“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 614 (Saturday)

Enjoying quality time chatting with seldom seen cousins is really fun, and today I got to do exactly that with two of my cousins when we spent several hours trading family stories. Thanks to stories shared by their mother, I now know a bit more about our parents’ generation of our common family. Other than being in a hospital in Boston with rheumatic fever as a young child and years of follow up visits, Dad rarely talked about life growing up.

The menfolk of the family seem to have a tall tales gene, and one of my cousins got into trouble after sharing one of our grandfather’s stories at school. Grandpa said that Grandma, who was from Canada, “came down the Nashua River in a canoe.” The teacher was neither impressed nor amused and made a phone call to my aunt.

Meanwhile, over at my house, Dad loved to regaling us with dinner table tales about his exploits with George Washington, George Custer, and other historical figures. In one tale, he crossed the Delaware River with George Washington. In another, he was at Little Big Horn with Custer, but didn’t die in battle because he had gone to get cigars. Never mind that the Washington river crossing was in 1776 and Custer’s Last Stand was 1876. Dad is apparently ageless, and in all the various tales and escapades, Dad always escaped injury or death thanks to having gone “out to get cigars.” After my sister repeated one of the tales in school, my parents got a talking-to from the kindergarten teacher at parents’ night.

The supper that shouldn't have been.

There was a food spread catered by Legends, a local restaurant. It was an array of comfort foods – toss salad, mac and cheese, pulled pork, chicken parmesan, shepherd’s pie, chicken and broccoli with rigatoni – and it was perfect. There was an abundance of desserts and much overeating was done. Maybe not by all, but by me. It’s okay, I avoided the cost of the “I’ve eaten too much and done too little for 20 months and my pants don’t fit” situation by wearing a stretchy knit skirt. I also avoided the salad, which is probably where I should have invested my lunch efforts. 

After the huge lunch, the plan was to skip supper, but you know how that goes. Once home, somehow a pecan roll found its way onto a plate as the accompaniment to a Sam Adams Holiday Porter. Oops. Nothing like potentially bad (but tasty) decisions.