Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Indiana Surprise!

Dear Reader,

I know it has been a very long time since I last wrote, and I apologize for that. I have been really very busy. In fact, I have been so busy that I'm not going to be able to tell you everything I've been up to in one post. So, in order to fill you in, I'm going to have to use a very high tech method. I'm going to post all the events in parts and........ I'm going to time travel.

We will go back in time to the day of Thursday, December 17th, 2009. We spent all day finishing packing and getting ready to leave for Indiana. We had told as little people as humanly possible about this trip. We were going to surprise my grannee. Mom, Dad, Me, Brother, Piggy and Baby left the safety of our home that night at 10:00pm and started on the way to the little town of Francesville, Indiana, home of my grannee and my Proud Relatives.

We drove through the night. Brother and I spent nearly the whole trip sleeping. Mom called Grannee when we were about 20 miles away from her house.
-Please excuse the dialogue I am about to post as I could only really hear one end of this phone conversation-

"Hi Mom!"

"Hellooo." I imagine this was my Grannee's response, she usually does this in a very sing-song voice.

"They told me that my packages are going to arrive at your house sometime today."

"Well, I'm at the post office mailing your gifts right now, and there's nothing for me."

"Oh!" Says my mom, with a kind of smile on edge of giggle on her face mixed in with a kind of crazy 'Keep it under control or you'll get caught! You mischievous little girl!' look "You're at the post office? Well, that's weird, they told me that they would arrive today. Maybe they are going to come later."

"Maybe."

"Are you alright? You sound like you have a cold." This statement causes panic to arise in both me and my father. Brother however is completely absorbed in the book 'The Hunger Games' and wouldn't know it if you had cut off his left big toe.

"Are you alright? You sound {murmur, bumble, unintelligible noise}"

"Are you alright, Mom? You sound like you're sick."

"blah blah, goo-goo-gaa-gaa"

"Must be the connection. We must be in a bad spot. I'll talk to you later."

~Hang up~

Then Dad, ever the dramatic, starts to express that "If your Mom is sick! This whole trip was a waste of time." kind of talk. Mom says that they both had a hard time hearing each other and she wasn't sure what she was saying. I strongly stick with the, "It was a bad connection. They couldn't hear anything." story, and Brother is off in the Games fighting Cato in the arena.

Anyway we finally get there. I put on my mask in case Grannee is sick and we surprise her at her front door.
She didn't scream and cry like they do on TV, but I could tell by the dust rag in her hand and the stuff scattered around her house that she was not expecting us, and that we did indeed surprise her.

Now, Francesville is a very small town. It is like a step back in time there. All the neighbors know each other, and the kids run around the neighborhood and ride their bikes and things. You can walk to the store and the library and everywhere. Francesville is planted right in middle of a bunch of corn fields, hidden from the world.

People do not lock their doors. Strangers have only ever broke in to someone's house when they were home once before and the people that were home shot and killed the intruders before they could say who they were. Turns out the bad guys were a couple of dudes who had broken out of prison from Mississippi or something. Nobody cared really, everyone else in town would have done the same thing.

My aunt (The Proud Woman) and my uncle (The Proud Man) live on the opposite side of town as my Grannee. You can walk to their house really easily, even if you are on chemo. It is less than a mile away. We weren't at Grannee's house for 10 minutes before the whole Proud Family knew that we had arrived, but at least we surprised Grannee.

The next day was the family Christmas party at my other aunt's (The Oldest Aunt) house. She lives in a place called Knox. I don't know much about Knox except that it isn't a safe place to go walking and has a koo-klux clan. I couldn't go to the party because The Oldest Aunt has grandkids who go to day-care and have lots of nasty little-kid germs that I can't be around. I heard it was pretty fun though, and that The Oldest Aunt was very surprised and had a TV worthy reaction full of tears.

While everyone else was out partying, Dad, the girls (being Baby and Piggy), and I stayed at Grannee's house. She wasn't as sick as we thought, by the way. Dad didn't go to the party because he is super paranoid. Even in Francesville, which in my opinion is one of the safest places on Earth, Dad doesn't like the thought of leaving his precious darling (and only) daughter at home 'alone'.

Grannee doesn't have a TV and if Dad had gone to the party, I could have entertained myself with the laptop that St. Nicolette gave me. However, Dad didn't go to the party, and he wanted something to do too. He is a smart guy now that I think about it. He had this all planned out.

Ever since I got that 'MacBook Pro' he has been wanting to get his little gadget lusting fingers on it, but I have been guarding it like a mother bear guards her cub. He purposely didn't bring his own laptop so he would have to use mine if he wanted to use one, with the excuse of "Why bring another laptop? If we need to use on, we can use Miss E.'s she is bringing hers." Anyway, he used his 'I'm your sweet darling daddy dearest' powers and asked me if he could use my laptop to write an exercise program. How could I say no?

Daddy on my Laptop and Piggy
Now that he's used mine, he keeps trying to thing of things that would justify him getting himself one just like it. I wouldn't be surprised if his laptop mysteriously gets left in the rain or accidentally gets mistaken for a dark chocolate cake and gets baked in the oven or something.


End of Part 1

3 comments:

  1. What a cool surprise! Grannee doesn't have a TV? Can't wait for Part II.

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  2. What an exciting story. I hope you do not wait too long for Part 2. I am also very glad you got to visit your family and surprise them. What a great Christmas!

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  3. What fun! So glad the surprise worked. And I love the part about your dad and the laptop!
    Merry Christmas!

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