By mid-day yesterday nothing had happened, really, at all. So, I couldn’t bear to write a recap. So, I decided to wait until today and see if Thursday evening picked up at all. Actually, it kind of did…All day Thursday I was in the final day of a 3-day class at Steelcase’s learning center. It was the last class in a series of classes my boss asked me to complete. Really the only thing that kept me going was realizing it was the last class and soon I would be done, done, DONE!!! This class was called EXECUTE and it was all about leadership and coordinating and synergizing and leveraging and A3s and Gibson’s Grids and FMEAs and objectives and SIPOCs…can you see why I felt like I had nothing to write yesterday? Did I mention that I’m now done with not only the class but the series??? You can’t see me but right now I’m doing my own interpretation of Jeff’s signature “Vegas Dance” which includes a shimmy, some fist pumping, and a soundtrack of ya duh dun duh duh dah!
The class actually broke a little early so I had time to book it out to a shoe sale…buy one pair, get 2 pair FREE!!! Of course I felt obligated to get 3 pair of shoes…but one pair was for Julie, so I feel like I was spreading the love.
I left right at 5:00 so I could get home in time to make a picnic dinner since we were planning to head out to Fredrick Meijer Gardens for a concert.
When Jeff came home he said that the refrigerator people could deliver the new fridge that night (Yes, our fridge died the previous night… it’s never fun to reach for the fudgcicle you are craving and get a handful of mush in return…fortunately we could haul up grandma’s mini fridge from the basement so we could save important things like milk, yogurt and jello! That thing has really come in handy…you just never know when you might need the services of a mini fridge…and it’s very exciting when you remember, hey, we’ve actually GOT a mini fridge!). This was good news but also bad news since it meant we had to totally clean out the old fridge (running at about 50 degrees) so they could haul it away. In a way it was very freeing. I mean, what a wonderful excuse to get rid of the 12 bottles of salad dressing with only 2-fingers of dressing left in the bottle…GONE! The jar of pickles where only 2 pickles remain…GONE! The jar of chocolate fudge sauce with the caked-on lid and 2 spoonfuls of sauce…GONE! It was actually quite a relief. But, it did add a pretty big job to an already limited time schedule.
After totally racing around with no time to catch our breath, Jeff’s mom and dad came in to babysit Langston. He was napping in his crib, woke up, and just started screaming…as if on cue. So, then I did some running around trying to pull together milk, food, diaper change, etc. And I felt bad that we were then essentially leaving the parentals with a very unhappy baby.
Sorry mom and dad…um….we’re off….uh…have a good time!
It was a pretty sticky night, threatening rain, hot. We didn’t think there would be a big crowd to see Dar Williams and Over the Rhine. And we were right. We walked right in and got a nice seat, met Julie there, started our snacking and then, kind of randomly this woman takes the stage with a guitar and starts singing. I am sorry to say that none of us knew who she was. Was she an opening act? Someone who just saw her opportunity and wandered on stage to serenade us? What was up? After about the 5th song we decided, hey, this must actually BE Dar Williams (this was about 2 songs after Julie had said…hey wait…that’s a Dar Williams song…but, this girl doesn’t sing nearly as good as her…so, I don’t know…) Oops. It was about this time that we noticed the woman in her 40s sitting right by us in a very determined lotus position. She seemed very proud of her flexibility given the many, many, many times she felt the need to bend at the waist and pick up something (what?) in front of her. She also knew every single song that Dar Williams sang (and there were many….most what I would classify as “complaint folk”) and sang along loudly and with a lot of expression and hand motions. I am not kidding. She was also the first and loudest to laugh at anything that Dar Williams said that even resembled wit or humor….including thigh slaps, head thrown back, and then, the inevitable bend forward to bang the ground. It was pretty fascinating. And annoying. We bet that this woman followed poor Dar Williams from venue to venue, sending love notes, filling albums with news clippings and photographs…and is possibly on the receiving end of a restraining order which necessitated her present viewing location at least 250 feet from the stage.
We also became pretty fascinated by this very sketchy looking guy who was just kind of roaming around everywhere. He would kind of mosey up to the stage. Then kind of stroll around behind. Then he would head off into the crowd. He was wearing this oversized baseball cap, weighed at least 400 pounds, seemed to do a lot of sidling up to security cards, etc. Imagine our surprise when it turned out he was “Juicy” the sound engineer for Over the Rhine! Too funny.
We really liked OTR and wished that they had been the opener. Dar was just kind of a downer and that crazy woman was just too distracting. But, we only stayed for about 30 minutes of their act because it was getting damp and dark, we thought our baby might be going wild on his grandparents, and it had been a long week.
But, there really is no better place to watch a concert. So relaxing.
We got home and heard that although he had been pretty cranky for awhile, a healthy dose of Tylenol had seemed to do the trick (he finally has his appointment with the ENT on Monday) and he had played hard, taken a long walk with “Papa”, and fell immediately to sleep.
After they left and Jeff drove our cast-off groceries over to his aunt’s house (they have curby pick-up today) I was alone in the house and wandered into the nursery to pick up sleeping Langston. I rocked and whispered to him and prayed for his future and our wisdom and snuggled him until the cares of the day melted away to nothing. With many smooches and whispered “I love yous” I put him back in bed.
A good end.
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