Easter redux

As we usually do, we went to my parents' house for Easter. Unlike in previous years, we didn't take our whole spring break down there. This year, we hung around our house for the bulk of the week (and so the almost 15 year old could take his driver's ed class) and then headed down for a long weekend. Even though we were there for such a short time, we had our usual crazy adventures although we managed to make it all three days (and both 4 hour drives) without one instance of vomiting, which might just be a record for us.

Our drive down was mostly uneventful but punctuated by T. weeping quietly about the fact that we had dismantled his single bed and were taking it to give to my 92-year old grandmother as it's significantly lower than the bed she was sleeping in (as she's short, getting into a high bed is just not easy at all anymore). You'd think the kid loved the bed more than life itself when in fact he rarely sleeps in it, preferring to be on his sister's floor. No idea what the woe is me attitude was all about but he managed to parlay it into not only prime seat in the car, but also lap custody of the non-carsick dog as well. Such a little scam artist!

Saturday morning I went on a nice long walk with my mom and intended to play some tennis with D. and W. as my dad took R. to the symphony with him. But after the walk, I took a shower and the sebaceous cyst on my head spontaneously burst. By the way, for those who don't know, sebaceous cyst is just the fancy and slightly less gross term for boil. So yes, I had a nasty boil bust open and derail my day. My mom insisted that I needed to go to urgent care to make sure I got antibiotics and frankly, even at my age, it's just easier to give in. Of course, several hours later, I was still sitting at my annual urgent care visit and cursing her for making me go. Eventually I was seen by a doctor who was 112 years old, a bit wobbly, seemed skeptical that this thing had burst open on its own, tried squeezing the gunk out of the inflamed and pulsing knob on my head, and ultimately was willing to prescribe me not only antibiotics but also Vicodin for the pain (which only occurred when he was trying to milk it like a zit). Pretty much blew my entire day by the time I escaped (sans Vicodin, I might add).

Up for church on Easter Sunday we did not manage to look like the lovely family pictures I've been seeing all of my friends post on Facebook. My parents, my husband, and I were all nicely dressed. My children looked like they got dressed in the dark, a pitch black dark at that. We opted not to capture photographic evidence but imagine this if you will: one Kristen with an infamed, superating, bloody knob poking up out of her hair, one T. weaing a not quite so white t-shirt with cute shorts a size too small, one R. with a holey shrug over her dress, and one W. wearing white socks with sandals and a pair of khaki pants we bought him at Christmas but which are now 4 inches too short and that made him sing soprano. Obviously I was talking to myself before we left when I asked them to make sure they had nice church clothes that fit. Why on earth would anyone try them on when they can just bamboozle mom by saying that they did and then having no better options available on the actual morning. ::sigh:: A completely and unashamedly ragtag and lying bunch, that's my crew. Even better, that's what we looked like in the midst of Southern gentility not only at church but at brunch afterwards although by then we had forced W. to change into a pair of too small shorts that showed his assets off slightly less well than the pants (he stubbornly kept the socks on with his sandals though.) This barely helped as by the end of the meal we had added more: my grandmother has a terrible case of shingles which wept through her lovely top making it look as if she'd had a minor accident. Guess it's no wonder the family behind us in church broke out the hand sanitizer after sharing the peace with us. (And no, I am not kidding. They all passed hand sanitizer down the row as soon as we all sat back down from the greetings.)

Lest we be a further sartorial embarrassment to my parents, almost as soon as brunch was over, we hit the road to head home. Other than obscene amounts of traffic, the return trip was pretty uneventful. And being gone such a brief amount of time has meant that there's less to do here at home to get us back to normal. Not a bad thing at all. Now we just have to wait for the phone call from driver's ed to schedule W.'s behind the wheel stuff and I have to keep measuring the subsidence of the knob on my head and decide if I want to follow my discharge instructions for a face lift, I mean to have the cyst removed by a plastic surgeon once the infection is gone (which should function as a tiny face lift given its location). Vanity or sound medical reasoning? Hmmmmm......