I am now happily ensconced (thanks for the spelling tip, velvel) in my brother’s dining room. One of the kids is downstairs in her bedroom. I think my brother is downstairs watching TV. The other teen is in his room playing video games, and the third is off with Grandma. He’s staying over there and going to the doctor’s tomorrow. Eric is on his way home. I’m staying here tonight.
I told my nephew that I was going to Rockaway Mall tomorrow to get my hair done by my favorite stylist, which I do every time I come up to NJ. “Can I come?” he wanted to know.
“Sure.”
Of course, you can’t ask one without asking the others. So tomorrow, two of them will accompany me to the mall, and if Mike is out of the doctor’s in time, Grandma will drop him off.
Um. I’m going to be in a NJ shopping mall on Black Friday. Yikes. And: Oy!
But then, I don’t care. I like the idea of having three teenagers around. There is a very comfortable, happy feel to this house. We sat around the table for a long time after dinner, telling stories. Then we got back around the table for dessert and told some more. The kids liked the stories about the fireworks and the hickory nut fight and the magnifying glass and the newspaper. (“Kids, don’t try this at home,” we’d preface those stories with.) They told stories in their turn.
The wind is howling outside. It rained, snowed, and sleeted during the last twenty minutes of my drive this afternoon, and the temperature is dropping to the twenties overnight. But it is very, very warm inside my brother’s house.
And oh yes, dinner was superb.