04 & 05-May-13

For Mother’s day weekend, I was a bit selfish.  See, instead of just spending the weekend in Mass with my Mom, I took the change to take a nice roadtrip out to New York to visit my Grandma.  That’s the danger of having a car that I love; I’m much more willing to take long drives now.

And that’s awesome, because I hadn’t seen my Grandma Hutt in ages at that point, and getting the chance to finally drive out and see her was something that I’d been meaning to do for months.

04-May-13

• The day started out very nice: I relaxed in the semi-early morning with a good breakfast out on the veranda – eating the usual bacon and eggs and fruits while sipping coffee.  I took a bit longer than intended, but was still out on the road before the noon bell struck.
• The drive out to New York was amazing – if a bit boring.  See, the route I took was just straight out on the Mass Pike, down the spine of the state.  I did crank the music and drop the top down, of course, and even got myself a nice early season sunburn for my effort (or lack of sunscreen effort)
• Once I do arrive out in New York it’s early afternoon still – so Grandma and I just sit back and relax for a while, catching up on how everyone in the family’s been doing.
  • It’s a bit scary, how well we remember the little things from our childhood… and how strange it is when they’re gone.  I hadn’t visited my Grandma at her house since my Grandpa passed away… and while nearly everything about the house was just as I remembered it, there was still something obviously missing.
  • After spending some time catching up we set to work – My Grandma Hutt isn’t someone to just sit around all day you know, and she had a few projects set up for us to work on while I was there.  Turns out I’m not half-bad at gardening and plumbing!  That leaky showerhead never saw it coming…
  • Dinner was excellent and relaxed – I bet everyone says this, but I’ll still consider myself a successful chef if I can someday equal her cooking.
  • After dinner, we stayed at the table and chatted some more as the news droned on in the background.  I don’t think I’ve stayed up that late with a family member in years… it must have been the early hours of the morning before we finally gave up chatting and I headed to bed.

05-May-13

• Mothers Day
• After having breakfast and spending some more time visiting with my Grandma, I packed up the car again and head out, back toward the demon-state of Massachusetts.  The plan was to meet up with a friend of mine for an early lunch, and then stop in Medway to do some Mother’s Day gardening with my mom before I drove back to Cambridge for the work week.
• And the plan went nearly perfectly – Lunch took a bit longer than I expected, but it was nice to see Erin again since she’d moved to New York for her PHD program.   And the drive out to Medway was just as quick and fun/boring as the drive out to New York had been… possibly better thanks to some interesting traffic
  • Seriously… some people just don’t know how to drive… or just enjoy screwing with me.  I can’t count the number of times someone started to pass me on the left (while I had cruise control on), only to stop half a carlength in front of me… just in the right place that I had to either hit the brakes or slam the gas to get ahead of them.  I’ll give you one guess as to what I did.
  • Once I got to Medway though, I realized the error of my plan: It was barely after 15:30, but my Mom had already finished all the gardening work that we’d planned on doing – all that was left was a bit of edging and stone-work.
  • But thankfully I’m quite good at stonework and arranging, so I jumped right into it.
  • After gardening came British Beer Company for dinner, and after dinner came the drive all the way back into Cambridge.  Just in time to get everything ready for the week ahead.