Nice Weekend

I went home this weekend. It was a very welcome break. Rachel and I left campus around 10:30pm on Thursday night and drove home. We dropped off one of our students at John Carrol, and got to my parent's house around 2:30. We opened the door and little gizmo's collar started shaking and rattling from my parent's room. So, we walked down to the dark end of the hall, and opened the door. Out burst the two dogs, Gizmo shaking and standing up on her hind legs-reaching her paws high and then stretching toward me, Molly wandered sleepily down the hallway into the kitchen.

We let the dogs outside, and then brought Gizmo back to our room to go to bed. The next day we woke early, played a bit with the dogs, and I worked on carving a circle, two inches deep and ten inch across, into a stump on the back porch. When I finished, I dug up a tiny crabapple tree, snipped off the tap root, and snipped the top off and stuck it in the little "pot" I had made. I sprinkled dirt around the root, and watered. In fifteen or twenty years, it'll be a true bonzai tree. That is, if it doesn't die this spring.

The weekend was nice. We relaxed a lot, and I taught Rachel how to play Backgammon. She smoked me the first time we played, and the third time, and the fifth time.

We also played a few games of Settler's of Catan. That was nice. I love sitting around late at night playing that game in the kitchen with my mom and brother. It was a lot of fun for us.

The drive home Sunday was nice as well. I got to spend some good QT with my friend Damian who agreed to take me home. He stopped at Mom and Dad's house Sunday around 3:45, and after Mom and Dad left, we made pork chops. We thawed the chops, and butterflied them and seared them on one side. Then, we put cloves of garlic on top of the pork chops, and on top of that we spread a mixture of spinach, farmer's cheese, sea salt, crushed peppercorns, thyme, parsley, sage, olive oil, and freshly grated parmesean cheese. We then put it all in the oven for twenty minutes or so and had dinner with a bowl of corn and green beans. It was really yummy.

After dinner, we drove home. We took route seven which winds down the Ohio River most of the way into Wheeling. So that was nice. It was dark by the time we got to the river, but the river at night is pretty as well. The whole way we drove the lights from Pennsylvania bounced and bobbed in the river. And we saw a handful of smoke stacks with huge fires bellowing out of the tops. It was strange to see--just enormous blue flames raging out of the tops of the smoke stacks. "We're going to see a lot of those burning." Said Damain as I expressed my surprise again.

We talked a lot. We talked about stuff in his life, and stuff in my life. We talked about living in a college dorm, and being a music therapist. We talked about our friends and how its strange being friends but knowing deep down inside that you're going to relocate one day. It was a good talk. And it was a good way to end the weekend. We had three days of comfort, quiet and normal. Coming back to the blur of things here in Wheeling is going to be hard after that very quiet weekend.


P.S. we found these glasses in our Settler's of Catan box. I think the last time we played was either at my parent's house, or Rachel's parent's house. So, if you're missing these glasses, please just let us know and we'll get them back to you.