Monday, March 5, 2012

Week 10 - Driving to Valentine

I don’t know if I should call it a highlight but Thursday was the remarkable day of the week. Nora’s dad’s funeral was in Valentine so some of us made the trek up there and back in the same day. 600 miles. Before Thursday was the regular – knitting, swimming, etc. – and afterwards was recuperating. For days.

Since my house was in the path of the northern (and more enjoyable I think) route to Valentine, Mary, Peg and Allan picked me up at 6:45. I had baked blueberry muffins for the road and brought lots of knitting since I wasn’t driving. It was awhile before I could see well enough to knit but the ride there seemed to go quickly. We stopped once for gas and more snacks and ate lunch at Big John’s in Ainworth, which I’d eaten at on one of my tubing trips. The food was delicious and the break was nice. We got to Valentine ~12:30 with a half hour to spare.

The funeral was hard. The pastor cried a couple of times but the clincher was when Ted, Nora’s husband, got up to speak and couldn’t hold it together. Between holding back tears and the blazing heat in the church (I was even sitting in direct sun to top it off!), it felt endless. There was a nice PowerPoint of his life (also hard) and it was an hour and 20 minutes before we headed downstairs for cake. When we finally left, we stopped a wonderful quilt shop and got gas, hitting the road at 3:30. Our only stop was Dairy Queen in O’Neill and Mary drove like a bat out of hell. I was home by 8:15. Exhausted.

Since Thursday was the 1st, I’d met with the boys for a couple of hours on Wednesday to talk them through doing deans’ reports without me. They at least got them run but Friday was a full day of helping them tie the ones they had problems with and running the last few myself. I went to lunch with Darla and Layton at The Egg and I (breakfast for lunch) then slammed all afternoon. 5:00 couldn’t come fast enough. I headed straight home for a lazy weekend.

Other than running some errands on Saturday morning, I had no other plans for the weekend. I treated myself to BK for lunch and then the new cleaning lady came. She was very nice and agreed to take on my house so I can now go back to $40 every 2 weeks, which is less than half of what I was paying Ginger. Now to fire her. I had all day Sunday to call but spaced. Typical.

On Sunday, I got some chores done and made one of my favorite comfort food for supper – chicken a la king. But most of the day was spent knitting. Go figure. I started a new pair of mittens, using yarn from a sweater I’d torn apart for the yarn on Saturday. Have I finished my socks? No. Oh well. I just couldn’t resist. BTW, the mittens are gorgeous.

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