It Just Does Matter

A bulbing

Dishwasher

 Not too many things really matter in life, but last weekend we managed to hit a lot of the ones that do. Here are some of the memorable moments from a jam-packed 24hrs:

- Carrie's plane had to turn around while taxiing to the runway to have a passenger escorted off for refusing to wear a mask. This doesn't matter, but it was crazy.

- Carrie and Viv camped out at Brad and Amy's unfinished house, and sweet Sarah made us a picnic basket of food.

- We celebrated the feast of St Francis, including Elliott giving the Lord's prayer in Latin, a story about St Francis and the wolf, and eating vegetarian lasagna and italian sodas. We were joined by the very sooty statue of St Francis, Creek fire survivor and noble character indeed.

- Elliott gifted us with what must certainly be our family motto: Familia Prima, Securitas Secunda (Family First, Safety Second) and the inscription to include in our reliquaries for the camp ashes: Cinis ex castris cognati (Ashes from cousins camp).

- We read aloud from the Prayer of St Francis, and made Viv cry. 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

- Our pilgrimage to camp was unforgettable. The term 'scorched earth' has never been so apt. We dug around for awhile, finding pottery and dishes, until we sort of slowly came to the realization that finding small burnt things really doesn't help very much. Meredith was an incredible sport, oohing and aahing over our finds like any good mom ("Well look at that!"). It was hard to even grasp how much different the experience must be for her, finding things that were a part of their everyday lives, now barely recognizable. Carrie scattered some wild flower seeds, and we collected ashes from the piles that used to be Bry's comic book collection, the lodge front porch, the general store library, and Lucy's tree...all of it just so, SO gone.

- Then off to the baptism, where sweet Jane Fowler and Helen Moore were baptized in a swimming pool in someone's backyard. Chatting with Brad, he said, "Do you know where we are?" (We didn't). "We're basically on top of the old alien graveyard." Sure enough, you could see remnants of giant PG&E equipment off on the edge of the property, now turned into a thoroughly leveled and manicured quasi-estate. 

Huh.

- Carrie asked Mom, "Mom, do you have maybe 1/2 of a banana? A little bit on the old side?" Mom's face lit up for a split second, thinking that the moment she'd been waiting for her whole life had finally arrived, before realizing she was being pranked. She then hit Carrie with the 1/2 of a brown banana from the fridge. Honestly, who uses food as a weapon?

- Carrie, Sarah, and Viv snuck over to the Fowler's new property to perform a bulbing. 

Def (verb): to surreptitiously plant bulbs on another person's property.

- Carrie headed down to Beth's to hang out for a few minutes and pay up on a 30 yr old bet with Bry. That Lawrence back patio is lovely on a summer evening.

- Mom and Sarah put family AND safety first when they sat outside with Viv for hours (out of an abundance of caution). 

- Carrie and Viv headed back to Brad and Amy's, where Archer popped his head out of the trailer and asked "Would you like some Jello I made?" After a brief exchange of glances, we said yes and settled in to eat a large quantity of red jello and chat with Archer and Carolyn. We learned about tarantula hawks and were fed some misinformation about platypus (I refuse to believe they have poisoned talons).

- Finally, Viv took Carrie on her first late-night black widow spider hunt. We killed TWELVE, and walked with a certain swagger after that. 

So, life, death, baptism, feasting, family...we pretty much did it all. Familia prima, after all.