser is out of town for another three weeks. When she told you in March about her trip, you decided it would be a good time to let your hair grow out, but now it just seems like you'll resign yourself to arranging your shaggy in-between quasi-bangs into something resembling a Style, because there are only so many hours until this shindig and you will have time for either a manicure OR a pedicure, only one of which can be crammed into the 50-minute time slot when Seth is at therapy on Thursday afternoon. There's no time for a haircut. Besides, it's risky at this juncture. Hairdressers can smell desperation.

By now, your darling husband is gnashing his teeth and wondering why he even bothers. All he was trying to do was to provide a night on the town, a chance to dress up and get tipsy on fancy cocktails and fake-gamble and bid on silent auction items (maybe they'll have a salon package I can snag?). He is thinking, you always say you want us to go out more? Well here it is, on a silver platter, and now you're all stressed out and splattering over a thousand words (!) onto the Internet and unearthing long-buried hang-ups that he wasn't entirely aware existed.

But you will reassure him that, really, this is the stuff that normally goes on in your head. And he'll be all "Really?" And you'll say "Yes, really. Trust me." 

...at which point, he will go to his closet and pull out his nice suit - the dark one - and a crisp, new white dress shirt, select a tie, quick-shine his shoes, and BAM, he is ready to go and looks like a million bucks, and what is taking you so long??

 Men have it so easy.

You will have to further reassure yourself that while you *have* gained some weight (and yes, losing some would open up new wardrobe possibilites AND be good for your overall well-being), you really are quite content with who you are. Extra flab and all. Life's too short to sweat the last 40 25 ten pounds, right? Ninety percent of the time, you don't care. It's only when you try to buy fancy clothes, or a bathing suit, that it ever becomes an issue.

So, you will determine that Wednesday evening will be when you bravely drink to excess venture out to buy two burners for your old stove some fabulous Cocktail Attire and Flintstone-esque costume jewelry. And you will wear your new clothes on Friday night, but you will also don your winning smile and your sparkling sense of humor. And you and your handsome, suit-wearin' husband will charm the bejeezus out of the other partygoers because seriously, the two of you together? You're a lot of fun to be around.

People like you. They don't like your clothes - they like YOU. 

Party dress codes are important to observe. If you were to show up in your not-leaving-the-zip-code duds, you run the risk of well-dressed people looking askance at you as if to say, hey, the suburbs called, they want you to come back now. Or, you could be denied admittance to the event and cited for failure to comply with the stated dress code. But when it comes right down to it, that isn't the stuff that really matters. It's who you are that speaks louder than any extra 25 40 pounds or fake-bling can. 

Hide and Seek

LAST WEEKEND, I dragged took my neighbor Stephanie up to my old stompin' grounds. My aunt and uncle built a sweet cabin on the ridge above what used to be my grandmother's (her mother's) farm, and they kindly allowed us to invade for a girls' weekend. Steph's sister Dory and Dory's friend Diane met us there. Our mission: A whole bunch of geocaching, a ride on the Millersburg Ferry and a visit to the Ned Smith Nature and Art festival.

I provided nonstop running commentary and shared interesting facts spouted minutiae about my hometown. I pointed out where my relatives live. (Which was, like, every third house.) I told stories from back in the day.  I wouldn't shut up was probably pretty unbearable, but I was their chauffer, so they were my captive audience.

For the uninitiated, geocaching is a worldwide game of hide and seek. You can find lists of "caches" on the website, enter the coordinates into your handheld GPS, then use that to guide you to the exact location of the cache. Along the way you can get sunburned hike, learn local history, and you get to see things that are miles from all civilization off the beaten path. My companions are all quite experienced geocachers, but they were patient and willing to train their chauffer.

But enough of my prattling on and on and on. I'll let the photos do (most of) the talking.

Dory fishes a microcache out of its hiding place while Steph logs our find.

One of the caches we found was hidden in state gamelands, high above the Susquehanna River... 

 
...and Routes 11/15. This was just north of Liverpool, PA. 
 
We found caches at two covered bridges - 
 
 
...the Aline Bridge, just up Route 104 on the way to Middleburg, and...

 
...Red Bridge, outside of Liverpool. Please don't tell anyone that I grew up maybe 4 miles from this bridge but never knew it was there.  Adjacent to this site were an old outhouse--

 
---and a long-abandoned house:

 

There were also cemeteries (which, I just learned, is from the Greek word that means "sleeping place"). There was the one out by Barners Church -

 
...where there are, in fact, many tombstones bearing the name "Barner."

 
(...even though this photo features a "Meiser" grave marker. You'll have to take my word for it.) 

Then there was the cemetery at the site of the former St. Michael's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Pfoutz Valley. It's an equally peaceful "sleeping place":

 

 This cemetery used to be adjacent to a church, which has long since been razed:

 
St. Michael's is next to the farm that was my aunt & uncle's, and the next farm after that one was was my grandmother's - where my dad grew up. So you see, I can't even count how many times I've driven by this place. And yet, I can remember only stopping and visiting it a few times. It's so peaceful and quiet there, and as I surveyed the plot's location amid corn and soybean fields, I got to thinking how this would be such a nice place to spend my eternal rest, because the chances are next to zero that they would pave over this particular slice of paradise... but then I remembered the other cemetery we visited earlier in the day -

 
The cache was nestled next to Sarah Catharine Shuman's grave. She died when she was only ten. And that was next to these --

 
--which were sequestered way up on top of a slab of earth that was flanked by a highway on-ramp and an off-ramp - the Millerstown exit of Routes 22/322. The highway was built in the '60s, and my cousin Julie tells me that her dad protested the original plan to relocate those graves. The highway was redesigned to leave this small family plot intact. And I am sure that when Catharine's grieving parents buried their precious daughter there, they couldn't have imagined that her resting place would end up overgrown and inaccessible to all but the hardiest, most adventurous hikers. I mean, you really have to wanna get up there.

Now, this cache -

 
...was called Nekoda. The cache was hidden in an overgrown area across the road from an old structure that once housed a general store and a post office. Until recently, it still showed up on maps of Pennsylvania, even though the post office has been defunct for decades. The building sat abandoned for many years. I could see it from my bedroom window. I spent 16 years looking across the corn fields at it, wondering if it really was haunted, as was the rumor.  A family has since bought it and fixed it up and I'd love to see what it looks like inside - I bet it's great fun to ramble around in there. We, however, were focused on navigating 'round needle-sharp bramble bushes to locate the cache that was tucked into the overgrowth near an old stone wall that may have once been the foundation for a barn or other outbuilding.

 
My fellow seekers - Steph, Dory and Diane. And yes, that's a Busch Pounder in Dory's hand. This was our 15th and final cache of the day, and we decided to linger 'neath the evergreens and enjoy a refreshing cold beverage to celebrate our finds. What a fun day - I enjoyed showing my friends around my hometown and surrounding area, and really liked learning some new things, too.

I have more to share, including the Millersburg Ferry photos - but those will have to wait for another day. Until next time -

Expecting the unexpected

BECAUSE I’M MARRIED TO A SERIOUS SPORTS FAN, I’m accustomed to checking sports schedules before I schedule anything for the family. I dutifully verified that gametime for the Steelers / Ravens NFL playoff game was 4:30 pm on Saturday before I booked Peezer’s birthday party for an earlier time slot the same day.

(The fact that I even thought to do this is something Curt takes for granted. Not all wives would. He has trained me well.)

And I was feeling like a Very Good Wife, until Curt’s friend offered him four face-value tickets to see the game IN PITTSBURGH. Curt, bless him, hesitated, on account of it being the same day as Peezer’s birthday party. But here’s the thing with the Steelers and their rabid fans. Face-value tickets don’t come along that often. And here was a chance for Curt to impress the socks right off of Seth and The Boss. Oh, sure, they’ve been to regular-season NFL games and to Big Ten football at Penn State. But the playoffs? Our favorite team?

So it was in the spirit of teamwork that I offered to “take one for the team” and agreed to host the birthday party solo while Curt took Peezer’s older brothers to Mecca Heinz Field.

Now, we haven’t hosted a birthday party outside of our home in all the years we’ve been parents. But this year, I finally decided there was a certain wisdom in throwing money at this particular issue. I booked the party and decided to let someone else clean up the mess.

And I didn’t necessarily think it would be a big deal. A few kids, some cake – how hard could it be? Last year, I invited his entire class to our home for his party. Out of 22 some invitations, we had only seven RSVPs, and of those, six kids attended. It was a manageable size for a group of five year olds, but I was dismayed by the lack of responses.

Fully expecting the same thing this year, I encouraged Eli to invite lots of kids, so as to hedge our bets. We mailed 23 invitations. Imagine how surprised we were when every single guest replied and only one said they could not attend!

Me + 23 kindergarteners + a frenzied party venue, teeming with hyperactive children? When I confirmed the party details, I asked if I could tack on a box of wine for an additional charge. Alas, it would be up to me to get through the party without crutches.

The kids had a blast bouncing on the inflatables. Plus, sensing my desperation, more than a few parents stuck around, so I had extra arms to assist me with my hosting duties.

Something else extra that I hadn’t counted on, though? Extra party guests! Three parents brought extra siblings. One let me know ahead of time. Two didn’t. And I might not even have noticed except that (for fear of losing someone) I put name tags on all the kids. Then I noticed one I didn’t recognize. “Who’s that?” I asked a nearby parent.

“Oh,” she said, smiling, “That’s Emily.”

Thinking I’d totally missed something, I asked, “Who’s Emily? We didn’t invite an Emily…”

“Oh, no, that’s Mary’s sister,” she said. “I brought her along.” So, I informed her – and the other two parents – that there was a maximum number of jumpers allowed on the inflatables, and that with all our invited guests, we had exactly that many, so if the referees decided to enforce the limit, I’d have to ask their extra child to get off the inflatables.

And you’d think that would have been enough of a hint, but you would be wrong. As we transitioned to the party room for refreshments, all three of the extra kids all bellied up to the table, and we ran out of chairs and chips and cups, because there were exactly enough place settings for the invited guests. The “referees” were cool about it- they brought in extras of everything. And charged me, naturally.

And you would think THAT would have been hint enough, too, but again, you’d be wrong, because two of the three extra guests actually held out their hands for the goodie-bag giveaway at the end of the party! Luckily, I had exactly two extras, because what kind of ogre says to a doe-eyed three year old, sorry, Susie, no candy for you!?

Despite those minor curveballs, it was a fun party – Peezer loved every minute of it. We toted his gifts home and opened them and this week we will be mass-producing thank you notes. Mostly, though, I was touched that this room full of kids was there to celebrate my kid’s birthday. It was loud, chaotic, and crazy – but it was a big ole’ party, and Peezer was thrilled.

I may have scored bonus points for “letting” Curt take the boys to the football game, but I like to think I scored far more meaningful points with my youngest son.

 

 

I 

Pitching pfennigs

IN A RECENT SEARCH FOR BLOG INSPIRATION, I was flipping through old photo albums. I came upon the scrapbook I put together of our honeymoon trip to Europe. The photographs and mementos brought back some great memories of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. However, the details have kind of... faded. After all, we got married a hundred years ago  in a land before cell phones in 1993, and the frankly, my memory just isn’t what it used to be.

Lucky, then, that I kept a travel journal of the trip, and made Curt write in it, too! (Kids: Listen to your mom when she makes you do this. My mom made us girls keep one when we took a big trip through the south, and even though I thought it was stupid then (sorry, mom), I realize now how wise it really was.) If only I knew where that one was.

Anyway. It was a grand whirlwind of a trip, including stops in Germany, Paris and England, cobbled together on the cheap, which is something at which we excel. And so it was that on Monday morning, October 4, 1993, we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, bleary-eyed but eagery to party experience all Europe had to offer. Our good friends Jim and Beth, who had been transferred there due to Beth’s job with the Department of State, were our hosts and tourguides.

We were in Germany, after all, so naturally, we drank lots of beer, ate lots of comfort food and toured plenty of old castles. But the best anecdote from the trip happened when the four of us got a little, um, sidetracked and ended up in the middle of nowhere. Here’s how we recounted the story in our travel journal, the day after the adventure:

MEG WRITING: Finally got around after a good breakfast of cornmeal pancakes and going to the travel agent at the consultate (Beth and me, to book the train to Paris) and the bank (Curt and Jim, to get money). We ate pastries in each train station (Frankfurt and Wiesbaden) – all the pastries are top-rate around here – who’d think you could get yummy pastries in a train station?!

...and not only pastries, but also, beer. You can drink a beer in the train station! You don't have to speak German to figure out what a Trinkhalle is. 
 
Anyway, we hopped on the S-bahn train in Frankfurt to Wiesbaden and transferred to go out the Rhine Valley. Rode out to a cute little town called Lorch – all was closed for the season! [My memory says this town was quite small. More about Lorch on Wikipedia.] So we got back on the train (after causing a commotion in the train station by pitching 10 pfennig coins against the wall) to Rudesheim.

Pitching pfennigs in a German train station. See Wikipedia for more on "pitching pennies."

Here, we hit paydirt – tasted wines in three different places. It was always served in a thick, sometimes colored-stemmed glass. This was fun, especially at the third place, where Beth & Jim revealed that they got married last year before they came here!...

We tasted lots of wine in this charming, quaint village. 

We went for dinner – I had a meatloaf-like hunk o’meat with gravy and fries and Curt ate Sauerbraten. Also more wine. We were working our way back to the train station – stopped in a wine shop and to have coffee and hot chocolate; got really involved in pfennig-pitching again and followed a bunch of Germans right onto….THE WRONG TRAIN! Took us a whole stop to realize the Rhine was on the same side [of the train] as when we went out.

All of a sudden, we were BACK IN LORCH, which was still closed and not [looking] nearly as quaint as it had earlier…

CURT WRITING: …We had just about no money, no trains back to Frankfurt, no way to call a cab and no hotels within 10K of good ole Lorch. As if we’ll ever forget it – I’ll recall this night on Route 42 in backwoods Germany.

We walked along through Lorch and finally came out to the main highway. Our choices were:

1. Hitchhike

2. Place a call at the SOS box

 
I found this shot of Lorch on Wikipedia. You can see the train tracks and even the station in the bottom/left corner, running next to the highway, which is next to the river and the wee little village.

We decided, in desperation, to thumb it. It took us FIVE SECONDS TO GET A RIDE! The first car by stopped. It was some excellent long-haired dude in a tiny little Citroen. He drove us to the next town, where there were still no trains. So this guy drove us all the way to Wiesbaden where the “S” commuter trains from Frankfurt extend.

“Seth” – our Aryan hero [as we’d dubbed him – he never offered his name] – wouldn’t take any money, and just sped off into the night. [As I recall we left what little cash we had left on his backseat as a token of our gratitude.] The trip back to JimBeth’s was uneventful from Weisbaden on in. We arrived home at 1:05 a.m. with all our money, [something] which seemed totally impossible when we stood in the rain in Lorch. Moral: There is no stinking moral. This is just what can happen when you wing it.

MEG TODAY: So picture it. We were a bunch of semi-drunk twenty-somethings celebrating love and our friendship as we chugged guzzled sipped our way through the beautiful Rhine river valley on a glorious autumn day. Still giddy from the day’s fun, and a little tired, too, we piled on the train, happy to be heading back home. It wasn’t until the train had started moving that I remember Beth looking out the window and calmly saying, “Hey – wasn’t the river on our left on the way out here?” Then, three beats of silence while our brains processed this observation, after which we realized our grave mistake. We hopped off the train, it left, and… realized we'd just gotten off the last train for the night and were stuck in a tiny German town in the middle of nowhere.

As if on cue, it began to rain! I remember feeling a little wary of the hitchhiking plan, but it was like 11pm and we really had no alternative. But no sooner did we stick our thumbs out than this car shows up, and the dude driving was super-nice. We all piled into this tiny vehicle, a la clown car, totally at this guy’s mercy. Turns out, he’d spent some time in Texas, spoke great English, and was listening to some English music (was it Eric Clapton or Bruce Springsteen? I don’t recall).

I think it was Jim who dubbed him “Seth, our Aryan Angel.” Three years later, we named our first baby Seth, not after our angel, but because it was a family name on Curt’s side. It was only recently that I remembered about Seth the Aryan Angel and thought what a nice coincidence that was.

And THAT, friends, is how I ended up hitchhiking in Germany on my honeymoon!

WINE ONE ONE!

WINE ONE ONE became a sort of distress call for the many of the bloggers who attended the Virginia Blogfest the past two summers, and yesterday, I experienced distress sufficient to invoke this special cry of desperation. And because this is my blog, dammit, I'm going to tell you all about it in excruiting detail.

(And you're going to need a glass of wine for this because it's kinda, um, long.)

Actually, let's backtrack to Tuesday. No, wait - let's go all the way back to Thanksgiving weekend, shall we? After we returned from the weekend, I noticed a hole in my wallet where my driver's license used to be.  Possibly related? My black leather jacket was also missing. I was pretty sure both items made it to Maryland, but we had a reeeeeally good time at the Hoot 'n' Holler, so I wasn't, like, 100% certain. If you know what I mean. (That microbrewed pumpkin ale was sassy!)

Depsite compulsively checking my wallet for days on end, yesterday, I finally decided that neither my jacket nor my driver's license was likely to magically reappear.  Because I was working at home and had flexibility, I decided to just pop on over to the MVA and get me a replacement license!  So, I did. It was minimially invasive painful - I was in and out in 20 minutes. Life Was Good. (And my photo wasn't bad, either, owing to recent hair color.)

Meanwhile, I was driving home from the MVA and I noticed my oil gauge was aaaaaalll the way to the right, at the very highest number. And I said to myself, huh!, and then I turned up the radio and sang along and when I got home, I kinda... forgot about it. I thought it might - ya know - fix itself!

So, Wednesday morning, it was like Arctic 28 freakin' degrees outside. I went out to turn the 'Burb on to preheat it. I noted once again that the oil gauge went waaaaay over to the right! But again, I thought it might regulate itself. Or something.

But when I strapped my wee son into his seat and backed out of my carport, I couldn't help but notice that the oil gauge was now beyond the top of the scale and waaaaaaay to the right. As in, OFF THE SCALE.

I called my friend and neighbor, E the Car Guy and explained what was happening.

"So, is that, like, bad or something?" I asked, as I trundled through the neighborhood, on the way to deliver my son to his school talking on my cell phone despite the recent hands-free ban in Maryland.

"UH, IF I WERE YOU I WOULD NOT DRIVE MY CAR ONE MORE INCH!" E yelled said. "STOP WHERE YOU ARE AND TURN YOUR CAR OFF RIGHT THIS INSTANT AND HAVE YOUR CAR TOWED TO YOUR NEAREST SERVICE STATION!"

So naturally, because I'm such a rule-follower, I was within half a mile of home, and it was 20-some degrees outside, I DROVE home and backed into my driveway.

I immediately called AAA, of which I have been a dues-paying member for, like, two decades. That kind of loyalty ought to be worth something, don't you think? I was told, repeatedly, how valuable they knew my time was and how important my call was to them, and that I should please continue to hold. And then after an hour a real live man come on the phone and I explained the problem and he was like, oh, yes, absolutely, you shouldn't drive it and where are you ma'am, and I said, I'm in [city] Maryland, and he said, Oh!, let me get you right over to "them" ma'am, which I thought meant my local AAA dispatcher, only I held for another thirty few minutes and then I got a recording that said I could potentially avoid the "unusually heavy call volume" if the following situations applied to me, and then the Friendly Recording asked if I was in any number of counties, none of which sounded familiar to me, and I was all, whaaaa...???, and then it asked if I was stranded on the Garden State Parkway! And I was all, oh, that dude heard me say "Maryland" and naturally, then he transferred me to New Jersey, so I called the main AAA number again, and was assured that my call was Very Important, and then I was all ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS, BITCH, and I hung up and called Morton's Towing directly and asked if they could provide a AAA tow if I called them instead of AAA, and they were all, sure, absolutely, where are you?

And lo, choruses of angels sang from the heavens and please, if you live in Maryland outside of DC and you need a tow, call Morton's Towing because THEY ARE THE SHIZZLE.

While I was waiting for the tow truck, I was digging around inside the car and GUESS WHAT? I found my black leather jacket, crumpled on the floor of the third row of seats. And I fished it out and GUESS WHAT WAS IN THE POCKET?

That's right! My driver's license was there. So, now I have two copies of my driver's license. Which is probably handy, because I'll probably lose one of 'em again soon.

So, Morton's shows up and this Very Nice Man put the Suburban up on his rollback and took my car to our garage. And we got married and now I have two husbands, the end. Meanwhile, I had a kid who needed to go to school, so my awesome neighbor Carrie took him there, then came back and was like, do you need a ride to Metro, or hey, you could use my extra car, and I was all EXTRA CAR? I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER ASK! So I took her Extra Car and drove myself to Metro. Which was good, because some days, I can flex my schedule and work from home, but YESTERDAY WAS NOT ONE OF THOSE DAYS. So Carrie saved the day! And Morton's.

(By the way, if anyone wants to buy a Chevrolet Cobalt, base model, 10K miles, stick shift, call me. My neighbor's trying to sell it. Drives like a dream.)

But that was not all the day-saving that would occur! I made it into work for my Very Important Meetings, and while I was there, the guy from our local garage called. It seems the errant oil gauge was not indicative of a mechanical problem (phew!), but rather a malfunction of the whole instrument cluster. Repairs would cost upwards of $500 and take three to five days, and I was all HOLD THE PHONE, DUDE, HOW LONG???

So then I called my friend E the Car Guy AGAIN, and I was all "instrument panel" and "five days" and "seriously???" and he was like, "Don't do anything till I call you back." Because he knows about this stuff and he knows people and he happens to be employed in the car biz.

So, I didn't.

When we finally caught up late yesterday, he confirmed the diagnosis and the fix, but said it would take less time and cost less then the garage indicated, and PLUS his dealership could hook me up with a LOANER car which is CLUTCH (pun not entirely unintended) because Soup Husband Curt is going to be away this weekend.

Remember Curt?

As if yesterday wasn't already complicated enough, I forgot to mention that Plan A included me zipping home this afternoon, shuttling Peezer from aftercare to Carrie's house, then zipping back over to Metro to zip back downtown for dinner with Curt and two couples from his work.  He asked me Monday and because I was operating on five hours of sleep, I was all, THIS week? Really? Do I hafta?? (insert whine here) Because normally, I'm super-excited to go out for dinner, in DC, but IT'S DECEMBER and I'm just really really busy and it just seemed like a lot of extra work. But he really wanted me to come, so I rearranged my Wednesday schedule, including a meeting for Wednesday night that I had already rescheduled from a prior date for other reasons. Um hi, I'm Meg and apparently I can't manage my calendar.

And so after the morning car drama, I had left work early and was on track for my second trip of the day into the city, and while I was driving home from Metro in Carrie's extra car, Curt phoned and said two magical words: IT'S OFF! It seems someone else had a health issue and called off the dinner. Which was such a relief, honestly.

So instead, we came home and invoked the WINE ONE ONE clause and had several a quart glass of wine with Neighbor Carrie and life. was. good.

Wow, I'm over 1400 words and I still haven't mentioned how Curt's going away this weekend and I'm driving a loaner car and Peezer has a birthday party and a playdate and I'll be at church for four hours Sunday morning, singing in a cantata-thingy. To say nothing of an exceptionally busy few weeks at work.  And I didn't even tell you that I was so freakin', irrationally stompin'-tired on Monday because I lucked into tickets to see the Steelers beat the Ravens in Baltimore on Sunday night. (With Neighbor Carrie!) But you know what? It's all good. My life is good. I am truly lucky to have neighbors in the 'hood who can help me out in a pinch.