There’s those old saying about home, you know the ones like, “There’s no place like home,” or “home is where the heart is.” My mother told me that I could always come home, except when I couldn’t… Not too sure what that was about. Either way, home at Began Anna’s was just like home. Not like my home, but like a home. You didn’t feel like a stranger, you were always welcome to whatever you needed. After our horrific bowel-churning, Arby’s cursing drive, we were glad to be home. Began Anna’s parents welcomed me like I was their long-lost child, like the prodigal daughter (although I hadn’t done anything wrong). We walked in the door into a cozy, warm living area and kitchen. The TV was on with the fishing channel and Began Anna’s mother, Tori was waiting with cooked salmon, potatoes, veggies, and wine. From this point in, wine becomes important. Pay attention.
Began Anna’s mother looked just like her, only a few years older and a little taller. Her father instantly lived up to the stories I had heard about his shooting woodchucks out of the kitchen window in the early morning of the fall with a pellet gun. There was one in particular in which Began Anna was in middle school, female rocker mullet and all, and upon walking into the kitchen for her morning breakfast, watched her mother run into the bathroom to escape the sounds of the pellet gun going off as her father shot “the eye out of a woodchuck.” As it seems, apparently Began Anna’s father, BC, decided that the only way to kill this specific woodchuck was to “shoot him in the eye,” according to BC. Well turns out that he didn’t shoot him in the eye, he got him in the ear. Which apparently is just as good. Since I have no experience at shoot woodchucks early in the morning, I cannot speak to this except to say, “Way to go BC.”
As Began Anna and I sat down to our dinner, we recounted our horrible stomach pangs, which in turn made Began Anna not as hungry. Which is understandable. Nonetheless, we began to eat. Tori was especially excited because she had stocked up on the wine. She was becoming somewhat of a wine connoisseur, according to her, and she wanted to make sure we drank wine in style. So she pulled out her first of many bottles of Two-Buck Chuck. Now for those of you who don’t know, Two-Buck Chuck is a cheap, but tasty wine from Trader Joe’s. It’s even cheaper if you buy it by the case, of course Tori did.
She poured out two glasses for us and I hastily drank mine down. What can I say? Wine settles my stomach. It helped. I even helped Began Anna finish hers. This trip home was getting off on the right pace, and there were baskets everywhere. Baby baskets, medium sized baskets, big baskets to carry all the baby baskets, pictures of baskets (not sure what that one was about), baskets everywhere! Even the wine sat in baskets. I was waiting to be served breakfast in a basket in the morning. Not only was Tori in love with good wine, but she loved the craftsmanship of a good basket. This was a woman of someone’s heart. Not really mine, but someone’s. And I loved her for it.
After eating and drinking our wine, Began Anna and I were given our bedrooms. Began Anna slept in her old bedroom, which consisted of a dresser and an air mattress, as her old bed was now in her parent’s vacay “house” in Florida. I was sent downstairs into something like the Red Room from the movie Jayne Eyre, only it was a bright and sunny yellow. The bed was a beautiful looking bed, but not so much a beautiful feeling bed. Mainly it was hard. Now I like a good firm mattress, but this felt more like sleeping on the deck of a very warm ship. Now, in my defense I did try to sleep in this bed, but it wasn’t working very well. Earlier, before bed, Began Anna had offered to let me sleep with her in her air mattress. Well, I was about to take her up on it. Tired for sleep and longing for a soft bed, I made my way from the downstairs area up to Began Anna’s bedroom. I’m not really sure what happened next, but for some reason I decided to stand over Began Anna’s bed before waking her up. But I woke her up, just not the way she would have liked. She rolled over to find a shadowy person standing over the foot of her bed. With fright she almost leapt out of the mattress. At that point I figured she was awake enough so I would go ahead and get in. The mattress wasn’t really soft, but it was squishy. It was sort of like sleeping in one of those bouncy things that kids get into and jump around in. We slept soundly, well atleast I did, while Began Anna attempted to breathe softly and refrain her movements so as not to bounce me out of the bed. Now, in case you haven’t understood this, Began Anna is half the size of me. She couldn’t bounce me out of anything unless she used a jackhammer. Well, maybe if she tried hard enough…
We woke from our slumber the next morning, and on to our next adventure. The eye doctor.
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