weekend in sc.

The boys' mother puts her bagels in the fridge. This should not be a problem, except for the fact that the bagel was rock hard when I pulled it out to toast it, despite its "sell by" date, which happens to be my birthday. We spent the weekend at my grandparents' house on the South Carolina coast. It looks like this.

The baptism boy and my brothers looked like this.







And I, of course, looked like this. But I spent the better part of my day napping.







On Sunday, we went to church. Church is a place where I sing with my mother and grandmother. Church is a place where I get hugged by lots of people whose names escape me right when I need them to stay put in my memory. Church is a place where I am related to everyone except for the black people and the missionaries. (But one of them did have eyes that looked suspiciously like Malphrus eyes.) Church is also a place for people to set me up with boys in the congregation. Last time it was with a boy we'll call J, who plays the saxophone. My mother asked him if he was busy the week of my prom. I was 16. It was mortifying. Did I mention that he's my third cousin? This time, it was with a boy we'll call Little M. (Because in South Carolina, you probably have the same name as your daddy, so to distinguish, one of you gets to be Little ___ and one is Big ___.) But sometimes, the Little is actually really little. Little M is probably about an inch shorter than me in my heels, and probably weighs about the same. I'm not sure if I'm related to him yet, but since I don't think it's love at first sight, we won't have to worry about our children having any inbreeding deformities. (Then again, my grandparents are second cousins and I turned out okay.) He does, however, own his family's oil company, and he flies his own plane. He was very polite, and was mentioned on multiple occasions in our Sunday School lesson regarding his service in fixing people's flat tires. For now, at least, I don't think our relationship is going to work. The distance is going to make things difficult. We drove home with nine people in our car. That's not legal. But despite my protesting, I had to go along with my mother's desire to save gas. That means that seven children (if I can still be counted as a child) are sleeping in my house this week. That also means that the boys have four more friends to keep them from fighting when they swim at my house. Unfortunately, the younger one has an ear infection, so I'll have to come up with some better pinna-friendly activities for a few days.

Bagel verdict: tasteless, bland, pretty much rock solid.
(But I'm eating it because my mother taught me better than to throw away food and I'm a good sport. Just like Liz Templeton.)