Monday, April 11, 2005

The adventures of a chauffeur

In an ideal world, weekends should be either very exciting or very restful. Since mine was neither, I'll write about other people's.

First on Friday, Joy, my mother-in-law, (otherwise known as SOG - "Silly Old Granny" in Blogsville) and I talked on the phone. She was about to embark on an exciting weekend get-away to the beach with her six other high school friends. This group of friends known to each other as "the girls" meet periodically in Galveston (GAL-ves-ton, Texas ... not Gal-VES-ton, Indiana) at one of the girls' VERY NICE beach house to do what girls always do when they get together - talk. I chauffeured my girls to a sleep-over around here, but I wish I could have chauffeured SOG to her sleep-over. I would have crashed that party. Do you know what is the only difference between SOG's sleep-over and my girls' sleep-over? Location, location, location.

When you're a chauffer like me, you get the low-down on other people's comings and goings - so here are the events of the weekend from the chauffeur's perspective.

Friday afternoon, I took the two teenage Jones sisters who look, and think, and act exactly alike (inside joke) to an overnight birthday fling. The chauffer went home and had a quiet evening of spring cleaning the garage. Quiet except for the fact that this chauffer incessantly talks to herself on such occasions.

Saturday morning, the younger of the two sisters needed to be picked up and brought home to freshen up and attend an essay recital contest and an orchestral concert with a friend. The young lady amused herself by relating the highlights of the looooong evening to the chauffeur.

Meanwhile, Ben was picked up by another chauffeur named Mrs. Camery to take him and the Camery children to a day of slave labor ... I mean volunteer work … to raise money for our co-op school. Ben later told tales of hauling and shoveling.

The chauffeur talked to her oldest son on the phone since he was too far away to be driven anywhere. They talked about summer plans.

Upon the chauffeur’s husband's return from a half day Saturday's work at the Mission, they took a long walk in the sunshine. This particular walking route was a favorite of the chauffeur’s since it winded into alleys that other chauffeurs use to come and go from the homes. How does she know that chauffeurs use them? Their mini vans are parked all over the place in those parts with bumper stickers referring to soccer, ballet, and honor students. Signs like these indicate heavy traffic areas frequented by other chauffeurs.

Later at home, the chauffeur watched the husband work on several honey-dos and then chauffeured him to the hardware store for parts. Finally, she chauffeured him to the grocery store for the shish-ka-bob supplies that he needed for an outdoor cookout behind their humble abode. This last trip was pleasant indeed, and not at all irksome.

Thus were all the chauffeur’s travels and experiences for the weekend.

3 comments:

quirky said...

busy busy bee! what else can i say??

Anonymous said...

It was a wonderful weekend at the beach. We stayed in our pjs til dinner time on Sat and then Jo took us out to a wonderful dinner. The most amazing thing about these "girls" is that some of us have been together since we were three years old in Sunday School and, knowing our ages as you do, that is a loooong time. So we have watched each other go through crisis after crisis, good time after good time, known when each others children were born and their grandchildren, as well. We've shared the good times and the not so good times and laughed and cried together, and now we are growing old together. (Make that GROWING OLDER together) Really, really good.
So, from the perspective of a S O G, enjoy every day. Some will be better than others but they are all a blessed gift from God.

Anonymous said...

To answer your comment on Josh's blog, my clever grandsons may make me look any way they like, as long as I am smiling and not tooooo old.
Love to all.