Mom and Dad's Visit: Thursday
What many of my readers don't know is that I have a tendency to start counting down the number of sleeps until my scheduled visitors arrive. For Brad and Gillian's visit this past December I think the count started somewhere around 68 sleeps. Mom and Dad's count started on January 1st with 38 sleeps. By Thursday I'd gone through all 38 excruciating sleeps to arrive at Thursday, February 8th with butterflies of excitement. I managed to get through the 6 hours of work that I had to endure prior to my 2:45 departure by doing the least amount of work possible. I was too excited about my folks arrival to even think straight; by 2:15 I was so excited I had a stomach ache.At 2:50pm I was on the road south for the 18 mi. (28.8km) trip south to my apartment where Alan was waiting for me. Mundane details, more mundane details... and we're back on the road to the Airport for the 4:07pm arrival.
Alan would most likely want me to share the trip to the airport with you. However, I'll leave that up to him. Basically, it was scary. Weaving in and out, cutting people off, honking. The whole nine yards. I think he was amazed we made it to the airport alive. When we pulled into the parking lot it was 4:02pm. Perfect timing. However, at this time Alan also informed me that my driving privileges were revoked for the day as he'd like to get my parents back to their hotel without either one of them suffering a heart attack or an aneurysm. I more than happily gave him the keys as I knew I was pretty revved up and should just chill out once my folks arrived.
Their plane landed at exactly 4:07 and they were down the stairs in the arrival bay within minutes. My dad gave me one of his not-so-patented "real hugs" which one seems to receive only after a long absence or perhaps the death of a grandparent. It felt great! And mum... well her hugs are always awesome and I'm pretty sure I managed to sneak in two before we started to head for the car. Their luggage, by some miracle, were two out of the first twelve or so bags onto the carousel so we were off for our first night of adventure all within 15 minutes of their plane touching down.
The first priority, after shoving two huge bags of luggage and four full size adults (anything over 5'-0" counts as full size, by the way, for those of you laughing at the notion of my mother and I being "full size") into a tiny two door Cobalt. Through means of deduction mum and I took up residence in the back seat (as was standard for the remainder of the visit) and let Alan take the reigns for our trip to Pacific Beach (P.B. to the locals) for some sand and surf, and dinner which was an ocean-side seat at Joe's Crab Shack for some beer, some crab and most importantly, dessert: three kinds of cheese cake and a GIGANTIC chocolate cake called "The Shack Attack".
Bellies full and hearts aflutter (from beer or heart burn) we headed off to our apartment to show mum and dad the digs. I think we hung out for half an hour or so and the folks were done. We took them up to their hotel. But first things first: we got lost. Well, not so much lost, but screwed by San Diego's planners sense of humor. Their hotel was off Penasquitos Drive. We live on Rancho Penasquitos Blvd. You'd think the two would be linked. Nope, they're like 3 miles apart. Anyway, the directions say to take the I15 north to the Caramel Mountain Road exit and then turn right onto Penasquitos Drive and "poof", you're there. However, Alan and I know that if you go straight up Rancho Penasquitos Drive you will come across Caramel Mountain Road because R.P.D. becomes C.M.R. (Note: I've switched to short hand as my fingers are wearing out...) However, what we didn't know was that at the intersection of R.P.D. and the 56 Freeway (where R.P.D. becomes C.M.R.) you can go straight through the lights and hit C.M.R. OR you can turn right onto C.M.R. Turns out, we wanted to go right but instincts told us to go straight because that's the way we'd always gone. So, 10 miles later we all realize we're in the middle of no where and start to wonder where the first gun-toting thug is going to pop out of the bushes and demand our Canadian dollars! So, we finally pull out a map and turn around and get them to their destination. We later learned that it's only a 6 1/2 minute trip from out apartment to their hotel. We, however, managed to find a 25 minute route. What fun!
To make a long story even longer: we dropped them off in their suite. Mom brought me Smarties, a Canadian affectation that you should all learn to appreciate more as they are not available here in the States and Dad, the ever-loving work-a-holic that he is, sat down and plugged in his laptop much to our chagrin. The night was over. Dad was back in work mode. So, Al and I let them be for the night and headed off to our own little slice of heaven (that would be our apartment) to dream of the days to come.
Thus ends the tale of Thursday...
posted by Meg @ 12:23 PM
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