come on eileen

whew. just a quick note - lets see what i can get out in the next half hour, which is how much time i have before i leave for my flight for paris - woo hoo! so apologies for not posting in the past few days; it's been crazy.

after driving to bismarck last friday to help player move in, my mom and i rushed back saturday night for my cousin, terra's, bachelorette party. on the way back in to town we stopped at another cousin's house to pick up a charger that i had lent them for their overseas travel. yet another cousin's baby was there - david, he's like 2 years old or something. babies. they all look the same age to me. my mom came in with me to see the baby and he ran right over to her to give her a big hug, even though he didnt know who he was. apparently he's a friendly baby and likes people. i was talking to my cousin's wife aout the charger and wasn't really paying attention. i looked down and there was baby david at my feet holding his hands up for me to pick him up. i looked at him. what was i supposed to do? i guess i didnt have my friendly face on or something and he ran away to his dad and started crying. oops.

so that night was the bachelorette party which i wasn't entirely in the mood for because i got NO SLEEP the night before in the hotel in bismarck thanks to my stupid hematoma. it kept making my arm cramp up and feel like i had a pinched nerve. combined with moving all day, i was incredibly tired and didn't want to be a party pooper. my mom and i went out and had a pretty good time. my cousin, terra, seemed to be having a GREAT time, and that's whats really important. my other cousins, amanda, sara, and kayla, did a great job of organizing the party. i just realized i don't think i've actually been to a bachelorette party before. weird. anyway, my cousin amanda had playing cards with dares on them. all the girls had to pick a card and do the dare. my dare was to kiss the tallest guy in the room. i look around. guess who the tallest guy in the bar was... my brother. yep. "forced" to kiss some random guy and he's a relative. it couldn't be some hot, older divorced man or zack efron. had to be my brother. not really how we roll here, this isn't kentucky, so i gave him a big sloppy kiss on the cheek. he must've had a few beers in him because normally this would result in a violent push away, but he let me kiss him and then i showed him the card. he looked around the room and shrugged. he was the tallest guy there.

i wasn't in the mood for partying since i was so tired and i still had to pack for this massive trip i'm taking, which, honestly, i'm starting to regret. we stayed out until 1230 or so, just enough time to meet my brother's girlfriend's mom. lindsay and the mom were at the elton john / billy joel concert in town so they decided to come out with us afterwards. we met at a bar, hoping to be quieter than where the bachelorette party was. but the party ended up finding us. apparently lindsay's parents are quite conservative - i'm not sure what she thought of all my relatives wearing penis stickers with nicknames (i was "well traveled" and my mom was the "white gloved maiden" since she's a nurse) and my cousin wearing a big inflatible penis. literally. i texted her earlier in the evening and asked how the night was going. she said, "good, i'm covered in penises." it was that kind of night. oh! and the best part is that my grandma got "tight" and came up with my cousins's wife's nickname. becky is very artsy, so they were trying to give her a name like "artist of love" or something like that. they all agreed it wasn't dirty enough and my grandma shouts out, "artist of sex!" and that's how becky became artist of sex.

anyway, the next day, the bachelorette, terra, came over to pick me up. she lives in the twin cities with her fiance just down the road from the airport - prime location for traveling cousins. this is why terra is one of my favorite cousins. :) i had to finish packing while she recovered from a teeny hangover. we got on the road a little after noon and hit the cities before 4. when we got to her apartment, her fiance, matt, asked if we wanted to go to the bar. terra wasn't feeling so hot, so she declined and crawled over the puffy chair. matt asked if i wanted to go and i said, "sure!" so we started to get ready to go. all of a sudden, terra's sullen cries from the chair, "wait! you're leaving without me?!" i guess she didn't want to be left alone, so she came along in her fragile state. but guess what. a tall glass of cold blue moon cures hangovers! she quickly felt better.

the past few days i have just been hanging out at terra and matts. we've watched movies and eaten well and had lots of champagne (celebrating terra's end of classes for a few weeks). all was going well until today. i got up and worked on finishing a few things on my to do list. i went to take a shower and discovered that there was no water. ??!! we had no idea what was going on, so i started packing my things instead. after an hour, terra went downstairs to find the maintenance guy and found a phone number to call. the woman on the other line said, "whats your address?" terra gave it to her and she said, "yes, you don't have water. you'll have it in a half hour." and hung up. okay... so i kept packing but started to feel a bit pressured - its just common airplane courtesy to shower before a long flight. we started coming up with a backup plan which included driving 30 min to her brothers house in maple grove for me to shower. she calls, "yes, hello, you said that we'd have water in less than 30 minutes." "i said ABOUT 30 minutes!" she screamed at terra. she explained that they called a plumber last week and put up a flyer that the water would be off for a few hours. well, the plumber never showed up - until today. so they just let him work and now they couldn't get the water on. ??!! wtf?? so terra calls back and tells her that her cousin has a flight and needs to take a shower. the woman was really rude and finally told terra that we'd have to go to another building to use the shower in the sauna room. so terra and i go downstairs to meet the maintenance guy to take us to the shower. he only had room for one in his car, so he asked us to drive and meet him over there. we drive over to the next building and he's not around. i was starting to get really annoyed. terra calls the woman back and finally the man comes outside. we had to go to yet another buildling. on the walk there, he says, "yeah, sorry 'bout this. can't do anything about the plumber." terra started to agree with him, "oh, that's ok." which i was having none of. "well, i think you need to notify your tenants." "yes." was all he said. now here's the thing. i'm only partly annoyed that i had to quickly pack to take a shower in a public shower with no ventilation and who knows how long its been since it was cleaned. i'm only partly annoyed that it took me away from doing other things. i'm really annoyed about how they treated us. if, at any time, someone had said, "i really apologize for the inconvenience, we didn't realize what affect this would have. i wish we could turn on the water for you, but we're not sure how long it'll be" then i wouldn't be so annoyed. a little courtesy and politeness is all i needed. i just wanted someone to really be apologetic, but no. they seemed annoyed with us that we were inconviencing them. how rude.

well, whatever. i am now clean and packed and leaving for the airport for paris in a half hour...

i'll try to be in contact while i'm away, but not sure how much internet connection i'll get. but check back because i've got some posts automatically scheduled to post in the next few days...

until then. catch you on the flip side.