Not that it was a bad weekend... On the contrary, it was really fantastic.
The reunion was wonderful. Matt and I were among the first people to arrive ("The few, the proud, the punctual," he quipped) but among the other early birds were people I'd hung out with and been in classes with, so I didn't have any of that awkward, "Do I know these people?" sensation that I'd worried about. Not everyone I'd hoped to see came, but I was excited to see quite a few of those who were there.
Matt was fantastic (and patient). He followed me around and gamely made small talk and fetched food and drinks for me. He joked about the spouses needing a different color name tag, or a sticker, or something, so that no one had to pretend to know who they were. I told him I should just write "arm candy" under his name and be done with it.
Every conversation started with the same three questions, which I found amusing: Where are you living, what are you doing, and do you have kids?
It was also funny to see everyone fall into the same old groups and cliques from school -- though that kind of made sense, since those were the people you were friends with and so most eager to catch up with.
The DJ was too loud, but eventually it didn't matter, and we started dancing. That was like the old high school dances, too, and at one point, I leaned across the space to yell at Carl and Tina (the DJ really was too loud) to wonder whether they'd end the evening with "Stairway to Heaven," which is the song that always, always ended school dances. They laughed hysterically -- but sure enough, someone had made sure to tell the DJ to close with it. Even if our star athlete leaned over the mic and talked the whole time.
I exchanged email addresses with several people, and made plans to meet up with some who still live locally. (Whether those will actually happen or if they were "oh we really must..." plans remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful.)
When Matt and I got home, my parents told us that the kids had been fantastic all evening -- not that they'd admit to it if they hadn't, I'm sure, but they were convincing, at least. Penny managed to drag out her bedtime until an hour later than usual, but I'd pretty well accepted that would happen, so I was amused, not annoyed.
I'd expected Sunday to be quiet and mundane, but that didn't happen, either. Matt mentioned at lunchtime that he was still hopeful about going to see Up. I put Alex down for a nap, and then checked showtimes -- the latest we could go was a 2:30 matinee.
When a movie is scaled back to two matinee shows and none in the evening, you know it's about to get pulled entirely. And if Alex slept a full two hours for his nap, there was no way we'd get to the theater on time. I suggested that Matt take Penny to see the movie, and we'd try Alex on some other movie, eventually. He reluctantly agreed.
So, naturally, Alex woke up at 1:30. We all packed up and headed out to the theater. Alex wasn't too sure about the whole "movie" thing, but then Matt sat down with a huge tub of popcorn, and Alex sat on Matt's lap and dug both little fists into the bucket. It was hysterical, especially since the bucket was nearly as big as Alex. If the light had been better, I'd have taken a picture. I think he was more excited by the novelty than actually hungry -- he fed me as many popcorn kernels as he ate himself, I think.
He actually did pretty well, once the movie started -- he sat on Matt's lap or mine for at least an hour before deciding he was Done with this whole Staying In One Place Thing and demanding to be put down. I took him out to the lobby, where he spent half an hour running around and going back and forth through the front doors, and looking at the big water fountain out front, and climbing up on the benches, and... But he wasn't fussy, just in need of some activity.
So Alex's first movie wasn't a triumph, but it went better than we'd expected.
After all that, I was so exhausted, I planned to go to bed at 9 last night. But that didn't happen. I started reading, and got sucked in, and didn't go to sleep until Matt came to bed and mocked me at 11:30.
And then I woke up again at about 4 -- we'd had some terrific thunderstorms off and on all night, and one of them apparently blew the power. By itself, that wasn't enough to wake me, but then the smoke alarm in our room (or maybe it was the one in the upstairs hallway -- it's hard to tell) started chirping. And by the time that wore off, I'd become aware of a low beeping noise coming from downstairs that I couldn't identify. So I dragged myself out of bed and went to find it (it was the battery-powered baby monitor, complaining that it couldn't find the signal). I turned it off, then got out my phone and programmed in an alarm for the morning, and then went back to bed. But by then I'd been moving around enough to have started my brain going, and it took far too long to get back to sleep.
The power came back on about three minutes before six, just in time for Matt's alarm to go off, and then my phone's alarm... I didn't want to get out of bed. Not even a little.
It's gonna be a coffee day today, for sure. Maybe tonight I'll get to bed early.
...yeah, right.
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