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I RUSH TO THE DOOR OF the ice cream shop, where a young woman is in the process of locking the door. With gestures I implore her to let us in. (Oh, just use your imagination, Dear Reader [Very well, if you must know--I clasp my hands in supplication while mouthing please please) She opens the door and I gush my thanks! Right behind me is The Yard Man. All the chairs in the ice cream shop are upended on the tables. I really don't wish to tell the kid who is waiting to dish up our ice cream that two more customers will be along shortly. "Here's what we can do," says The Yard Man. "I'll just order four different kinds, and Gabe and Jenn can choose whichever two they want."
"Yes," I say, anxiously peering out at the parking lot. "That's what we'll have to do."
The yard man starts opting just as my cell phone rings. "Hi," says Gabe. "We're here. Where are you?"
"Oh, good!" I say, relieved. "We're here in the ice cream shop."
"Well, where is the ice cream shop?" says Gabe. "We're already here."
"The ice cream shop is right beside the restaurant. But they've locked the door to the ice cream shop. Just come on back through the restaurant!"
 "Uh. What?" Gabe sounds confused. I hear him ask Jenn, "Is there another part to this place?"
To me he says, "We're AT the ice cream shop! We're ordering our ice cream."
"Uh. What?!" I say.
"Yeah," he says. "And they're sweeping up the floor. They've closed!"

Ah, Reader Dear. Backing up affords a much better view! You've no doubt spotted the comical error: We had raced to two different ice cream shops!

So then, with their ice cream melting, Gabe and Jenn drive all the way to Oregon Dairy Store to join us.   And meanwhile The Yard Man and I take tiny bites (well, at least I do, Reader Dear!) as we sit in the dark at the outdoor picnic table on this lovely last night of spring and watch as the parking lot empties.  In spite of my nibbling, I'm finished with my ice cream, and most every car is gone from the parking lot when Gabe and Jenn arrive with their dishes of soupy ice cream.  We all have a very good laugh.
  "We very nearly got four servings of ice cream!" I tell them. "We were going to get four different kinds and let you choose. They were scooping up the second one when you called!"
"Oh!" said Jenn. "We thought of that plan, too--to get four! I thought I would choose just some basic kind."

And there you have it, Reader Dear, the small comedy of errors!
"Eight dishes of ice cream!....Oh, I wish it would have happened," I sighed. "What a good story THAT would have been!"

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IT WAS A (SMALL) COMEDY OF ERRORS! It wasn't as comical as it could have been (which gave me only a tiny pang of disappointment, and really didn't dampen the pleasant evening one iota). But let me start at the beginning, Reader Dear, as it's ever so hard to back up with a load of comical errors, albeit small!

I listened to a phone message this morning and heard the young man who had left the message yesterday saying, "Hi, Qathy, this is Dave. I'm in the area; I'm visiting Jenn. We'd like to come see you guys if it suits you."

Dave? I thought. Dave? I should know this Dave; his voice is familiar. I listened to the message again. I hadn't a clue, but began a mental rundown of all the Daves I knew. I kept bumping up against anonymity!

It just so happened, fortunately, that an hour or so later my daughter showed up. "I got a call from Dave," I told her." I must know him, but I don't!" I pulled up the message on the phone and put the phone to her ear. She listened intently. "The voice is familiar!" she said.
She listened again. "Hmm. He sounds young."
We pondered.
I listened to Dave again.
We discussed the possibilities.
And she listened to Dave again.

And then she said, "I think maybe it's Gabe!"

Well, Dear Reader, I listened to the message from Gabe, my nephew from Virginia who is in the area visiting his girlfriend, Jenn, and he no longer sounded like Dave!
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So now come forward in time, Reader Dear (which will mean less backing up for me), to this evening. The yard man and I are taking Gabe and Jenn out to eat at a nice little Asian eatery. Jenn, we find out, is my husband's cousin's husband's cousin's daughter! We have a very nice visit while eating the Vietnamese food (very likely it wouldn't have been as enjoyable if Dave had shown up instead of Gabe!) As we're cleaning our plates of the Xoi Ga Lap Xuong and the Bun Ga Nuong, my yard man suggests that we follow up our Asian meal with ice cream at Oregon Dairy Store, a few miles away. But then we're leaving the restaurant and we're struck by the lateness of the hour; it's very nearly nine o'clock. "Oh," says my yard man, "it's possible they'll be closed!"
"We could go to Carmen and David's," says Jenn. "In the city...Of course, they might be closed, too."
"Well," says Gabe, "we could just pick one and make a run for it!" (This nephew of mine likes ice cream [hard to tell if that'd be true of Dave]).
"Yes, yes, let's do it!" I say.
"Oregon Dairy!" says the yard man. "Does she know how to get there?" He's talking to Gabe.
We're leaping into our respective cars, squealing tires out of the parking lot (I've embellished just a bit, Reader Dear, I confess).
I convince the yard man that taking the limited-access highway will get us there faster; he's well-accustomed to driving with a heavy foot; we pull into the nearly empty parking lot at Oregon Dairy Store just as the digital display on the clock says 9:00.
Gabe and Jenn aren't there yet, but the yard man and I scramble from the car and race for the door of the ice cream shop. "Look," says the yard man, "the OPEN sign's still lit up!" No sooner do the words leave his mouth, the neon goes black...

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(Great big sigh, Reader Dear.....it's late. The digital display on the clock NOW says 11:47)
To be Cont'd...

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I GOT THE CALLS last night-- two messages from Best Buy, one of them a computer voice and one of them a human geek, both leaving the same notice-- "Just to let you know that your laptop is repaired and ready for pickup at your earliest convenience!" Oh, it put me up on a small cloud (perhaps a Three [maybe Four, though not nearly a Nine]).  Friday afternoon I'd been informed that it could be as long as five days before they could rid my little media marvel of its freakish illness. So today, between my trip to the hardware store for copies of keys and the trip to apartment-newly-rented to get the lease signed, I made the trip to Best Buy. "Here it is!" The geek handed it over, clean and shiny and supposedly in good health!
"And you're SURE you fixed the original complaint--the reason I brought it in--that stubborn problem with picture position--not being able to rotate and save?" I asked.
"Well, here," he replied, and he found the photo of Scout, that little happy birthday girl (one of the photos I'd taken vertically and couldn't coax out of a lying-down position*). Just like that he set her upright and smiling.

He stood the chef on his feet, as well.

And then, as though on a reverse rampage, he set about flipping all those tables and chairs (and the folks sitting in them) into an upright position!















By the time I left that store, I was so pleased with the better position it put me in!





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*(Music Friday, Viewer Dear! All of them scenes from Music Friday!)

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MUSIC FRIDAY in the city. "Let's go!" I talked my Yard Man into stopping his yard work, which he'd been busily pursuing for several hours, hauling in loads of mulch, wielding the weed-whacker and the leaf-blower, saving only a skimpy pile of labor with the labor-saving devices. It was such a frabjous, fantabulous, fit-to-be-labeled PERFECT evening, it didn't take a lot of wheedling to persuade the man to drop his tools!



Judging by his chortling when we'd gotten to the city and strolled around and come upon one musical offering after another, he was more than fine with the decision. Then we came upon a tiny first-cousin once-removed (child of a first cousin, that would be, Reader Dear!) who did not seem removed at all, but gave us a sweet come-close smile and waved. "Exactly a year ago right now," said her dad,"it was almost time to start pushing her out!"
"Wow," we responded, " Happy Very First Birthday, Scout!")



The evening was rife with the kind of j'oie d' vivre that only fine weather and fine food and fine music can produce. And since the hour was getting late and we hadn't enjoyed the edible part of that trio of delights, we chose to cap off our evening with drinks and a blackberry tart and a dark chocolate something-or-other eaten under the stars.



And we had a word with the chef, who waxed enthusiastic over this great city (in which he's been serving great food, Reader Dear, for lo, these many years), and the old, old buildings surrounding us. "Just look at this beautiful view from right here!" he exclaimed, gesturing toward the roof lines and the lovely arches and finials and moldings. "And to think, this view has existed just like this for over one hundred years!"



Ah, it was a fine evening, Music Friday in the city.
My Yard Man and I, we both highly recommend it.
(If I could put that endorsement to music, Reader Dear, and serve it up with a margarita and cheesecake, you know I would!)
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THE FAMILY REUNION is over! Participants are settling back into their normal routines (with the exception of the one (teenager) who is leaving this very day for a three-week visit to India!)
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A neighbor has agreed to change the locks at the old home place.
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However, one of us is going back to real life a whole year older! I forgot to tell you, Dear Reader, that we had a birthday celebration while at our "Genes of a Feather Flock Together" gathering over the weekend!


There's nothing like a birthday to prompt a seafood dinner out, and a late-night mini-gala in a motel lobby with cheesecake and brownies from Wal-mart!




Happy Birthday, David! May your thirty-first year be the best one yet!
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