This wasn't the plan at all. I was hoping to take today off and rest up for the events of the coming weekend. Heck, I need to rest up if only so my hand doesn't shake too badly when I present the charge card at the end of the rehearsal dinner tonight.
The rehearsal dinner is going to provide one of those Circle of Life moments: There are a lot of people standing up for Middle Son and Margaret tomorrow, and they all have spouses or Significant Others, and there are a number of visitors from out of town to be accommodated. So smaller, closer venues were eliminated as candidates for tonight's event. That left a restaurant in not-quite-as-nearby-as-would-be-optimal Lincolnwood -- OK, maybe not in Lincolnwood, but across the street therefrom -- the same restaurant where, believe it or not, Long Suffering Spouse and I had our rehearsal dinner 33 years ago.
A lot of memories are coming back as tonight's event approaches. I remember, for example, how bemused I was that my father took the day off before my wedding. I remember thinking, why does he need to do this? I'm the one getting married. I worked all day the day before my wedding, barely making it to the church in time for the rehearsal. I had to turn in my timesheets at the wedding reception to our office manager. I remember being up early on my wedding day filling them in; they were folded up in the jacket pocket of my tuxedo during the Mass. Time off before the wedding indeed! Who gets that? I wondered.
Well... Middle Son does, for one. I think he worked some, possibly from home, on Thursday. Margaret has been off work since Wednesday, because that's when her family arrived from Michigan. And the kids will be going on a 10 day (or is it two week?) honeymoon. It boggles my mind. But, then, they are his and her CPA's now (Middle Son passed his last test earlier this year; his license just arrived in the last month) and they are traditionally accorded some serious slack after tax season.
But here I am in the office. I was here to 7:00 last night setting up stuff to be filed in court this morning and I will start running just as soon as I hit the "Publish" button.
Thirty-three years ago I couldn't figure out why my father thought it necessary to take the day off before my wedding. Today I'm wondering, how in the world did he get away with it?
