We had quite a full weekend of fun, and I’m just going to try to encapsulate it in this one posting. On Saturday morning, Peter took Neil to the Scout-o-Rama, while I took Kelly to the Stanford Powwow. And afterwards, we had a barbecue party! Shiaw-Ling is our party enabler, so she organized it, and we, as the people with the biggest house, hosted it. Have I mentioned already that I love parties? And of course, if you host a party, you’re guaranteed to be invited! I was pretty low key at the party, and mostly did hostess-ly duties, like figuring out how to get the right chocolate consistency for the best dipping of the strawberries Shiaw-Ling had brought. I had already decided to opt out of the poker planned for after the barbecue, because per modern white man custom when visiting native tribes, I had left all my cash behind in Indian territory. Luckily, we didn’t have much of a poker crowd, and the party ended up as a team-up Guitar Hero competition. Just for the record, I shredded.
As the mother of a preschooler, I didn’t get to sleep in on mother’s day. I did get nice presents. Kelly gave me a card she made at Andrew’s storytime at Borders: according to it, I’m 5 years old (that’s the biggest number she can count to), and I am an expert at Waldo books. Neil gave me a candle, with a “just kidding” sort of joke on it; and Peter brought me books, because he knows how much I love reading. And then, we went to a ballgame, because I’d scored some free tickets at OSH. I hadn’t seen the San Jose Giants yet this year, and it was early enough in the season that the ballpark isn’t impossibly crowded during the merchant promotion games. It turned out to be a surprisingly lucky game. The San Jose Giants won 5-2. I personally won two free burgers for doing the best chicken dance in the ballpark. That never happens, and I can only attribute my success to the possibility that the fancy dancers at the powwow inspired me, and that I forced Kelly to be my reluctant partner on this Mother’s Day. Neil caught a bag of sunflower seeds when they were tossed into the stands. And, on weekend games, children are allowed to run around the bases after the game, but on this day, mothers were allowed to do so with their children, so I could do it, too.
We spent the evening kicking back and watching Tristan and Isolde, a sad medieval romance. In it, much to Peter’s great amusement and delight, the Irish are the conquering oppressors over the English. Well, ok, maybe not English, just Cornish, but still…