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Saturday, October 06, 2012

Relief Society vs. Priesthood

On Thursday night I had Homemaking Family, Home and Personal Enrichment Night a Relief Society activity (I love the simplicity of that, I really do). Andrew was hoping to keep the girls at home and send me to the church by myself but that would mean driving in the dark and, well, I'm still not very fond of driving. I might be the only person in the world who relishes every red light they hit. I'm finally able to let the steering wheel slide through my hands to correct my trajectory after a turn, but it squeaks as it does because my hands are so sweaty from being so nervous. I've driven by myself before but that was during the day and I didn't think I was up for a twenty minute drive, alone, at night.

There's one other Mormon in our neighbourhood so I sent her a message to see if I could just catch a ride with her, but she didn't get back to me in time so I ended up driving to the church...but I made Andrew and the girls come with me so that Andrew could drive home afterwards, or at least coach me while I drove home.

The girls went to the nursery to play with the babysitters. Andrew went into a classroom to read this book he's supposed to have read by tomorrow. I went into the cultural hall with Benjamin.

We had a lovely dinner—Hawaiian haystacks with pumpkin rolls for dessert—and then our first class of the evening was a crock pot cooking class and the instructor had four different dishes for us to try. We were all laughing about that at our table.

My friend Magi said, "My husband's going to be like, 'So, how was your evening? Did you have a good time?' and I'm going to be like, 'Yeah, it was really...fulfilling.'"

Her joke is even more impressive considering she's a non-native English speaker. I do love linguistically witty people. That's why we're friends—and because we have baby boys a couple of months apart and little girls who both turned three this year. We have a lot in common. Anyway, in the middle of all our eating, my friend Amy carried Miriam, crying, into me. She had started crying in the nursery and Amy, who'd been in the hall on her way to the material's center to make some copies, found her wandering in the hall with one of the sitters (who didn't know who Miriam's mom was—it's me, I'm Miriam's mom). Andrew had heard her crying, too, so he took a break from studying to hunt Miriam down as well. He found her with me and took her into the hall to see if he could calm her down.

She was inconsolable‚ so he decided he'd better just pack the girls up and take them home. Fortunately my neighbour had shown up by this point and agreed to give Benjamin and me a ride home (and also that we should ride to Relief Society activities together in the future because, duh, we live so close). So Andrew and the girls went home and I enjoyed the rest of my evening, eating myself silly, and talking about the upcoming General Conference, completely oblivious to the string of texts Andrew had been sending me.

"Is Miriam sick or something?" I asked him when I got home.

"Didn't you get any of my texts?" he asked.

I checked my phone and this is what I saw:

7:37 PM Do you think you can get a ride home with someone? Meme needs to get home...
8:07 PM Vomit all over the church parking lot.
8:25 PM 101.5 degrees
8:26 PM Also, there was a rabbit in the front yard. Weird.


So, after coming into the cultural hall to clear that plan with me (because I apparently never answer my phone (it's true; I don't)) he picked Rachel up from the nursery, retrieved Miriam from the couch in the foyer where she was crying in a heap, and walked outside to the van. He'd just opened the door and was about to put Miriam into her car seat when she threw up all over the place. Thirty seconds earlier and she would have vomited all over the church's carpet/couch, thirty seconds later and she would have vomited all over the van. As it was she vomited all over the parking lot.

"I am made of good timing!" Andrew said.


That was pretty good timing, it's true—he must be living right.

I, on the other hand, was severely punished by Miriam's sickness—between her and Benjamin, I was up all night long. On Friday morning I woke up long enough to do Rachel's hair for school before I crawled back into bed, which had been taken over by munchkins. But I didn't care. I slept between these two little things for three glorious hours:


Whatever Miriam had, it was short-lived. We spent all of Friday watching Angelina Ballerina. She had water for breakfast, a popsicle for lunch, soda crackers for a mid-afternoon snack, and was already feeling up for pizza by dinner time. She was perfectly fine today and no one else has felt the least bit sick so I don't know what was wrong with her!

Tonight Andrew went to the church for the priesthood session of General Conference. He taught primary on Sunday but I was in Sunday School when the Elder's Quorum president announced, "Oh, by the way, if the brethren want to come to the church for an ice cream bar beforehand, we'll be meeting at 7:30! It should be fun, so everybody come!"

I shared that piece of news with Andrew, even though I thought it was kind of lame, meeting for an ice cream bar. Count on the Elder's Quorum to come up with a stupid activity, am I right? Like it even takes a half hour to eat a lousy ice cream bar...

It dawned on me only yesterday that the "ice cream bar" probably wasn't just "a frozen dessert on a stick," but a fully-fledged Ice Cream Sundae Bar. That makes a huge difference. And since I, of course, told Andrew my sudden inspiration, we've used it as inside joke fodder ever since.

"They moved the time for the ice cream bar to 7:15," he told me.

"That's a long time to eat an ice cream bar," I said.

So, he went to the ice cream bar/priesthood session and texted me from there before he left to come home (and I actually heard my phone this time):

10:00 PM Meme's vomit still in parking lot.

Awesome.

He just got home and apparently the ice cream bar was amazing and they also had pizza.

Double awesome.

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