Of Potholes and Pot Roasts

I am exhausted!  We had such a busy weekend.  My honey and I were booked solid with lots of family and friends related activities.  We had a yard sale to set-up with my mom, a friend's birthday to celebrate, a wine tasting to attend (Yeah, I know.  My non-drinking self went to a wine tasting.), Sunday dinner at my mom's house, and then the great crash from all that running around.  Although the items just listed were in the order of there scheduled appearance, events did not necessarily occur in that order...

This was the plan for Saturday: a happy couple at a wine tasting.
It didn't quite work out that way.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, I was gently nudged awake and a voice whispered into my ear.  But, it wasn't sweet nothings my honey was whispering, instead it was, "What time did you tell your mother you would be over to help out with the yard sale?"  Not exactly the wake up call that every girl hopes for on a weekend morning. 

It wasn't even seven a.m.  I was being awoken (gently, kindly, and with all the love in his heart) by my honey to ensure that I was on time to my mother's house.  Given the current state of inter-household relations, being late and angering Mom was NOT a good idea.  I completely understood his concern for my timely departure.  But, it was Saturday and I was so tired my eyes hurt.  It was my one day a week to sleep in without an alarm waking me up.  I was pouty and unhappy about having to be up, but fear of further maternal disapproval got me moving and over to Mom's house promptly at 7:30.

My honey opted to stay home, having not seen my mother since I dropped the 'moving in together' news on her and being unsure of his welcome.  Within two seconds of my arrival, though, my mother was asking where he was and why I had been unable to talk him into coming over and helping out.  So, I texted him to hustle over to the mothership's home.  I also promised her delivery of one honey in five minutes or less.  Oops, his place is fifteen minutes away.  Mine is two minutes away.  Guess she knows where he spent Friday night!  Oh well, she's going to have to get used to the idea eventually, right?  Why not start now?

He arrived just outside of my boasted five minute window, but in good spirits and very willing to do anything my mother wanted him to do.  My honey's no fool.  He would have gratefully schlepped hundreds of pounds of yard sale trinkets out of and back into the house in order to earn some goodwill from my mother.  We got the yard sale set up and Mom left the two of us outside to act as her sales team.  We did a pretty good job, too.  Over the course of four hours, my honey and I sold ninety dollars worth of junk to unsuspecting strangers and neighbors.  If you don't think that sounds like a lot, consider the fact that not a single item in my mom's yard sale cost more than one dollar. 

Yard sale completed and maternal goodwill earned, we raced off to celebrate my BFF's birthday.  She had decided that this year's birthday theme would be "Thirty-One Is The New Twenty-One"  and in this spirit, we reenacted her twenty first birthday with a trip to a local event known as "Wine In The Woods".  Now, I don't drink and my honey is more of a beer drinker, but since it was her birthday and my honey was already gaining experience as a goodwill ambassador, we paid the fee for one designated driver and one wine taster and in we went.



Yeah, it was a little crowded.  No wonder we couldn't find the friendamily!

We hadn't eaten breakfast before rushing off to yard sale with my mother, so the first thing we did once inside the "woods" was hunt down a food vendor for some barbecue.  BBQ sandwiches in hand we strolled through the crowds looking for the friendamily.  Within ten minutes, in fact before we even located my friendamily among the sea of thousands of smiling, glassy eyed faces, one of us was already hurting.  It was me, of course!  Leave it to me to be the only sober person in the park to stumble and fall because of a pothole in the dirt walking path.


My honey was walking directly in front of me.  Hundreds of people were walking directly in front of him.  Nobody else had any trouble negotiating the dirt path, but me, the SOBER girl!  The pothole was about six inches in diameter and maybe three or four inches deep, but I couldn't see it because of the thick crowd meandering along the path.  I stepped right into it and went down like a ton of bricks!  Man, this sounds familiar!  Oh, wait.  I did something similar just a few months ago when I broke my right ankle.


Luckily, this time it was my left foot and I was wearing tennis shoes, so I didn't break anything.  Thank God for the last second impulse I had to change my shoes between the yard sale and the wine tasting!  But, I couldn't stroll from tent to tent with my friends while they tasted various wines or visit the craft fair in the middle of the park because walking more than twenty feet just wasn't an option.  In short, the rest of my day was pretty much trashed after I fell.

Funnily enough, after two minutes of browbeating from my friends to leave me on the blankets in the shade and two hours of strolling around in search of a bottle of the wine he had enjoyed, my honey was also trashed.  So now I was hurting and he was feeling no pain.  My honey is a happy drunk, but even a happy drunk can be obnoxious when you're not feeling very happy yourself.  Upon returning to our home base, my honey was happily intoxicated and telling me that if he could have fallen in my place, he would have.  It was sweet the first time he said it.  By the forty or fiftieth time he said it, it wasn't sweet anymore.  It was really annoying.  I know you are reading this and cringing right now, my love.  No worries.  I still love you even when you are intoxicated and repeating yourself over and over and over again.

That's us!  He's had a little too much wine
and I haven't had quite enough pain medication.

Eventually, it was time for the merriment and imbibing to stop.  This is where the real trouble began.  The parking lot and my car were a good half mile from the wine tasting pavillions.  I was in no shape to walk that far.  My honey was in no shape to aid me in walking that far, though he certainly tried.  We started out walking arm in arm, but as we began going downhill towards the parking lot, gravity seemed to speed up my honey's steps til he was pulling me along.  Afraid he was going to pull me forward and cause another fall, I let go of his arm and started walking unaided.  We caught a very brief ride with the handicapped shuttle (which stopped twenty yards short of the parking lot, WTF?!) and then I bit my lip and dug my fingernails into my palms as I walked the last five hundred yards to the car unassisted.  I drove us home (Again, thank goodness it was my left foot and not my right!), got him dinner, and then watched him pass out on the couch before eating a single bite. 

Thankfully, this brought Saturday to a close.

"My girlfriend must really love me because when I woke up the fan was turned on and pointed in my direction." 
No, he didn't say that when he woke up, but he should have.

Sunday started with my honey telling me that the room was spinning and his head hurt.  Shocker!  I wasn't surprised after all that wine.  I got him some Advil and a cup of water before getting ready for church.  I drove over to my mother's house to pick her up for church and she was bubbling over with excitement about how much stuff she had gotten rid of and how much money we had made at the yard sale the day before.   She inspected my foot and proclaimed nothing was broken, though Doctor Mom quickly announced that I was going to have the mother of all bruises in a day or two.  She was right!  My foot is black and blue now.

Now for the really good news:  We must have impressed Mom with our yard sale efforts because she announced after church that I should go home and get my honey because she had made a pot roast for Sunday dinner.  Pot roast is one of my all-time favorite Mom meals.  If she's making my favorites again, that can only be a good sign for her getting over her earlier displeasure with us.  Don't you agree?!?!  What?  Well, who asked you, anyway?  Oh wait, I did.

Ben Franklin has been famously misquoted as saying that "beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy".
Well, for me, pot roast is proof that my Mom loves me and wants me to be happy.