Highlights:

I actually, for the first time ever, slept on the red eye out there. The flight was 4 ½ hours and I slept the entire time. This is unprecedented. I attribute this success to several factors: long and event filled day leading up to the flight ensuring that I was completely worn down, a calms forte and a window seat so I could sort of lean against the wall of the plane.

People-watching at the Roundhouse Bar in Put-in-Bay. There was a pretty good cover band playing requests there and, apparently, there is some band called Buck Cherry that sings a song called ‘Crazy Bitch.’ I’d never heard it before, but when the band started in on it, the crowd went wild. You haven’t fully lived until you’ve witnessed a 50+ year old women shouting the ribald chorus to that song while dancing around energetically. Good times. Most everyone there was over 40 and WASTED.   

Cedar Point's Millenium Force - minds were blown. We got off the ride and all three of us (my Dad came with us to Cedar Point) had big shit-eating grins and couldn’t stop talking about it for the rest of the day. Should you ever have the chance, I recommend you go to Cedar Point.

My Dad told my sisters that their role in the wedding was that of “Presenters.” Really, they just walked down the aisle and sat up at the altar during the wedding.  But in the car on Saturday, as we ran last minute errands with Breanna and Rebecca, the four of us brainstormed different ways they could present my Dad at the wedding. Examples include getting the crowd going by singing “Party like a T, Party like a TVBAW, TOTALLY DUDE!” and “When I say TEVE, you say BAW! TEVE! BAW!” and “T to the E to the V to the E to the BAWWWWWW, to the BAWWWWWW.” Basically, just hanging with the two of them was pretty amusing – they are fun to tease and be silly with. 90% of the time they were on good behavior, so we had fun together.

Cornholing at the post-reception fireside gathering. Mark and I making up slogans with the new stepbrother for Cornhole including “I’d rather be Cornholing,” “Born to Cornhole” “Got Cornhole?” “My grandma got cornholed and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” and so on. And then we discovered that the stepbrother did not actually know what the dirty connotation of ‘cornhole’ is. He’s 21, so I figured he knew what it meant, especially since he was laughing so hard at the slogans. After explaining what it meant, we asked him why he was laughing so hard when he didn’t even know what it meant. He said that is just sounded funny. Of course, after the revelation of the true meaning, he was even more amused.

Lowlights:

Walking the 5 blocks with our luggage to the passenger ferry to Put in Bay in a torrential downpour. Luckily it stopped raining by the time we got to Put in Bay because if I would have had to walk the ¼ mile to the hotel in that kind of deluge, I probably would have exploded.

Mark and I were so excited to get to Cedar Point that we didn’t make a note of where we parked the car. A totally boneheaded move! My dad had to drive us up and down the aisles for 20 minutes before we found it. Luckily, with my dad there to drive us around, we were able to find it relatively quickly.  I once spent an hour and a half in the Magic Mountain parking lot looking for the car and only found it after that because a security guard found me wandering around crying and called the guy up in the tower to look through his binoculars for the car.

We all know that the Seattle baggage claim takes forever, but last night was the extreme worst baggage claim experience yet. We waited for AN HOUR for our luggage. That is patently ridiculous. Never ever again will I check luggage to SeaTac unless I really have no choice. It’s just unacceptable.

Now, I just can’t wait for today to end so I can go home and see Bo! I missed my little guy.

The other day, I was in the car and I heard this song called “Hey There Delilah” on Power 106. I encourage you to not actually follow that link - the song is lame. For starters, the name Delilah is number 548 on the name popularity list kept by the social security administration. By selecting such a fictional name, it made the whole song feel insincere to me. The song itself is pretty generic, following the tried and true pop formula. That’s to be expected on Power 106. What got me thinking was one line from the song: “I'd walk to you if I had no other way." How many love songs contain some variation on this theme? Loving someone so much that you would walk vast miles to get to them? This started me on making a mental list of other songs that include this theme. I only came up with a few (500 miles, of course, being the first one that came to mind).

From there, I got wrapped up wondering if anyone has ever actually walked 500 miles for love in real life. I tried to think of circumstances that would conspire to require this feat of someone. The only thing I could think of is war time. The war’s over, infrastructure is in chaos, you’re stationed far from your sweetheart (that’s the basic plot of Cold Mountain, now that I think of it). So then I spent some time wondering what Google search terms I could use to try and research this. I thought of “walking for love” and “walking long distances” but I knew those wouldn’t work – too general. What would be a good search term? I can’t say I’m often stumped when it comes to Internet research, but in this case, I am. I truly want to know if anyone has ever walked a long distance to get to the person they love.

Finally, I thought about whether or not I would walk really far for love. I could definitely be motivated by love to walk any distance that does not exceed a hundred miles. But more than that? I’m really hard pressed to think I would. Is being willing to walk so many miles the ultimate testament of love and have I failed that test? Is my love not that strong!? I thought about it some more and decided if I had the choice of walking 500 miles or never seeing the one I love again, I would have to give it a shot. Assuming that we were separated by acts of god and he loved me back. Otherwise, you’re just a stalker wearing an adult diaper.

These are the things I think about while alone in the car - driving allows the mind to wander.