Nature Sucks

This morning being coherent feels like I am running some kind of cruel race. Honestly being coherent any morning is rough, and the fact that I can string together multiple words into sentences is pretty freakin amazing. This one is particularly rough because it feels like I did not actually get much of a weekend. Between yard-a-palooza and furniture moving on Saturday, and the mothers day visiting marathon yesterday I feel like I just need to sleep forever. I keep reminding myself that sleep is for the weak, and myself keeps giving me the middle finger.

The End of a Ploy

Over the past few years, my wife and I had decided that for mothers day we would divide and conquer. I would go to my places, she would go to her places, and we would theoretically meet back at home in a shorter amount of time than normally needed. Apparently my wife realized that she was getting the shaft, and while I also had two people to visit… those two people could be easily coaxed into being at the same location. Whereas her two people were in completely separate towns.

The divide and conquer meant that usually I was back home by 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and could chill out and relax and enjoy the rest of my Sunday. That said, my wife would roll in around 4 or 5 and have the rest of her day as well… which is still better than going together. However since we were both exhausted, she was determined that we should go together this year, if nothing else than to try and keep each other from falling asleep at the wheel. Reluctantly I agreed knowing that Sunday as a whole was a completely gone day for both of us.

Mommy-ball Run

So yesterday got up with our horribly annoying alarm from 1988 going off at 7am… me rolling out of bed, showering and setting down to blog as rapidly as I possibly could. I grew up catholic, so we had to get up that early to be able to attempt to meet my mother for breakfast immediately after mass at 9 am. My mom has always talked about going out to eat with a “group of friends” after church, so assuming this was still the case we grabbed a largish table when we got the the restaurant shortly after 9. We had no clue that it would just be Mom and Grandma, and that they would not be showing up until closer to 10 am.

Our original plan was to eat breakfast, and then go back to Grandmas house and chill out for awhile. We did not however take into account that if given the choice between talking and eating, my mom will always choose talking. As a result it took roughly two hours for her to finish her veggie omelet, and by then we needed to start getting on to the next house. We gave our hugs to mom and grandma, made sure grandma got safely into the car and then moved on down the line to then next house.

All Roads Lead to Bernice

We travelled the almost hour to the next destination, my wife’s mothers house. She was happy to see us as always, and hugs were exchanged, however she had an agenda. Over the last few months my wife and I have both gotten into photography, and one of the things we had been searching for were old timey rickety metal bridges. My wife’s mom thought she knew where a few were… 8 or 9 years ago… so we set out on an adventure to find them. One of the things we quickly learned that a short distance means something completely different to her than it does to anyone else.

Over the course of the next few hours we drove along the backloads of Craig County in search of the illusive “old metal bridge”. The first candidate was in a place that kept sounding like folks were saying “Car Salami”, but once we got there we found out that at some point recently it had been replaced with a very spartan concrete bridge. The river still looked cool so we got out and snapped a few pictures, and played dodge the oncoming cars while doing so.

The next candidate was in what felt like the exact opposite end of the county, honestly maybe 10 minutes from where we started our journey. We started backtracking with furious vengeance, all the while my wife’s mom telling us tales about what used to be there and who used to live where… all of which were a super confusing tapestry of references that neither of us actually knew. We arrived at our destination and low and behold it was a real live rusty metal bridge. A placard on the bridge announced that it was built in 1913, and while extremely cool it was bizarre how every so often the bridge would shudder and sway. We had been on the bridge a few minutes when my wife noticed that on one end it was being held together by only a few pieces of rebar… as you could see all the way down to the river below through a crack with only little toothpicks of iron rebar holding it together. Yeah… we totally drove across it anyways.

The Final Leg

After finding the goal of the mission, we needed to be getting on the road to our last destination. We travelled the 20 minutes there and at this point we are both extremely sore and tired. We had a good visit with my wife’s step mom and her dad. Also got to see my brother in law and his significant other, which was pretty awesome. We have not seen them much since they moved away from Tulsa. We talked about my wifes mothers addiction to the kindle, and just how many books she has read. Her dad showed off his new tablet, that he purchased entirely for playing games on. It was a pretty chill time of just hanging out and talking, which at that point was roughly all I was capable of doing.

As we headed back home, we had run the marathon for yet another year. Four people to see, three households and it took roughly 12 hours to accomplish it all. So this is why I am exhausted this morning, and why no amount of sleep would satiate me at this point. We had a good time all around, but overall it just wears you out to run around and visit that many people in one day… attempting to make sure that no one feels slighted in the process. So instead of me getting home around 2 and my wife around 5… both got home at 7 pm.

The big take away from the weekend is that nature hates me and is trying to kill me. After all the yard work, dusting, and running around Sunday, my allergies are declaring war on me. I have sneezed more in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 4 to 8 months. As I write this blog entry, I am clearing my throat constantly and praying that the Allegra kicks in without bringing me into an allergy medicated coma. It is going to be a crazy busy week, but at least I can enter it knowing that a ton of things got accomplished.

I hope the mothers out there had a great Mothers day, and I hope the children out there survived it. I managed to get in a little bit of Rift last night before collapsing in bed, and the highlight was getting a friend of mine guilded with the Catari Honor Guard. I will go into my debate over the positives of Alea Iacta Est and Catari Honor Guard another game, but I brought him into the Cats for the simple reason that we have the ability to invite people there. I hope you guys have a wonderful day.