Stop the world!  I want to get off.

I heard that line from somewhere.  I don’t know if it was from a play or a song.  But it seems appropriate some days.  Like the day years ago when I called my mother and asked if I could resign from being an adult.

She said I couldn’t.

The last two weekends I had to make a 5 hour trip (one way).  The first was for my niece’s graduation.  The second was for some mandatory training.  Both times I stayed at my sister’s home.

My sister (as I mentioned in a previous blog) is a Red Neck. 

I forget that until I’m in the midst of experiencing it … again.  I don’t know why it surprises me; yet it always does.

My sister and I are only 3 ½ years apart.  I am the elder (howbeit I LOOK younger ha ha).  How is it that we two sister, raised by the same parents in the same home are so DIFFERENT?! 

The graduation open house parties I attend are the nice, polite ones.  People put the graduation card in the wicker basket by the door and accept a pretty paper cup of punch.  We greet the graduate who politely greets us and thanks us for coming.  There are no surprising behaviors (we’ll ignore the little boy over in the bushes that just learned that he can “go” outside) and there is fun, animated, interesting conversations with some overtones of laughter.  We arrive at the correct time and leave before we overstay our welcome – rarely more than two hours (unless you volunteered to help clean up).

I don’t know why I expected the same from my niece.  They had an all-out Par-Tay.  I have no idea how many came, they just kept coming, and I think some stayed over night.  There was a bonfire and lots of food, and lots of booze.  I would forget that glasses just sitting around weren’t innocently holding punch and would dive at Red as he would pick up an unattended glass.  There was some questionable talk – and some of it must have been very crude – since I didn’t understand what was said, which only means I didn’t get it (I would tuck it in my mind to remember to ask Sir later if he understood it). 

My darling husband couldn’t come because of work.  I wish he had come.  Not only would I have had him to be with – but I would have stayed in a motel room.  He told me that I should anyway.  But my sis-in-law said that I could stay in her camper; she and my brother would sleep in his luxury semi.  Red was to sleep with me.  He couldn’t.  We stayed in the camper in the back of the house – but even though the party was in the front some of it drifted back.  Mostly kids yelling in the back in the dark.  So Red would doze off and then wake.  I got cold and got under the covers only to discover that my s-i-l doesn’t have top sheets and the only covering was an old bedspread.  In the early morning my 4 yr old neice woke up and wanted to be with her mom.  So I took her the long walk down the driveway to the semi.  On my way back, I thought I’d go in the house and crash on the couch for a bit.  No way.  There were kids laying every where:  on all the couches, on the floor, across the huge ottoman.  There was simply no place to sit.  I went back to the camper and got Red.  My sister saw me out her bedroom window and asked what I was doing.  I said, “I’m going to Perkins for coffee and a warm place to sit.”  She called me about an hour later and said she kicked some kids out and I could come back now.  Later that day, after a mostly sleepless night, I took my two children and drove the 5 long hours home. 

The only comfortable thing that night was the thought that I saved $65 on a motel room.  It was a small comfort.  Sir said “I told you to take the motel.”

He was right.

Again.

It can get annoying to be married to a guy that’s right all the time.  However, I should learn and just listen to him.

Did I? No.

The next weekend for my workshop – I stayed at my sisters again.

But that’s another blog….