Got home at one this morning. Couldn’t quite believe it. We backed the truck up to the fence (to make it exceptionally awkward for thieves to try and get in it) and came upstairs and tried to adjust to not needing to hurry up and get back in the truck.
Bly was really nervous about meeting everyone here, so I figured we’d jump in and get it over with. We met BJ for lunch, before picking up Hope. Because had we done it after picking up Hope, no one else would have got a word in edgewise.
As expected, BJ likes her. One down, only two more to go of my close friends. When you’ve got friends the like of Thomas, Donna, and BJ, three is all you really need.
But first Hope. We drove up to the house, and she was walking down the street, returning from the park with most of Connie’s brood. That aggravating child I’ve missed so much for five days waved and walked into the house.
We didn’t have to carry her off, though, when we caught up she decided she was ready to come home. On the drive, a bug splatted my windshield. I told it that was pathetic, an Oklahoma bug could have done it a hundred times better.
Oh, and we’ve come to a consensus. Having driven “across eight states” doesn’t quite convey the magnitude of our accomplishment. So we say we drove across “seven states…and Oklahoma.”
Donna suggested El Molinito for dinner and I wasn’t coherent enough to suggest something else, so once again poor Bly was subjected to Mexican food. She likes it well enough, but being, as Thomas puts it, a “gringo weenie” (so am I, and Donna) she has to be really careful. In unfamiliar restaurants, that isn’t easy.
Anyway. It went well. Donna is looking forward to going to the movies with Bly, Thomas zinged and got zinged and he likes that, and Hope provided a distraction by having a minor meltdown when they didn’t have any buns for the cheeseburger she ordered, and there wasn’t anyone with enough English on the staff to get that she would take it without the bun. She ended up with the chicken fingers, but by the time they arrived she’d eaten some of my cheese crisp and Donna’s beans and Thomas’ fruit, and she wasn’t hungry anymore.
When we got home again, we all fell down.