Happy 29th birthday (plus sales tax) to my brother's wife and my sister-in-law, Margaret. May your day be a great one filled withe laughter and red velvet cake that refuses to go to anyone's hips. Perhaps Margaret's birthday is why my new jacket arrived here yesterday rather than get shipped directly to New Jersey.
Let me backtrack before we both get lost and give up. Some months ago, being foolish and feeble but undaunted, I essayed a hike together with our son, Patrick, after we had eaten breakfast from the hotel we were staying in while visiting my brother and his wife and though we didn't get lost, technically, we did end up on a far more lengthy sojourn than we had originally planned.
My wife and our daughter, Michelle, later-risers, were having breakfast and the plan was, after their breakfast, we would leisurely make our way home to The Land of Steady Habits. My turning a twenty minute stroll into an hour's power walk wasn't part of the time line and Patrick and I returned to the hotel, hurriedly threw our clothes into suitcases and checked out, joining the women of our family at the front desk. Perfect timing.
Not so much. Two hours after we got home I realized, at about the same time he did in his house in Mystic, that I had left my brand new jacket, a birthday present from my wife, hanging in the closet of the hotel room in our rush to exit. So, too, had Patrick. Sigrid called the hotel, shared the room number and the descriptions of both jackets and the following day Patrick made arrangements to have them both picked up and shipped back to us. Except....
According to a different voice of a different person on the phone when Sigrid called back the next afternoon, no jackets had been turned in or found, despite Sigrid's distinct recollection to the contrary in a conversation with a previous hotel worker some sixteen hours earlier. Nope, never happened; we are so sorry and have a nice day. Thanks for staying with us.
About that....when we headed south (for us) for The Wedding in September, we stayed elsewhere (I for one, never took my jacket, or trousers off which made showering problematic) but did drive by our previous hotel and let them know we still thought they were #1.
Yesterday afternoon, in a dark colored plastic sack, my new jacket that my wife ordered a week ago arrived. I'm thinking if she had been more judicious in opening the shipping container, and I had a better idea how big to make the holes for my head and arms, I could have gotten a second jacket out of this deal. But one and one and one is three. Got to be good looking cos he's so hard to see.
-bill kenny
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