Just thought I'd share.
For those of you holding your breaths with the excitement after yesterday's entry: No, I didn't get a turkey. About halfway into the morning, K.T. and I were chatting on IM, and she proposed going to the movies this evening to see Toy Story 2 and Dogma. (I was worried at first that Dogma was a horror movie - the title doesn't give anything away except that it deals with religion, lots of horror movies are based on religion, and I haven't seen any previews for it, but K.T. has been complaining for weeks now that she wants to see a good, scary movie. But Matt set me straight, so I'm fine with it now.)
Well, it sounded like fun, and I definitely want to see Toy Story 2, so Matt and I agreed. That meant that the pies for Thanksgiving that I was planning on making tonight had to be moved up to last night, and there was no time left in the schedule for a turkey.
Though if Dad's turns out nasty, I may cook one next week.
I'd been planning on a fairly quiet evening - I'd taken a meatloaf out of the freezer to fix for dinner, I was preparing to make the pies, and I had a stack of new library books to keep me busy while Matt was gone at his basketball game (absurdly scheduled for 9:30 at night!)
Around three, K.T. IM'ed me again and said she could get free passes to an advance screening of The Green Mile on William and Mary campus, and she knew Matt had a basketball game, but did I want to go? I thanked her for the invitation, and explained about the pies. She asked if she could come over to our house after work to wait, since she didn't want to go home and then immediately turn around and come back to Williamsburg. I agreed that sounded reasonable.
A bit later, she asked if it would be okay for Kevin and Matt (not my husband, but a friend of Kevin's from work - usually called MattFromWork to avoid confusion) to meet her at the house. This, too, sounded reasonable.
Matt usually leaves work at about 4:30, but got stuck in a meeting and couldn't leave until about 4:45 yesterday. And the maid service, trying to get their whole week's scheduled cleanings in before Thursday, was running late.
So pretty much all within the space of about ten minutes, everyone converged on the house. K.T. arrived first, and I explained about the maid. She suggested that to stay out of the maid's way, the bunch of us go out to get some dinner.
Well, I'd been planning on that meatloaf, but cleaning spray fumes make me slightly nauseous, and I'd been nursing a throbbing headache all day anyway that the roar of a vacuum cleaner was not going to improve, so I told her it sounded like a good idea.
I was about halfway into making the lemon chess pie when everyone else showed up all at once. The maid offered to come back today, and I took her up on it. K.T. still wanted to go out to eat, though, and I was ammenable, so I got Matt to come back downstairs (he'd gone up to check his e-mail) and talk with us about where to go.
K.T. had been craving a sub sandwich, with pepperoni. I definitely didn't want a sandwich for dinner, so I ruled out going to Subway. It was decided, then, that we'd go to Paul's Deli, which is one of two bars thinly masquerading as delis right next to William and Mary campus.
This is the point at which I should have said, "I think, actually, Matt and I will just stay home and eat our meatloaf." but I couldn't figure out how to say it without sounding like I was either whining or trying to dump them. So we went.
What a disaster. After you gave them your order, the cooks just yelled out what you'd ordered when it was ready - no way to tell, if several people had ordered the same thing, whose it was. The cooks are of some eastern European descent, and were almost completely impossible to understand through their accents. Matt and I had paid on the same ticket, and when his sub came up, they kept the receipt, so I wound up getting in an argument with one of the cooks when my cheeseburger was done. They forgot to announce my onion rings, so I didn't get them until most of the way through the meal, by which time I didn't want them anymore. And through it all, my headache just kept getting worse and worse, until finally, about two minutes before we left, the Advil I'd taken finally kicked in.
(There was one very funny commercial on the TVs at Paul's that was trying to link martial arts and radiator fluid. We dubbed it the "Kung-Fu Koolant" commercial.)
We went back to the house and I finished my lemon chess pie while we sat around and talked, and then K.T., Kevin, and MattFromWork left to go to the movie. They decided to take just one car, and come back for the other after the movie, so they wouldn't have to jostle for parking spaces. Matt and I didn't have a problem with this, since his basketball game would keep us up until at least 11, and The Green Mile started at 8:30.
Matt and I watched a TV movie about Orson Welles trying to make Citizen Kane for a while, and then Matt left for his basketball game, and I finished watching the movie, which had a lovely, bittersweet ending.
Then I made the two peanut-butter pies, which was fun (and yummy!) Only minutes after I'd finished those, Matt came home, irritable because they'd gotten badly beaten. (Since he told me at the beginning that they'd been signed up for a more advanced league than he thought they deserved, I wasn't too surprised, but I tried to be sympathetic.) He took a shower, and we settled in to wait for the trio to come back.
At 11:15, Matt went upstairs to look it up in the Internet Movie Database and we learned why they were so late: The Green Mile is a three hour long movie!
Finally, at almost midnight, they stumbled in, collected their things, enthused about the movie (except for Tom Hanks, who K.T. has decided she hates for his personality rather than his acting skills) and headed home. I stumbled to bed, and fell asleep almost instantly.
Now I'm waiting for the maid to show up so I can go do some shopping (I'm using the shopping as an excuse to not be home while they're here - cleaning sprays still make me slightly nauseous, and I still don't like lots of noise) and doing some laundry, because there won't be time to do it tonight or tomorrow.
The plan tonight is to meet K.T. and Kevin at the movie theater for Toy Story 2, then go to the Chinese take-out place at the other end of the shopping center from the movie theater for dinner, then go back to the theater for Dogma. I think for once, I won't want to get any food at the theater.
I'm actually not a big fan of going to movies on opening night - I really hate crowds, and noise, and opening night crowds are noisier than most. But Matt and I seem to have trouble getting the momentum going to go to the movies by ourselves, so this is a good thing.
(Is it just me, or do I sound very grumbly and grouchy? I'm not, really; I'm just feeling slightly harried at all these last-minute plans. Yes, 24 hours in advance is "last minute" - especially if I'd already had something planned for that time.)
It doesn't feel like Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I don't know whether it will feel like Thanksgiving tomorrow, either. Maybe if I watch the Macy's parade, that'll help. My brother is coming to town tonight, and I'm looking forward to seeing him.
And dammit, I need to wrap Matt's birthday presents.
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