things that drain (and things that don't)
Mar. 3rd, 2007 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesI'm back, and I'm exhausted.
On Friday, the plan was that I would go meet L at the airport at noon and we would pick up a rental car and go off to NH and get some lunch on the way. That was before her plane got delayed by an hour and a half because of the weather. The meeting up and renting car bits went just fine, but the driving visibility was pretty uniformly awful all the way up. We never did get any lunch, because by the time we got to Dover, it was time for everybody who was already there to be at the funeral home for the viewing. So we went straight to the funeral home, got there before everybody else, and were sent off to feed ourselves and come back. Which we did.
The viewing went on from 4:00 to 8:00. (For some reason, the funeral home put a lot of tan makeup on Pepere, and I don't think he had ever been that tanned in his life, so he looked a little odd.) After the viewing was over, we went and checked in at our hotel and went off on a grocery-hunting expedition, and had dinner with our parents in their hotel (there was a girls' hockey tournament going on in Dover this weekend, so lots of screaming kids in hotel pools and hotel hallways, and not enough rooms available in any one hotel for all of us). We ended up going back to our hotel at about midnight, at which point I proceeded to have a very broken night.
I got a horrendous sinus cold on Tuesday. All day Thursday, there was pretty much no difference between my head and Niagara Falls. I went through most of a box of tissues. Since I knew I couldn't go on like that, I bought some Advil sinus pills and drugged the hell out of my sinuses all day Friday. Unfortunately I was left with a cough, which showed up with a vengeance when I lay down. So I spent most of the night on Friday trying not to cough and thereby keep L awake, when I wasn't waking up because I was sleeping in a strange position and my elbows kept falling asleep. I think I got three hours of semi-continuous sleep and three hours of sleep in bits and pieces.
This morning we got up at 7:30, because we had to be at the funeral home at 9:15 to sort out the order of procession and all that stuff. Then we went to the church for the mass, and the next time somebody asks me to do a reading and hands me a list of options, I'm not going to pick one that has the word "incorruptibility" in it twice. (It was one of Paul's letters to the Corinthians, and happened to contain "the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised", which is one of my favorite parts of Handel's Messiah. Besides, there was only one mention of "our lord Jesus Christ" in it.) I did get through the reading without tripping over my tongue, though, and several people told me I did it very well.
I was fine up until the very end, when they started singing the last hymn in French. For some reason, that set me off. (It had set me off at Memere's funeral too.) I didn't actually see the coffin put in the ground, which is fine with me. The cemetery wanted us all to stay in our cars because it had rained like mad all day on Friday and the ground was, put politely, a mess. So we did, and after that we went back to the funeral home again and rearranged the passengers in the various cars and all went off to Wendy's by way of lunch.
After lunch there was a reception in Durham at the assisted living facility, so we went to that too. It turned out that there was some houseware stuff in Pepere's apartment that had been in storage and was offered to the grandchildren, so I came away with a set of fairly pleasant tan stoneware plates for 8 (and mugs, which kept appearing from everywhere, and a sugar bowl and cream pitcher), and L came away with a silver-edged china service for 12 (including platters and gravy boat. For some reason we were all highly amused by the gravy boat).
I had been planning to take the bus back from Dover, but ended up coming back through Boston with my uncle J, his mother, and my cousin J anyway. Unfortunately, my uncle smokes while he's driving, and remember how I said I had a cold? The smoking didn't help.
So, to sum up, things that drain:
Funeral home viewings
Lack of sleep
Readings with the word "incorruptibility" in them, twice
Funerals, in general
Things that don't drain:
The roads in cemeteries (talk about flooded, my goodness...)
My sinuses
Parking lots that haven't been salted (I knew I should have brought some shoes with treads!)
I think it might be time to go fall over.
On Friday, the plan was that I would go meet L at the airport at noon and we would pick up a rental car and go off to NH and get some lunch on the way. That was before her plane got delayed by an hour and a half because of the weather. The meeting up and renting car bits went just fine, but the driving visibility was pretty uniformly awful all the way up. We never did get any lunch, because by the time we got to Dover, it was time for everybody who was already there to be at the funeral home for the viewing. So we went straight to the funeral home, got there before everybody else, and were sent off to feed ourselves and come back. Which we did.
The viewing went on from 4:00 to 8:00. (For some reason, the funeral home put a lot of tan makeup on Pepere, and I don't think he had ever been that tanned in his life, so he looked a little odd.) After the viewing was over, we went and checked in at our hotel and went off on a grocery-hunting expedition, and had dinner with our parents in their hotel (there was a girls' hockey tournament going on in Dover this weekend, so lots of screaming kids in hotel pools and hotel hallways, and not enough rooms available in any one hotel for all of us). We ended up going back to our hotel at about midnight, at which point I proceeded to have a very broken night.
I got a horrendous sinus cold on Tuesday. All day Thursday, there was pretty much no difference between my head and Niagara Falls. I went through most of a box of tissues. Since I knew I couldn't go on like that, I bought some Advil sinus pills and drugged the hell out of my sinuses all day Friday. Unfortunately I was left with a cough, which showed up with a vengeance when I lay down. So I spent most of the night on Friday trying not to cough and thereby keep L awake, when I wasn't waking up because I was sleeping in a strange position and my elbows kept falling asleep. I think I got three hours of semi-continuous sleep and three hours of sleep in bits and pieces.
This morning we got up at 7:30, because we had to be at the funeral home at 9:15 to sort out the order of procession and all that stuff. Then we went to the church for the mass, and the next time somebody asks me to do a reading and hands me a list of options, I'm not going to pick one that has the word "incorruptibility" in it twice. (It was one of Paul's letters to the Corinthians, and happened to contain "the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised", which is one of my favorite parts of Handel's Messiah. Besides, there was only one mention of "our lord Jesus Christ" in it.) I did get through the reading without tripping over my tongue, though, and several people told me I did it very well.
I was fine up until the very end, when they started singing the last hymn in French. For some reason, that set me off. (It had set me off at Memere's funeral too.) I didn't actually see the coffin put in the ground, which is fine with me. The cemetery wanted us all to stay in our cars because it had rained like mad all day on Friday and the ground was, put politely, a mess. So we did, and after that we went back to the funeral home again and rearranged the passengers in the various cars and all went off to Wendy's by way of lunch.
After lunch there was a reception in Durham at the assisted living facility, so we went to that too. It turned out that there was some houseware stuff in Pepere's apartment that had been in storage and was offered to the grandchildren, so I came away with a set of fairly pleasant tan stoneware plates for 8 (and mugs, which kept appearing from everywhere, and a sugar bowl and cream pitcher), and L came away with a silver-edged china service for 12 (including platters and gravy boat. For some reason we were all highly amused by the gravy boat).
I had been planning to take the bus back from Dover, but ended up coming back through Boston with my uncle J, his mother, and my cousin J anyway. Unfortunately, my uncle smokes while he's driving, and remember how I said I had a cold? The smoking didn't help.
So, to sum up, things that drain:
Funeral home viewings
Lack of sleep
Readings with the word "incorruptibility" in them, twice
Funerals, in general
Things that don't drain:
The roads in cemeteries (talk about flooded, my goodness...)
My sinuses
Parking lots that haven't been salted (I knew I should have brought some shoes with treads!)
I think it might be time to go fall over.
