Death, Dancing and Pancakes

Well, the weekend is now officially over.

It may seem strange to say that on a Thursday, but I feel like it’s Monday.  My so-called weekend began last Friday when Habibi and I made a change of plans because of a death in the family. 

If you read my most recent post, you will know that we have had back-to-back funerals and mourning-type festivities since last Friday.  Almost an entire week later, we are beginning to exhale.  Between getting the news of two deaths on Friday, viewings on Sunday and Tuesday, funerals on Monday and Wednesday, spending hundreds of miles in our dirty little car and nothing but junk food to eat to top it all off, we are –needless to say– so tired our brains hurt.  When it rains, it pours!  (Poor Habibi had to start his new job today too, but I hear it went well.  Hooray!!!!!!!!!!)

However, if anyone can put the “fun” into funeral, it’s my family.  After a touching ceremony filled with endearing (and often entertaining) stories of my aunt, we all adjourned to the local small town, rinky-dink VFW.  Where else would we be?  Like a fat kid at a wedding, I ate enough frosting to make me sick (That cake was GREAT, Mom!  Good call!), joined the rest of the non-smokers for a cigarette break, colored Sesame Street pictures with my cousins’ kids, danced to Tom Petty on the juke box with some of the cutest toddlers alive and got a free house plant.  To end the night, most of the family rolled sluggishly into our favorite hole-in-the-wall café in town and ended up eating off of each other’s plates like a flock of lazy seagulls.  It was pathetic but Isabella’s pancakes were saturated in butter and syrup and I wanted them so you can keep your judgments to yourself.  SO DAMN GOOD!

All in all, not a bad way to honor a loved one.