caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saga part 2 The saga continues� 8/24: Blue gets up and goes in for a 7 am interview. QueenV and I sleep past nine, make orange danish rolls for breakfast (yum!), and clean up, then meet Blue at the house. I have to find clothes to pack for the weekend in all this mess still. Once we get there, Blue goes off on some errands or other and I attempt to make some sense out of the storage area that is my bedroom. I finally do retrieve some clothes from various boxes and find a duffle bag to pack them in, and even manage to dig up my bathroom stuff. Kitty arrives at Mom & Dad�s around 3ish and we hit the road by 4, finally, although we still have to go pick up Kitty. We finally get on our way, with everyone and everything stowed in the van, by five. We nearly have hysterics at the Canadian border because Mom, who gets very frazzled by authority figures, momentarily can�t remember where she lives. It�s also pretty entertaining when asked how long we are staying in Canada, because although her response, "two days," is absolute truth, the van looks like we�ll be living in it for a month. We play car games and read Minnie�s Cosmo, which is highly entertaining as it features the sex survey. It�s a fairly smooth trip, all things considered, and we arrive, very giggly, in Stratford around 8 pm. We have dinner at a fabulous Italian place called Fellini�s, which features nifty Italian movie posters and beautifully painted trompe l�oeil scenes on the walls. Unfortunately they no longer have the orange flan, which I remember so very fondly from last year, on their desert menu, and I am very disappointed. We get to bed at a decent hour, around midnight. 8/25: I get a decent night�s sleep for once, and QueenV heroically takes the first shower so I can steal a few more minutes. We meet up with Mom, Minnie and Kitty in their room, and then head over to the hotel office/dining room for breakfast. It�s this dinky little drive-in kind of motel that looks straight out of the �50s, and the hosts are this sweet little older couple who live there and make homemade scones and muffins for breakfast every morning. And the scones are to die for. We have at least two scones apiece, except for Minnie who is doing Weight Watchers since she is getting married in December. She heroically limits herself to one muffin. Then we head out to the shops. Stratford�s downtown is full of great little shops with art, gorgeous clothes, books, and nifty little gadgety things. It�s really not terribly touristy, even though it�s a town full of tourists. I guess if it�s full of tourists who come there to see plays, you have to figure they are playing to a slightly higher common denominator than your average tourist town. I can spend very little money, of course, but I picked up a few things; a pretty candle, a book (I love the bookshops, since they carry the English versions almost exclusively), some postcards. Minnie is on a spending spree and spends several hundred dollars on pjs, a chenille blanket and matching pillow, toasting glasses for the reception, a wedding journal, and books. I have to admit I am jealous of her disposable income. We get take-out fish and chips and go down by the river to eat, which is very pleasant. We walk along the river for a little while, which is very lovely, contemplate the probabilities of the ducks carrying away the little children who insist on feeding them (it was funny at the time, really) and go into a couple more shops before heading back to our rooms for naps before getting ready for the play. QueenV and I spend most of our nap time talking and watching Canadian television. I have brought a flowery red dress to wear, and QueenV has a mannish button-down shirt and dress pants, so we decide to go as lesbian lovers, an idea which Mom quickly shoots down as she doesn�t want us to embarrass her. She does point out that she wouldn�t be embarrassed if we really were lesbians, but since we�re not she doesn�t think it�s appropriate. Oh well. We go to an English pub-type place for dinner, where we are nearly sent into hysterics again by the wandering troubader, in a puffy shirt and velvet vest, singing "Puff the Magic Dragon," "Both Sides Now," and other '60s folk songs. We think "Barbary Allen" would have been much more appropriate. QueenV ties the cherry stem from the cherry that was in my amaretto sour into a knot with her tongue. We are suitably impressed. We then head over to the Festival Theatre, where we are going to see "Sound Of Music." I know, you�re supposed to go to Stratford for Shakespeare, and there were several I would have happily seen (particularly Henry V, which I have loved ever since seeing the Kenneth Branagh film version) but SoM was the one all five of us could agree on. QueenV and I have a special relationship with Sound of Music, in any case, formed through drunken warblings of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" in graduate school. We spent a good half-hour perusing the awesome gift shop at the theatre, and purchased nifty t-shirts, postcards, etc etc. QueenV caved and bought Charmaine Carr�s Liesl Forever book. We all got t-shirts � Kitty and QueenV both got the one that said "Whiskers on kittens," while Mom and Minnie went for the "A Few of My Favorite Things" rebus and I got one that actually says "Climb Every Mountain." Which ought to be my new motto, the way things have been going lately. The play was excellent. I knew they had changed some things for the movie, but I was surprised at how prevalant the Nazi plot really is from the beginning in the play. Some of the songs were in different places and some were new to me altogether. The Captain and Maria were both excellent, everyone�s voices were amazing, and the staging was so very nifty. Some of the kids were annoying but the littlest one was adorable and made up for it. A grand time was had by all, and I think QueenV and I grinned most of the way through. You could just tell that everyone on stage was having so much fun, and so everyone in the audience did too. After the play we went back to the hotel and chowed on the chocolates and pralines we�d bought at the candy store earlier, which makes an interesting combination with wine, and talked and giggled some more until 1 am or so, when we finally stumbled to bed. A grand time was had by all. 8/26: This day did not go so swimmingly. It started off just as lovely, with scones and all, and the drive back started off okay. But we were all tired and it didn�t take long for us to start crabbing at each other; Kitty was being her usual talkative self and I really wanted to stop hearing her voice for just a few minutes. Minnie was anxious because she was going to the Madonna concert that night and was supposed to meet the friend she was going with at EngineerBoy�s condo at 3:30. This would not have been a problem if we hadn�t been stuck on the bridge waiting to get back through customs for an hour. It really didn�t phase me or QueenV at all, surprisngly, but the others got really antsy. It wasn�t like there was anything we could do about it. We got Minnie back by a little after 4, with ample time to make it to the concert although not enough time for her to get as dolled up as she wanted to. I got steadily more annoyed with Kitty all the way back as she just wouldn�t shut up. I know, I know that�s how she is, and usually I can take it, but three days in a row was just too much. We got back to Mom�s finally, around 5, and as we were unpacking the car I said something snippy to her since she had just told me something Dad had said not 5 minutes before while we were all in the room. I said "I know, I was there," and Kitty whined that I was being mean to her and had been all afternoon and she was sick of it, and I lost my head and just screamed at her. Dad came running out because he thought someone had fallen or something, and then sniped at me for being mean to my sister. I just burst into tears and sat outside in the van for some few minutes; poor QueenV had no idea what to do. I did get myself together and apologize to Kitty. I think it was really just coming back to all the stress and tension, after having gotten away from it and really not thought about it for a few days. Blue wasn�t at Mom & Dad�s to meet me like I expected, and it all just threw me, I guess. I had been unnecessarily mean and snippy to Kitty; she can�t help how she is and it�s not her fault that it gets on my nerves. We were all okay after a little while. Blue came back eventually, with the news that the things that were supposed to have been done on the house had not been done at all, and that we still had no occupancy permit. Lovely. We watched "The Wedding Planner" on DVD, which is a fairly stupid movie, and went to bed. There�s more, still, but I�m tired of typing. To be continued, again� 10:33 a.m. - 2001-08-30 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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