three days

From one end to the other, Memorial Day Weekend was a pretty righteous one. We did family things, we did friend things, we did some normal things, we did some unusual things.

the normal things

// We started the weekend with an earlyish lunch at our fave Mexican spot, where Sean, Jordan, Weston and I scored some steak burrito/plethora of chips and little else/tureen of refrieds/chicken soft taco, respectively.

// Sean consumed many beers while building from scratch and installing a computer at my parents' place, to replace the one he previously made that lasted seven years (quite the life span). And the new computer works fabulously! How he can booze and build like that is pretty beyond my capacity to comprehend. I have a margarita and I start veering off pathways and into bushes.

// We went to the beach Sunday AND Monday. (Well, Monday's not the norm, but beach as much as possible is the norm.) Jordan played alternately with cousins and all by her lonesome. Sometimes we just look down to the shoreline and she's doing weird karate-esque moves on the waves and clearly sing/shouting some fabricated tune or another. Plays well with others (mostly), but decidedly an introvert, that one. Weston, he just ate sand and squinted into the sun a lot and was mainly content to study Mum Mum crackers before ingesting them whole.

the unusual things

// Saturday night, Sean and I went on this epic date.

It was crazy, really. We left the kids with my parents around 4:30 and met a couple friends for drinks at this pub type place in the "old" part of town. Great vibes, friendly service (the bartender bought us a round!!) Our friends could only stay for a bit and took off to go pick up their babe. Sean and I headed in from the patio area and decided to play a game of pool.

the Paul Newman to my Minnesota Fats

I haven't played in, oh, ten years. Since I first met Sean, actually. Totes held my own though. The second game, there were only three of my balls left on the table, so basically I won.

Around 8, the bar started Karaoke Night. We are so not those people. But we got a round and grabbed a chair to watch people who were those people. A guy named Lester sang Jethro Tull and Margaritaville while his wife cheered him on, and eventually Sean got curious enough (...liquored enough...) to check out the song list. He rattled off an Eric Church song while I played supporting vocals from the sidelines, and we sat down to enjoy our drinks and applaud the string of valiant vocalists.

I couldn't help it though. On my way back from the bathroom, I detoured over to the DJ and asked if he had Idina Menzel's Let It Go. He did and I was feeling diabolical I guess because I signed him up.

Sean dedicated the song "For my daughter Jordan," and off he went. IT WAS TERRIBLE. I thought Sean knew the song's cadence from hearing it so many times but he was like a stanza behind and there I was dying laughing. The crowd was completely cheering him on, much like Cameron Diaz in My Best Friend's Wedding. Eventually I did step in to get him on track, but I refused to sing into the mic. I think the moral of the story is I'm the meanest wife. But the other moral is we had an awesome time.

PS Sean signed me up for Boston's More Than a Feeling and I made him duck out with me before they called me. See: meanest wife. (But also - that is the HARDEST song to sing in all of history. My singing voice? Like the goat in that Taylor Swift vid.)

// The beach was strikingly glorious TWO days in a row. And there was zero - talking, zilch - traffic on either days, when Sean and I suspected Memorial Hell. Instead we enjoyed this

 stop

it

 now

cuteness

with no money spent (except gas because it's pretty much ouch these days) and no aggravation felt. Essentially the most celestial sequence of days one could ever ask for. And we all pretty much felt like

and

on Monday evening.

The End.

Oh you know what, Sean made an excellent point over the weekend. I had never fully appreciated the gravity of Memorial Day, really, until this year. I said something off-the-cuff about the Day as juxtaposed to the 4th of July. How it's always more celebrated, or something. And Sean said, "Yeah, but it shouldn't be. Memorial Day is a day to honor all veterans in all wars in American history." That's a lot of wars and a lot of lives. So, I'm three days late in saying this here, and it's supremely inadequate besides, but Thank You, American Soldiers. To those who have fought and to those still fighting for this country.