After narrowly avoiding travel disasters my family split up back at Hartsfield in Atlanta for a few hours, resolving to meet again at the farm. Incredibly this plan resulted in all of us meeting again at the farm.
I spent most of the formative time of my youth at “the farm” – fields of Christmas trees (also known secularly as “Frazer Firs”) perched precariously on the sides of a mountain in North Carolina. Over the past fifteen years my family has slowly acquired most of the top of the mountain and transformed the farm into something like a country fortress, penetrated only by our meth-making neighbors. They occasionally drop by to steal a laptop or sometimes to overfish the pond. Recently they’ve been a bit more distant, which is probably because Daddy bought some guns and taught us how to cock a shotgun to scare off hillbillies.
Scattered torrential downpours marked the weekend, so I settled in to catch up on my emails, reading, studying, and blogging. Somehow I managed to neglect these duties and instead spent most of Sunday, after realizing our Blu-Ray player had the capability to connect to a Wi-Fi network, setting up the Blu-Ray to our Wi-Fi and trying to enable Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Note my use of the phrase “most of Sunday” – our internet at the farm is tenuous at best and I do not have a reputation for dabbling in electronics. However, I did eventually set up these services and ended the day feeling more or less fulfilled.
On the topic of Wi-Fi: I’m actually writing this on a plane. …A plane with Wi-Fi. It’s called “GoGo” and its motto is, “The sky is no longer the limit”. I think that’s pretty clever, and I typically disdain mottos.
Memorial Day (that was yesterday, for those of you who don’t keep track) dawned slightly less rainy and we all hurried to don our exercise clothes and work in a quick run. SB and I tackled about three miles on the same route and returned to the house to find Daddy on his way out.
I should note that my father does not hurry as effectively as we do.
A bit later, after SB showered and I read a few books and wrote a dissertation, Daddy made it out the door. By this time the clouds looked somewhat ominous again and we encouraged him to exercise care while exercising. We thought this was wildly funny and witty.
The Judge returned a few minutes before the rain begin. It drizzled a while, then turned torrential again, and we sat on the front porch swing with the dog and watched the driveway for Daddy to reappear.
It was an hour or so before we began to worry. This may seem like a delayed reaction, but as I noted earlier, Daddy moves slowly. SB also posited the opinion that he could have elected to walk back up to the house to avoid getting the inside of his car wet. Daddy’s car is named “Fluffy” and he likes it to stay very clean. None of us found SB’s suggestion unreasonable.
Eventually the Judge and SB elected me to drive down to the pond and see if Daddy needed some help. By this point Mom had reached a level of concern and worry that turned annoying to those around her (“He really should have been back by now. I hope he didn’t fall. He should have at least called. Do you think he had his phone with him? I’m worried.” Duh.); I took my escape for what it was and headed down to check on Daddy.
Two minutes down the driveway (oh yeah, it’s a long driveway) SB called to let me know that Daddy had checked in (guess he had his phone) and had driven into town to get gas once it started to rain. He saw this as a perfectly normal course of action and did not understand why Mom had seen fit to alert the media of his apparent disappearance.
I asked SB if that meant I had to come back, and she snarled, “Don’t even think about leaving me alone with them.”
To their credit: my parents are awesome. They’re probably the coolest parents that exist and they actually hold their own as real people, too. Daddy cooks delicious apple pie and pancakes and buys Blu-Ray players; Mom teaches us the names of every plant on the farm and buys tractors. I imagine they maintain some level of coolness in the workplace as well, since they have lots of parties. However, they are also part of my family, and as I have established, members of my family make each other into lunatics.
Interestingly, my sister seems less affected by this, which leads credence to my childhood attempts to convince her that she was adopted.
Currently my airplane (on which I confirmed my seat three times after Friday’s fiasco) rockets over some part of the East Coast, carrying me to New Hampshire for a week of camping in Maine and SPS Anniversary Weekend. It’s so nice to be in a position where I miss my family again.
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