The tiniest ballerina

As is often the case these days, my niece was at my parents' house when I called last week. At some point during our conversation, my mother or father will inevitably ask her if she wants to talk to "Auntie Shan."

(She calls me Auntie Shan. Not "Shannon" or "Aunt Shannon." "Auntie Shan." HOW CUTE IS THAT?)

And because she is three and has a very short attention span, she will grab the phone and we'll have a very short and mostly one-sided conversation wherein she tells me what she's eating and other three-year-old conversation topics until she's tired of me and she says, "OK, thanks for calling Auntie Shan, bye bye!" and hangs up on me, usually in mid-sentence.

I adore her. :)

The news du jour during our most recent call? "I start dancing, Auntie Shan!" And this time she didn't mean in my parents' kitchen.



Seems our little ball of energy is channeling her inner fire into a ballet class for tiny wee ones at the local health club.

Since she is three and going through the normal orneriness that goes along with that age, it was a toss-up: She'd either be super into it, or she'd be that kid in the corner jumping off a pile of mats while the teacher is leading the rest of the class in a round of plies.

Fortunately, she chose the former.




(They have to wear special outfits and shoes, and wear their hair in buns. Can you even stand the cute?)

No word yet on whether or not my brother is becoming a "Dance Mom." I'm betting it's only a matter of time.

Sometimes heroes are reckless

I am a daddy’s girl.

I could deny it, but honestly’? There’s no point. My mama’s my best friend; my dad’s my hero. This is the way of the world.

We grew up in the country, and Dad is a real DIY kind of guy – I really can’t remember a time when we actually HIRED someone to fix or build anything we needed around the house. So, when an especially hilly part of the property needed to be leveled out so grass would grow, there was no “Let’s hire a team of people who are trained to use earth-moving equipment. Dad came home one afternoon with a Bobcat on the back of a trailer, and that was that.

It's like the Smart Car of bulldozers.

I was about 8 years old, playing in the yard, watching my father happily push dirt around in this tiny bulldozer while Mom and my baby brother chilled in the house. I watched him coax the thick tires up the bumpy hill, chopping up sod and leaving dark brown earth in his wake.

Then, I heard the sound of the engine change from a low growl to a higher-pitched whine. I looked up from my “Barbie Climbs a Tree” adventure to see the Bobcat wobble, then lean, then completely tip over, with my beloved daddy trapped inside.

He landed with a crash, and I could hear nothing but the engine whining and the sound of screaming – the latter of which was coming from me.

I was absolutely positive my dad was dead.

I ran, screaming and crying, toward the house, apparently to inform my unsuspecting mother that she was now husbandless. She emerged, my baby brother on her hip, blinking and confused, as I explained that the Bobcat had crushed Daddy and OMG WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DOOOOOOOOOOOO??!!!

And…that’s where my memory of this incident abruptly ends. I’m assuming this is because my mother decided I was too hysterical to be of much use and sent me inside to recuperate while she helped my very-much-still-alive (albeit bruised) father out of the toppled machine.

What I’ll never forget, though, is that feeling of watching him tip over and the absolute certainty that that was the end of him.

And, unfortunately, I’ve had that feeling more than a few times since then.

Four times within the next 10 years, my father was involved in car accidents that, by all rights, should have killed or at least maimed him. Each time, he managed to walk away with little more than a few scratches and the occasional broken rib.

(I’m realizing that this kind of makes it sound like he’s a crazy drunk driver, or at the very least a careless one. While I know the former isn’t true, the jury’s still out on the latter – when the reasons progressed from “I fell asleep” to “A flock of geese flew in front of my windshield! No, really!” we all became a bit suspicious.)

The thought of losing him was so profoundly devastating that each time, I would have nightmares for weeks that he was suffering horrible deaths, being ripped out of my arms, crying out in my sleep until he came into my room and proved to me he was still alive.

In 2001, just a month after 9/11, he had open-heart surgery. Afterward, in his hospital room, I watched him sleeping, hooked up to 500,000 tubes and machines and monitors, and marveled at how frail he suddenly seemed.

I hated that thought. He’d survived crash after horrific crash, kidney stone surgery that nearly ripped him in half, and a quadruple-bypass was going to knock this man down?

I should have known better.

Today, at 64, he’s just as alive and vibrant as he ever was. Yes, he complains about his back a little bit more than he did 25 years ago. But he’ll still golf 18 holes, joke around with his family and carry my niece proudly through a room to show her off. He still offers advice and gives perhaps the best hugs EVER.

And he still tells me when my attitude needs adjusting. (That still kind of annoys me, Dad.)

The long and the short of it? Today, my dad is still as much of a hero to me as he was when I was a kid. He’s still one of the only people whose opinion actually matters to me. Hearing him say “Good job” or “I’m proud of you”? Still some of my finest moments in life, ever.

Dad, I know I told you about 100 times over the weekend, but allow me to say again in this public forum: I love you. You are the best dad a girl could ask for. And so many of the wonderful things in my life today started with you and the hero you’ve always been to me.

Happy Father’s Day.

And please be careful. :)

On his birthday: 20 Reasons My Dad is the Coolest

Oh, it's a very special day today, friends.

My beloved Dad turns 64 today.

64!

My mother is my best friend, but I have always and will always be a daddy's girl. Always. College speech class, time to give a speech about your hero? Boom, Dad. No thought required.

I've learned so much from him, even when, in my teenage angst, I just wanted to block out the sound of his voice. (And, oh please dear Lord, please never let me hear the words "attitude adjustment" ever again!)

:)

It's a Thursday. We're both working, and I can't be with him on his special day. So instead, today I give you:

20 Reasons My Dad is the Coolest
By Written Permission

1. His laugh. When he laughs, REALLY laughs, it's an amazing belly laugh that makes him squint his eyes up tightly and throw his head back. I love making him laugh.
2. His love for music. He's a fantastic singer (he's been part of a quartet for the past 20-odd years called "The Final Four," so named because they were asked to sing at so many funerals) and always sang to us. In fact, he sang ALL the time. In the mornings, getting ready for work. In the kitchen fixing himself a snack. In the bathroom doing...who knows what. Sometimes he'll break into song in the middle of a conversation. It's just part of his charm. :)
3. His dimples. I just discovered that he had them. He's been my dad for 33 years -- how I have not noticed this before? I blame the beard. But they're adorable.
4. His determination to make me into an athlete. Growing up, he took me golfing, bowling, to the batting cages -- you name it -- and bought me a volleyball for my 14th birthday. I was hopelessly uncoordinated and WAY too stubborn to take any of his coaching, but he kept encouraging me, spending lots of quality father-daughter time in the process. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't a little bit sad when I quit sports (for which I have ZERO talent -- sorry, Dad) for good in 9th grade, but he came to every concert, gave me roses before every play and always told me how proud he was. That's a good dad.
5. His popularity. He was once voted "Favorite Person" in a write-in vote in the county where we lived. (He hates hearing this part, but just between you and me, he beat out "God" and "Jesus" in the polls.)
6. His terms of endearment. I'm 33, and he still calls me "baby." How nice is that?
   
   
   
   
7. His ambition. My father is an incredible businessman who's built a pharmacy chain from the ground up. He's never afraid to ask for help and never afraid to go it alone when the situation called for it. And because he's who he is, he's learned from his failures and come out successful in the end. Very inspiring.
   
8. His generosity. Ask anyone who knows him: My dad is a helper. And while he's been a helper his entire life, now that he's semi-retired, he's kicked it up a notch, spending multiple weeks each year helping a village in Honduras build churches, schools, houses -- whatever they need. He gives his time, his money, his advice -- all freely and gladly. It's the trait of his I most want to emulate in my own life.
9. His ability to "watch" sports while "resting his eyes." Sorry, Dad, but no one believes this.
10. His better-than-average art skills. This may come as a shock to many people who know him, but he's actually pretty good with a pencil. When I was in fourth grade he illustrated a (completely nonsensical) "book" I had written since my own drawings resembled those of a psychotic prisoner.
11. His ability to know everyone, everywhere. Anywhere we go -- in state, out of state, places he's never been in his entire life -- my dad will find someone he knows. Or maybe everyone just feels like they know him because he's such a friendly guy. Either way, the man knows no stranger, and that's a heck of a positive way to live.
12. His love of being our Dad. I'm sure my brother would agree: Our dad loves us with a devotion and loyalty that, while it chafed sometimes when we were younger, is pretty incredible. Our parents were never those parents who defended us no matter what we did -- they made sure we faced every consequence head-on. But they were always there to hug us and tell us they still loved us when it was over. And now when we're adults and going through a hard time? Still RIGHT there.
    
13. His love of being a Papa. You will never see that man's eyes light up quite the way they do when my niece walks into the room and says "Papa!" He could eat her for breakfast, lunch and dinner -- he loves being a Papa that much.
    
    
    
14. His love for my mom. One year, just before Christmas, Mom was at work and Dad asked my brother and me to help him wrap her gifts. To this day I don't know what prompted it, but he said, "I love you kids so much -- you'll just never know how much I love you. And your mom...I love her most of all." At the time (I was about 12), I was silently kind of aghast. How could my dad love my mom MORE than me?! It was like telling me he had a favorite child -- betrayal! As I became a less self-centered adult (hopefully) and got married myself...I finally got how amazing that kind of love really is. And what a great example for his kids. I've never forgotten it.
15. His cooking. My father, hands-down, makes the best scrambled eggs and grits in the entire world. I'm salivating right now just thinking about it. He's pretty good on the grill, too. And he makes a mean bowl of cereal. :)
16. His nine lives. In 10 years' time, he totaled four cars and always emerged virtually unscathed (OK, maybe with a few broken ribs). And they were always the most bizarre stories. ("A flock of birds flew in front of my windshield! No, really!") If you could see pictures of the cars, you'd swear he has a guardian angel. I have no doubt. Drive more carefully, Dad!!
17. His inability to act his age. Christmas this year found us all at a waterpark, and my then-63-year-old father was right in the mix, as always. Running around, scaling and then throwing himself down stories-high water slides and splashing and playing with his granddaughter.
18. His ambiguous ethnicity. Whenever we'd go on vacation, people would start speaking to my father in foreign languages. Spanish. Italian. Middle Eastern languages I've never heard of. Even Chinese (although I think that's a bit of a stretch). And each time he was forced to say, with an apologetic grin, "Umm...I'm sorry -- I have no idea what you're saying." With his black hair and dark skin, he looks as though he might come from almost any ethnic background except his actual heritage (German/Swiss), and it is endlessly confusing to strangers who JUST want to talk to someone from the motherland.
19. His willingness to try new things. I'm certain if I told him my new favorite food was peanut butter and pickle sandwiches dipped in barbecue sauce, he'd at least try a bite. He never wants to miss out on new experiences, and I think that's pretty amazing.
20. His ability to always be himself. One thing's for sure with my dad: He'll always tell you what he thinks, and he isn't afraid to show what he's feeling. When my great-grandmother died 20 years ago, we sang her favorite hymn at her funeral, and my dad couldn't quite make it the whole way through. He put his arm around me and used his other hand to wipe away tears, but he made no effort to hide them. His beloved grandmother had died, and he was going to miss her, and my big, strong dad was going to show it. In that moment and ever since, I've known in my heart that that's what makes a real man.
    

Oh, Dad. There are so many more than 20 reasons why you're the coolest. Like the way you always have a book (and now a kindle) in your hand, and pretty much single-handedly fostered my lifelong love of reading. Or all the times you did ridiculous dances in the kitchen or farted at the dinner table (sorry, Mom) just to make your children laugh. Or the story of how you threw the hairbrush down the well when you were little.

There are just too many reasons to count.

So on your birthday, let me just say, from daughter to father: I love you. You really are the coolest, bestest, most fabulous-est father a girl could ask for. Thanks for being my dad. :)

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Christmas, Part 2

After the waterpark extravaganza, we were (OK, maybe just I was) in need of some quiet, traditional Christmas togetherness.

And on New Year's Day, I got it.

We ate enchiladas (seriously, NO MORE HAM, please, EVER), opened gifts, bowled on the Wii my dad bought for himself (...) and just had laid-back, fabulous family time. And no one was in a bathing suit. :)

******************************

The Christmas crew, preparing to be whupped by the Wii Bowling queen, aka me.
(It's true. I am inexplicably awesome at fake bowling.)

My brother. The very focused, serious clown.

The niece.
While I was trying to get her to show off the scarf I knitted her,
she was apparently possessed by Chuckie. Or she ate too much candy.

Mmrph? Picture?
Hugging her amazing handmade doll from Couple More Hours!
She refused to put it down all afternoon -- HUGE hit.

Oh, this girl. She does love an audience.
This face killed me.

Christmas, Part 1: Waterpark! Family! Christmas!

Since T and I have been together, we've had a few Christmas traditions with my side of the family:

1. The weekend before Christmas, either Friday or Saturday, T and I spend the day with my parents and my brother (and now his wife and daughter), exchanging gifts and eating nothing but appetizers. It's both low-key and lovely.


2. The following day, we drive up that way again to celebrate with my extended family: Grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins and now the cousins' gaggle of children. Big dinner, presents, games and talking afterward, a fire in the fireplace. Chaotic, millions of kids underfoot -- but lovely.

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, my mom called us at home. T answered, then quickly brought the phone to me on speaker.

"Dad and I were thinking: This year, instead of getting together with the whole extended family at our house, we would take everyone to an indoor water park!"

Silence. A moment passed. Neither Tommy nor I said a word, but we both looked at each other with our noses wrinkled. Um. What?

Doing our best to be supportive, we said, "O...K." And we found someone to stay with the dogs so we could spend an entire day celebrating Christmas...at a water park.

Now, before you start in with your "Ooh, water park! I would LOVE to do that with my family for the holidays!! Why the wrinkled noses?" let me say: I hear you. I know you water park enthusiasts are out there. We are just not part of your ranks. We are not water park people in the BEST of circumstances, and now we're going to celebrate CHRISTMAS there? In our bathing suits?!

Ahem.

The weekend before Christmas, T and I left the dogs in the capable hands of our neighbor and schlepped the hour and a half to Huron, Ohio. Which is, frankly, a completely unlikely place to have a water park, I think. And an entirely unlikely place to find the biggest water park I have ever seen in my entire life. As we rounded the corner into the Kalahari complex, our jaws dropped and the only word we said for five minutes was "...whoa."

"Huge" doesn't even begin to describe it. "Monstrosity" is getting a little bit closer. "Seven football stadiums stacked end to end" is probably more like it.

We managed (barely) to navigate through the enormous complex to our hotel and found the rest of the fam in one of three humongous suites my parents had rented for the night. (This was their Christmas gift to everyone.) Again: Insanely huge. And there sat my grandma, in her best Christmas sweater, surrounded by all the Christmas candy and popcorn balls she'd made for the occasion. In that moment, I found all of these things extremely comforting -- a little shot of something familiar in this anything-but environment.

Everyone started to arrive, and as usual, things...didn't get loud. See, half of my extended family is deaf. But in place of the usual din of a family gathering, we have even more hugging, signing and animated storytelling than your average clan. It all balances out.

And kids. Holy goodness and light, did we have kids. In addition to my niece, my aunt and uncle have four, my cousin S has three (including a be-dimpled six-month-old cherub named Gavin) and my cousin J has SIX, five of whom were present and roaming around everywhere, already trying to escape to the henceforth-forbidden balcony.

In the confusion J's second-youngest, Jaylen, ran to each person in the room and excitedly told them (in words and in sign language) that there was a BABY in the room, did everyone know this?! She immediately appointed herself guardian of young Gavin:



As said kids were starting to get antsy -- I mean, we're at a water park; let's get this swimming train out of the station! -- my dad disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with a huge box in tow, practically skipping with delight.

"As everyone can see, this place is really big," he understatement-ed as my aunt translated. "So I got us all a little something to help us find each other in this giant mix of people."




Oh, yes we did.

(As my brother so lovingly put it in a text he sent me surreptitiously: "OMG. We are those people I used to throw things at.")

So, yes. We all trekked, as one large, bright-red, frolicking group, down to the indoor water park. It was not at all embarrassing. (People seemed to like our shirts, actually.)

The indoor water park? One enormous room, about 90 degrees, humid and full of wet people. It did not smell...good. T had decided not to swim (party pooper!), but we didn't want to leave the herd, so we hung out in the middle of the melee.

"You're not swimming?" one of my cousins asked. When I responded in the negative, she handed me a frightened-looking one-year-old I had just met for the first time 10 minutes prior. "Here, can you hold Jazella while we swim?" she asked, ignoring my panicked look. Before I could protest, she had rocketed across the room to stand in line for a three-story-high water slide, and I was left with a terrified spider monkey clinging to my neck.

And so went the afternoon. Random confused children were assigned to me so their parents could go have fun. I love the little'uns, but...this was not what I'd signed up for.

At last, the parents came to retrieve their young, and my niece arrived, ready to take on the Lazy River with her Aunt Shan. Hooray! Something I actually wanted to do! :)

T and I eventually escaped the asylum and headed back to the sanctuary of the main suite, where we had a lovely (non-bathing-suited) time talking to my aunt and grandparents and putting a hurt on the Christmas candy.

Around 7, everyone returned. Pizza was ordered and eaten, gifts were distributed and all of a sudden, just like that, here it was: The Christmas I'd been mourning all day. Everyone in one room, talking and laughing and signing, eating and playing, hugging and napping.

And it was lovely.

Poor, little, sad, homemade clown

My mother has a lot of amazing qualities.

She has the endless compassion and gentle touch that make her an amazing nurse; she gives the most FABulous hugs; and she can make me laugh until I cry like no one else on earth.

What she is most decidedly not, however, is a crafter and a seamstress. And, coupled with the fact that she and my father weren't super-fans of Halloween in the first place...

...when it came time to dress up for Halloween, I was pretty much on my own.

Which is how I ended up looking like this:

Believe it or not, this actually took some coordination. In Sunday School the week before, my best friend, P, and I discovered we were wearing the same purple dress. One of us said something like, "Hey, what if we both wore them on Halloween and went as...two...girls...wearing the same dress?"

Throw in some horrendous blue eyeshadow circa 1984 and some purple spray-on hair coloring we found at the grocery store, and we were in business.

(Believe it or not -- and I certainly can't -- we actually won second prize in our elementary school's costume contest that year. I think the official name of this costume was "Twin Dolls." Looking at it now, I'm calling it "From Sunday School to Trollopdom in Three Easy Steps.")

And then, there was the year of the saddest homemade clown ever in and of the world, ever ever ever:

As you're squinting at this awful picture (sorry), take a good look at the hair. NOT A WIG. That's my own hair, once again with the spray-on hair coloring, teased out to hay-sus and Aqua-Netted to within an inch of its life. Also please note the lack of a traditional clown nose. My parents apparently did spring for some face paint this year, but the squishy red nose was just too much, it seems.

And my costume? A clown-themed nightgown (that I already owned) and, not pictured, my father's boots. I was also carrying a balloon on a stick, apparently. I have no idea what's happening with that.

OK. So. Am I scarred forever because my mother didn't make me a Pretty, Pretty Princess dress or let me be a witch (I wasn't allowed to be anything evil-y) or help me come up with something really creative like this one brother-sister duo at my school, who once came as toothpaste and a toothbrush?

I won't pretend I didn't kind of long for some of those things. At the time.

But now, I'm kind of glad my parents left me to my own devices. It's made me into a person who always thinks, "Hm...could I make that myself? Let me see what I have lying around the house" instead of just running out and buying something new.

See, Mom? You weren't slacking in the Halloween department; you were teaching me to be resourceful!

OK, one last picture, before I leave you all to trick-or-treat with your little ones and/or gussy it up for your adult-themed Halloween bashes. I was really hoping to find the awful picture of my brother and me dressed up as a Hawaiian (me) and a tourist (him) -- once again wearing our own clothes -- but alas, it has failed to surface.

So you're just going to have to be contented with this picture of me from the time I worked in a haunted house as "The Electric Chair Victim." Once again, my powers of resourcefulness at work, I correctly deduced that electric chair victims aren't dress-up kind of folk. It's much more likely that they'd be wearing a black turtleneck and jeans.

And from the look on my face, it's apparently tiring, soul-sucking work, too:

(Double-kudos to my mom for cutting off the top of my head. At least those all-important knees made the cut. I love you, Mom!)

Happy Halloween! :)

Photo Flashback Tuesday

I was digging around in old photo albums (OK, boxes with random photos -- I'm not organized enough for albums) this weekend, and I found this:

A few observations about this picture:

1. Who was in charge of my hair on this day? Apparently "Rat's Nesty Braids, Plus Barrettes" was a viable 'do back in 1980. And I rocked it.
2. Please note my expression of "Um, yes, may I help you? Genius at work here. Very busy. Shoo." According to my mother, this expression surfaced often. (And probably still does.)
3. I was apparently a very trust-worthy three-year-old, since I was left to my own devices with not just the cookie cutters but the 50-pound, solid-wood rolling pin. Clearly a future executive at work.
4. Check out that *awesome* '70s wallpaper! Go, Grandma!

To continue the photo flashback goodness, I promise to share a picture of a costume from my youth sometime during the week before Halloween. Be assured, it'll be incredibly embarrassing -- my costumes were always awful. :)

(Bonus points to anyone who shares their own photo flashbacks this week. Don't make me stand alone in Humiliation Corner.)

On the road (again)

"Are we there yet?"

"Funny, Grandpa."

We're five minutes into the trip, and we're just settling in. Mom's at the wheel, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa are sitting semi-comfortably in the back. I'm riding shotgun. From the mirror in my visor, I can see the back-seat occupants shifting to find a comfy butt-groove.

Since we're stopping for breakfast in 15 minutes, it hardly seems worth the effort at this point.

Gone are the days of my youth, when a family road trip meant logging as many miles as possible at a clip, and stopping to go to the bathroom was considered a sign of weakness (something I'm still trying to train out of my husband). Now? We're relaxed! There's time to spare if we need. Because the wedding we're traveling to is three hours away, and it starts at 4:00...

...and it is now 9:30 a.m. There's no sense rushing, after all.

After a leisurely breakfast at Cracker Barrel with enough sodium to kill an ox (say what you will, though -- there's something about a table piled high with biscuits, gravy, bacon, sausage, eggs and grits; it just feels homey), we...don't hit the road. I emerge from the bathroom to find the other four members of my party in different corners of the gift shop, browsing for cheesy merchandise.

But once everyone's satisfied with their purchases (and I've misread a label and therefore purchased Garlic Dill-flavored pretzels), we're off! Same seats as before, five happy bandits (now with full bellies and an armload of over-priced crap) hitting the open road!

If you're confused, it's OK. I did tell you on Friday that we were driving two cars on this trip. Friday evening, my mom called and said, "Grandma said she's sad that we're taking two cars. She thinks we won't get to talk if we do that. So we're all driving in their Lincoln Town Car. I told her you get carsick, so she and Grandpa and Dad volunteered to sit in the back so you could ride up front."

Now, hopefully in the time we've spent getting to know one another, one thing has become clear: I am sarcastic and, at times, mean. And the idea of being sandwiched in a car with four other people does NOT sound like my idea of a great weekend.

But I'm not a robot, people! I'll be damned if I'm complicit in making my tiny, adorable grandmother SAD, of all things! And the fact that she volunteered to ride in the back -- because I do get extremely carsick -- well... I'm powerless against that, OK?

As we jump on I-71, though, one thing becomes apparent: Grandma is not only generous and adorable, she's now also extremely hard of hearing. "Conversation" involves repeating things multiple times and/or turning around in my seat and shouting in her direction.

"WHAT? Shark bites?"

"No, no -- they put up new lights."

"Mark Price?"

"NEW LIGHTS!!"

Bless her heart, she eventually gets tired of the whole thing, and the back seat occupants turn to their newspapers while Mom and I chat.

When we near the hotel, though, she perks back up -- and all of a sudden I remember why this trip may make me insane.

DAD: (talking to my mom, who's driving) G, you have to watch for 275.

GRANDMA: (yelling) 75? Doesn't that go to Florida?

DAD: No, TWO-seventy-five, Mom. It goes around Cincinnati.

GRANDMA: (now appointing herself junior navigator, since apparently one isn't enough) OK, G, you're going to be looking for 275. North.

DAD: No, South!

GRANDMA: What? Pouch? What?

EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CAR: SOUTH!!!

GRANDMA: OK, G, what you're looking for is 75 South.

I realize I may not make it to the wedding, because I may have to throw myself out the window before we even get to the hotel.

On the way to the wedding, it's even worse. The map provided by the couple isn't proportional, and we're WAY out in rural Indiana, and we quickly have no idea where we are. I try to take advantage of the GPS in my phone and punch in the address of the family farm where the wedding is taking place; GPS's official position is "Huh?"

We stop in front of a one-room house with an open door that has a sign reading "Mike's Palace. Back Off!" Miraculously, Mike of said palace knows the farm we're heading toward and gets us on the right road...which leads us through a town called Friendship, which sounds lovely but which today is hosting the most bizarre flea market/festival/campsite I've ever seen. We pass by a giant banner that says "Body Piercing: Half Off!" next to the largest display of cow skulls in the history of time, and I hysterically think we may have passed into another dimension from which we can never return.

All four members of my party are alternately reading signs from Bizarro Flea Market out loud, yelling at people in the road, shouting directions at one another or trying to call someone from the wedding party. I consider making a break for it, but I'm too scared to get out of the car.

But then: We've made it. We're there. And the farm is nothing short of amazing: Acres and acres of land several miles from any other home, with a breathtaking view of rolling, plush, wooded hills. The house was built in 1848 and is simply exquisite. The driveway is lined with lights and tulle and flowers and greenery. Our family is there to greet us, and are simply thrilled to pieces that we've made it, and hug us extra tight to prove it. My dad checks out my mom's wedding duds and tells her she looks cute.

It's a wedding!

And my cousin S faces the love of her life under a beautiful trellis, and they take their vows:

Her son and daughter are junior attendants, and the newlyweds' three-month-old son serves as "Little Groomsman":

And S is more radiant than I've ever seen her:

And as we're listening to a reading from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "A Gift from the Sea," I can't even remember feeling irritated before. The couple is standing before us, so in love, and every member of my family is crying with happiness, including yours truly.

And then, of course, it's time to party -- in the decked-out, AMAZING-looking barn the groom's father constructed just for the occasion:

When it's time to go, I offer to drive. I hear my grandma whisper to my dad, "Is Shannon a good driver?" Sigh.

The next day, after another long family breakfast, we hit the open road once more. This time, all of us are exhausted, but we can't stop talking: about the wedding, how beautiful S looked, how much fun breakfast was, how happy we are that we came.

And we sing: You Are My Sunshine, Amazing Grace, K-k-k-katy, I've Been Working on the Railroad, hymns we remember from church, songs we made up.

And my heart just overflows.

(Here's where I was planning to post the video I have of us singing, which my phone just steadfastly REFUSES to give up. You'll just have to take my word for it -- we're a family of pretty good singers.)

I can't believe I ever balked at taking this road trip, smooshed into a car with these people I adore. It's something I'll always remember.

Then, around the midway point in our journey home, my 64-year-old father gets antsy in the backseat and turns into a four-year-old:

When they drop me off at home, my grandma hugs me tight, grabs my face with both hands and says, "I like you. You know that?" Then she hugs me again and says, "Oh, I'm just so glad you came!"

Oh, me too.

A request and a promise

First, the request:

Tomorrow, my cousin S is getting married. Yay, S! I couldn't be more thrilled for her, so of course I will be there with bells on! However, it's in Indiana, so T will be on Bubba duty while I attend stag. (Zero problem with this, as the T is not so much a wedding person, anyway; I barely managed to get him to agree to attend a non-Elvis-officiated wedding for US.)

Plus my parents and grandparents are going, so it'll be some good, quality family time.

The wedding's being held at the groom's family farm somewhere smack-dab in the middle of rural Indiana. Since it's a bit of a haul, the wedding isn't until 4:00 and it's literally in the middle of nowhere, the plan is to drive out tomorrow, attend said festivities, stay the night and return Sunday.

See where this is going?

ROAD TRIP! With my parents. And grandparents. And NOT with my husband or my brother or his wife.

In other words: I'm 10 years old again.

The original plan, God help us all, was for all five of us to drive in one car. I had visions of myself on the dreaded b-tch seat in the back, sandwiched between my (perfectly lovely) grandparents, singing 500 choruses of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and "You Are My Sunshine" like the family road trips of my youth, only this time peppered with long stretches of conversations that begin with, "So, why haven't you had any babies yet?"

I started panicking.

So I casually suggested to my mother that PERHAPS we could caravan -- I'll drive my nice, roomy car, she can drive her equally roomy car, and we can swap passengers. You know, to maximize the family fun.

Is it the greenest solution? Perhaps not. But is it the sanest? Hoo-yes.

(Incidentally, when my mom pitched the idea to Grandma, here was her response: "Oh. Hm. Um...is Shannon a good driver?" My mother's response, God love her: "No, she's awful. We're all going to crash in a ditch and go up in a ball of flames." Clearly I've taught her well.)

So the request? Say a prayer for us and/or me. For as much as I love and adore my family (and I do, I really REALLY do), I fear this may be a true test of my sanity. When you're a kid, a road trip is A) kind of an adventure and B) not exactly something you can opt of out because, well, you're 10 and your parents kind of rule your life. At 33, I can barely tolerate a road trip with MYSELF. To KROGER.

And now, the promise:

I realize it was WHOLLY unfair of me to post the reenactment of my bizarre salon encounter without saying how I felt about the actual haircut or ponying up some pics. Please accept my apology.

So let me tell you:

1. Against all odds and the laws of nature and/or reason, Little Miss Cuckoopants somehow managed to turn out a decent haircut. I KNOW! I was as surprised as you are. As baffled as she appeared to be throughout the entirety of the process, somehow my instructions soaked in amid the lack of understanding of what holiday it actually was, and she did a good job. (And I tipped her accordingly, even after she implied I might be old enough to receive Social Security benefits. I'm not made of stone, people.)
2. As with any new cut I get, I've spent the better part of this week trying to figure out how best to style it, which is my excuse for not showing you any pictures up to this point. This weekend, however, I'm snap some glamour shots and on Monday, I'll give you the goods. I may even try a few different styles just for funsies.

But you have to hold up your end of the bargain. And if you aren't the praying or meditating type, just hum a few choruses of "The Wheels on the Bus" in your head and have a little chuckle at my expense. Either/or.