Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Weekend update

I've just come from my weekly biblestudygroupthatdoesn't studythebiblesomuchasread"religious"books-group and I have gotten the kids to bed and Lynda won't be off her flight from Raleigh, North Carolina and back in the house until midnight and I should be folding laundry while watch Jennifer Garner be (maybe?) the only good thing about "Catch and Release" . . . but instead of all that, I've got some blogging to do.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has be out in theaters for almost an entire day. Still haven't seen it.

It's been an up and down several days here in Burb's life. This past weekend Lynda and I were focused on our anniversary date (last Sunday, July 8th, our 12th year of happily ever after). It's funny. Since last week was so broken up by the fourth of July hitting on Wednesday, everything seemed disjointed, which contributed to my being able to obsess about getting to Sunday. I was thinking about it constantly and counting the time in my head until we could say good bye to the kids and the baby sitter and have some couple time to have a nice dinner and see a movie all by ourselves.

Normally when I build things up in my mind like this, it never works out and disappointment occurs. But, this ended up turning out happily . . . though there were some potential problems.

We had arranged for a baby sitter to come by at 3:30 on Sunday so we could go to a late afternoon movie (Knocked Up . . . finally!) and then get some dinner. Everything looked good, but as we were heading to church that morning, Lynda remembered that she had committed to having a meeting after church about next year's Sunday School plans. So, okay . . . I would take the girls to get some lunch and we come back and get her when the meeting was finished.

Right after church was over and we were heading to the kitchen to get some coffee and snacks for the kids, I started feeling queasy to my stomach and a bit light-headed. I wondered what it was, but just got a bit of fruit, skipped the coffee and figured it would go away. Well, it didn't. After the kids were done with their snack, we got in the car and headed out for lunch. But I realized that since church (during the summer) begins as 9:30 rather than 10:30, it was barely past 10:30 and McDonalds wouldn't be serving lunch yet. So, I decided to take advantage of the time and swing by the library to return a book (Everything is Illuminated) that I had finished reading.

To keep the kids occupied during the drive between church (New Albany) and the library (Westerville), I turned on a Disney CD. The usual stuff played through my ears without much thought until the disk spun up a song from Toy Story 2, "When She Loved Me." This is a very pretty song, sung by Sarah McLachlan, telling the story of a girls toy that is loved and then left behind when the girls grows up and leaves toys behind. I'm telling you, McLachlan sings it beautifully. (You can hear a brief listen to the song at this site, just scroll down to the track listings and click on your link for #2.)

For whatever reason, as I listened to the song, I thought that this song would be a nice one to play someday at Lynda's memorial service. I imagined it playing while lots of pretty pictures of Lynda scrolled by on a laptop or something. The sentiment and beauty of the song struck me. And then I started listening to it more and thinking about Sarah and Grace growing older and leaving their childhoods behind a little more . . . and then I heard Sarah singing along in the back seat while the song played on. Well, I started to cry right there in the car as I drove. It was just a very emotional moment completely out of left field for no real reason at all, just my imagination and emotions bumping together all at once. Odd and yet, I treasured the entire experience.

By the time the library run was over, we made it McDonalds and all sentiment was forgotten in the face of mass produced beef patties and salty fries. But I still wasn't feel very good. My stomach was still feeling unsettled and I was having a slight cold sweat. So the girls had Happy Meals (Hello Kitty toys!) and I had water and a simple Mickey-D's cheeseburger. Once this fabulous lunch was done we got back in the car and returned to church to get Lynda. Her meeting wasn't completely finished yet, but it got done quick enough and we got home. Lynda told me to go upstairs and lay down, which I did--because I wasn't going to miss out date!

By the time the baby sitter got there, all was pretty good and I felt well enough to go out. We enjoyed Knocked Up, but I will say that there were moments of language-inducing cringing. I'm not a prude and I'm not party of the language police, but I did find some of the cursing a bit too gratuitous. I suspect that such language is MUCH more true-to-life that even I am willing to allow, but there it is. My only other concern is that many of my friends had recommended that I see the movie and I even heard that they thought of me when they were done watching it. But, I must be mistaken since neither male lead is particularly like me (are they?), so I don't know why I came up in particular. It's probably just an "I-had-to-have-been-there type moment.

After the movie we tried out a new smallish Mexican restaurant in town that we both enjoyed. (Proof enough that whatever was wrong with me, it wasn't my stomach.)

So, all in all, a good anniversary date.

But on Monday, I didn't feel well at all. It wasn't my stomach, but my muscles and head that ached all over. My energy was very low also. Basically, I felt like I had a mild case of the flu. I stayed home from work and slept during the morning and spent the rest of the day watching Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, and Man vs. Wild on The Discovery Channel (which is rapidly becoming my go-to summer channel for TV programming). Lynda did get me to go to the doctor Monday afternoon, but all he suggested was that I might have picked up a virus while hanging out in the public pool with the family on Saturday. It seemed the best solution, so I tried to rest the rest of the day.

Yesterday I did go to work but I felt a bit weak most of the time and my leg muscles still felt achy. But today, I am happy to say I am back to normal. Whatever it was, it came and went quickly and didn't prevent any important stuff (date) from being missed. All that was missed (work) wasn't missed by me at all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice story, Burb. If I was one of the ones who thought of you in relation to Knocked Up, it was only for the following reasons:
1. You are the only other parent in the Four Square
2. There is the "been there" element that you mentioned
3. The final song "That's my daughter in the water" totally reminded me of you! How could it not?

You are definitely not like those other dads.

And I agree with you about some of the vulgarity, even though I'm happily vulgar much of the time. And you had just come from church, so....

Lulu

Sven Golly said...

Based on the link, I have to infer that your weekly biblestudygroupthatdoesn't studythebiblesomuchasread"religious"books-group is, in fact, happy hour. Come clean, man.