It seems that most weekends we are fairly busy with different activities. This is mostly because every Wednesday or Thursday I ask Arthur what he wants to do for the weekend and then I proceed to tell him what I'm planning for us to do. After all, the weekend is when most of our adventures happen. However we had one weekend lately that took us several days to recover from-- Monday morning was a very needed rest break.
We headed out to my parents' house for the weekend. The purpose of the trip was for a work weekend. My parents have been doing some updates on my grandmother's farm that they recently purchased. My dad grew up in the house and the farm has been in the family for close to a century. We agreed to come out and help with some projects and ended up with a crew of my younger brother and his wife, two of our cousins, and our aunt.
Of course before all this work we had to roll out of bed early to make a stop at the library book sale. If there is a guilty pleasure we love to indulge in it is a good library book sale. Arthur is usually the one that gets carried away with purchases like Bullfinch's Greek Mythology or How to Build a Telescope. He refrained and only made 2 purchases. One was a high school science textbook from 1915. One page had a picture of the Wright brothers' first plane with the caption-- "This is an example of the latest in aviation." Arthur was pretty excited with this find.
We then headed to work. The gals worked on painting a bedroom, some window trim, and some siding. We chatted about life. The guys worked on fixing a door, chopping down some trees, making some benches for the fire pit. They discussed and debated religion, politics, etc. Arthur also got the pleasure of hauling two lengths of irrigation pipe across a field. My father always tells us stories of when he had to move irrigation pipe twice a day, carrying it over their heads with mud dripping down their arms, going uphill both ways, etc. (always wondered how the field could go uphill at all since it was flood irrigation.) Recently Arthur asked me if my family had pressured me into marrying a big, strong, strapping young man. After all, my family has greatly benefited from Arthur's muscles in recent months as he has been called on to move help family members move. He is holding out hope that sometime soon he will have my "dowry" paid off in sweat equity. I think hauling the irrigation pipes helped. Several projects got checked off the list. While there was a lot of work it was fun doing the projects together.
Editor's Note: Seeing as my in-laws will probably read this, I (Arthur) believe it in the best interest of continued positive familial relations to note that all of the previous paragraph was stated in jest, and that if Jacob had to work for seven years to make Rachel his wife, I realize completely that I am getting one heck of a discount.
There were also lots of opportunities to reminisce. We looked at the hand painted Japanese dishes my grandpa sent my grandma while he was in Tokyo during the Korean War. Later on as we looking through the sewing room my aunt showed us a box of embroider dish towels, handkerchiefs, dollies, etc. Included was a note that my grandmother wrote 25 years ago-- "I thought about throwing these things out but thought you all might enjoy looking through them some time." Several of the items were gifts when my grandma taught kindergarten for several years or that my great-grandmother handed down. I also came across some scraps of fabric left over from the baby quilt Grandma made me. Another find was a few other sewing projects my grandma started over the years that need finishing-- a quilt or two that needs binding, some needlework pillows that need finishing. These projects were split up among the womenfolk to finish. My mom and I joked later that she better not leave me a handful of sewing work that I feel obligated to finish.
While I was strolling down memory lane with the gals, Arthur was watching Game 7 of the Spurs-Clipper series. I think he was grateful for being able to watch the game and it came down to the final few seconds. He wasn't much of a happy camper the rest of the evening. The next morning we jumped out of bed even earlier since we needed to get our hike in for the weekend. We decided we would walk from my parents home to my grandma's house-- a distance of just of 8 miles-- before church. The road we took between point A and point B leaves a little to be desired and it is even questionable what vehicles could traverse it. The road crosses a section of the county that is sand hills, small hills (Arthur informs me that they don't even qualify as hills but just mounds) of thick sand. This made walking a little more challenging. It was a beautiful morning and we enjoyed the adventure and scenery and even made it to church with five minutes to spare. After church we went out to eat at Wheatland Cafe. It is a small cafe only open on the weekends in a town with a population of 100. Delicious fried chicken and all the fixings plus a good opportunity to catch up with everyone else from across the county over Sunday dinner. We then had to get on the road. Soon Arthur was rendered incapacitated for driving due to a carbohydrate induced coma from the mashed potatoes and gravy. I took the wheel and enjoyed the company of one of my favorite radio shows-- The Prairie Home Companion. Our next stop on the whirlwind weekend was the Salina Symphony Concert. One of my friends plays the violin in the symphony and let us have her free tickets so we got a good dose of culture at the concert. Next we scurried on to Bible study and finally made it home about 8:30pm, completely tuckered out.
On Sunday night we joked that we needed to go to work Monday to rest up from the weekend. We didn't know of the "adventure" that Monday would hold either. At about 7am on Monday I go to grab my keys to head for work and realize that they aren't there. Suddenly I remember that I had put them in the console of Arthur's car this weekend since my purse was buried under our backpacks and my keys along with the spare key on Arthur's key chain are all on their way to Manhattan with my husband. I called him, somewhat frantically, and was never so relieved when he actually answered his phone since he has a habit of turning it off and forgetting to turn it back on. My husband graciously turn around and drove 20 minutes back to bring the keys home. I made it to work with about 30 seconds to spare and he was almost on time too. That evening I am driving home and Arthur calls to inquire about if I am going to get home safely. He informs me that he is slightly stranded in a parking lot due to flash flooding and can't get out of town for awhile. Finally his car pulls up in the driveway and that evening we hit the sack and were easily lulled to sleep by the rain and thunderstorm passing through the area. Omnia Vincit Amor.
No comments:
Post a Comment