I have great friends, a loving girl friend, a wonderful (at times) son, and of course my health. It’s weekends like this last one that really make you realize all that you have. Thanksgiving weekend is always a long one, but this one seems a little longer than usual. As you know, the plan was to go down to Lee’s place as per usual (turns out for the last like 4 years). This year there was going to be a special guest along for dinner. No, not Andrew (though he has made that trip before), This time Emily and I would be spending our first Thanksgiving together. Of course we both had to make an extremely long drive in order to do this. She was the lucky one and got to start out a little early. You see, I had to finish up with work, then drop off Andrew at the airport. Sounds easy right? It would be if it weren’t for the fact that I had to drop him off at BWI which is (normally) 45 min away. In the afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving. So as you can imagine, I spent the next 3 hours driving to and from the airport. I finally started my drive to TN at around 7pm on Wednesday evening.
It was a very long long long drive. I did get the chance to do a burn in on my Zune though. I listened to it the whole way there. I also had a few good phone calls along the way to keep me awake. That and a TON of caffeine. It did get to the point where I would zone out and focus only on driving. Not to the point of being unsafe, but to the point where I was ready to get there. Thankfully what was waiting for me upon arrival was more than worth the journey. I got in at around 4:30am TN time and there was a beautiful set of arms waiting for me to dive into them. We managed to get a little bit of sleep (the caffeine leftovers were still racing through the system). I think we woke up around 9am.
Thursday was very lackadaisical. We were all pretty tired to begin with so we just wanted to relax and take things easy. We watched a few shows on TV, the parade, some Eureka, and a few Episodes of the Addams Family (TV series). We also squeezed in the Addams Family Values for reference. The argument continues by the way. Lee took us for a nice drive around Franklin to show us some of the houses in the area and how nice the town was. Yeah, he still keeps hinting. Since we were all pretty tired, we ended up turning in early as well.
Black Friday. Missy had to work pretty early so it was just us for a while. Emily had this great idea to get up and take a run. Well, it was a great idea in theory. Being somewhat sick with a minor cold, it quickly became apparent how little air my lungs could process on a cold morning. She finished up the run but I had to bow out a little early. We went back and cleaned up and chilled for a while. Em and I ventured out to the Comic book store to see if they had anything good (they rarely do). She picked up a few books that caught her eye. When we got back, Lee wanted to take us all out to do some sight seeing. Top of the list was the Parthenon. On the way there we stopped off near Lee’s work to visit with Emily’s old high school friend Shelley. Apparently the Cheesecake Factory is pretty darn busy on black Friday. Who Knew! We got to the Parthenon only to find out that it was closed. It was ok though, we had a great little picnic in the park and got some great pictures as well. Apparently Nashville has an over abundance of squirrels as well, and they were all around our table!
When we got back we had a little bit of time to sit and relax before missy got home. There is something to be said for just sitting in the same room with someone you love and enjoying their presence. Just knowing the person is there is somewhat comforting. Anyways, I digress. Missy came home and brought with her some sandwiches, which made for a nice easy dinner while we watched “Over the Hedge” with the kids. Once the kids headed to bed it was Adult time! Which meant that the drinks came out and we watched “40 Year Old Virgin”. (With frequent pauses for refills and stories). I have to say that the movie was a little eerie to watch when the guys apartment looks just like mine. (I’ve heard). Saturday was going to be a big day for outings so after the movie we called it a night. Well I would say that except Emily and I sat downstairs and talked for what seemed like minuets but turned out to be hours. Personally, I loved every second of it.
Needless to say, we slept in a bit on Saturday morning. This was ok as Missy was feeling under the weather. We thought it was only a hangover, turns out it was a tad worse than that. You see, when we got there on Thursday, Shiloh (the youngest) was a little sick. What we thought was just a child’s sniffles turned out to be a bit more. Missy ended up being sick through most of the day. This gave Emily and I the chance to get away just the two of us. We went to downtown Franklin and walked around Main Street. We visited many of the different little shops and even got the chance to walk around one of the art galleries there. We stopped in to the local Irish pub and had a good Irish lunch, where we stared into each other’s eyes for most of it. It was such a nice afternoon out, the type where you don’t want it to ever end. Sadly, it had to. We headed back to hear the word on what we were doing for the evening.
Missy was apparently still sick, and it got worse. Now Torri was sick as well. Lee canceled the baby sitter and we made arrangements to meet up with Emily’s friend Shelley. We decided on a place called Amerigos. We had some time to kill so we sat and played some cards. Emily taught me a new game called Egyptian War. Apparently I am better than she thought at it. (: We had a nice dinner with Shelly and got to talk about all sorts of old times. About halfway through dinner I got a txt message from lee with the “I think I got it now”. This was a very very bad sign. When we got back to the house he was feeling pretty bad. Missy had started to recover and came down to chat but in the middle of it Lee made the motion to clear a path. This was the point where I figured we should head downstairs. Em and I had planned to curl up and watch “Love Actually” on the Mac. If only we had gotten that far. As soon as she laid down, she started feeling queasy. I will keep the details short and say the rest of the night was a real test of our closeness.
So the count came out at Shiloh, Missy, Torri, Lee, and Emily all getting sick. At this point, Damon and I remained un-effected. We started Sunday off pretty slow as you can imagine. We didn’t it the road until around 11am (VA/FL time). The drive was long and painful. I didn’t hit near as much traffic as I thought I would have, but Emily had some rough spots in South Atlanta. Because of this we both got home at around the same time. Of course, this was around 11pm! We both just crashed out for the evening. At least, I had thought that it would be the end of my evening.
About 5am it hit me. Apparently when I am driving I put myself in a sort of sickness stasis where I can focus on driving and let my body deal with things later on. It was now later on. The queasiness set in and I knew what was coming. I jumped on the opportunity and medicated up with some Pepto to stop my stomach from doing what it really wanted to do. Unfortunately, this didn’t make it all better, it just calmed the storm. Needless to say, I have now spent the rest of the last two days at home either on the couch or laying in bed. Oh, and I heard that later on Sunday evening Damon caught the bug as well. Everyone in the house got it. Ugh.
So when I say I am thankful for my health, I really mean it!
0 Comments.