There was no post on Friday because Matty and I jetted (drove) to CT for our friend Laurie’s memorial birthday party and Viking funeral. It was an amazing celebration of an amazing woman. The highlight for me, besides seeing some of our old friends (yes, even you, Carter), was meeting Laurie’s good friend, Tom. Tom is an 84-year old ex-marine, and he and his lovely wife, Sue, met Laurie because Laurie used to walk her dogs past their porch, where they would sit and have coffee. Laurie was so friendly, she always waved and said hi, until one day they invited her to the porch to have coffee. The combined sweetness and friendliness of Laurie, Tom, and Sue, led to frequent porch dates, as well as regular breakfast dates for Laurie and Tom. He is hilarious and I believe Laurie brought us together.

In the meantime, Bert & Duke (aka, Hazy & George) managed not to terrorize Grammy that much. Thanks again, Grammy, for being a lifesaver. On Saturday, I thought it would be really cool to go to JP Porchfest. I was wrong. It turns out kids (and husbands) do not appreciate diverse music acts when it’s 90-something degrees out. We did enjoy a hot minute of jamming to Johnny Blazes and the Pretty Boys sing “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.”

Sunday morning, we had a bit of a setback. I had the worst headache of my life, neck pain and lower back pain, and diagnosed myself with Spinal Meningitis, because I have a minor (Matty would say major) case of hypochondria. I ended up going to the ER, where the lady who admitted me wrote, “headache” as my issue. There’s nothing like going to the ER for “headache” to make you feel completely lame. Unfortunately (fortunately?), the doctor thought I wasn’t totally crazy and suggested doing a lumbar puncture, but said I could hold off to see if conditions improved. I opted to hold off (my fear of needles trumps my hypochondria, and I’d already suffered through an IV). As my friend Vikki’s husband said, “wow, being a stay-at-home mom must really be taking a toll on her!”

Today, I’m back to 50% power, so I took the kids to the library for story time in the morning. The “professional storyteller” was very good, and told a bunch of folk stories, mostly Haitian. My limited knowledge of Haiti is largely based on Clueless, “if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haitians.”

The kids both got a free book at story hour, and George was so excited about his, he couldn’t even wait until we got to the children’s room in the library to read it.

We took it easy in the afternoon. Hopefully, I’ll be back to normal tomorrow, because a 6 and 3 12 year old aren’t the best at taking it easy. They’re very talented with Magnatiles though!