even old new york was once new amsterdam

I find myself strangely bereft of words tonight. I think it's just been a v. long few days -- we successfully saw Aunt Becky and the scandalous husband off this afternoon, and they leave for Italy tomorrow. But there was much to do before then; first, we had breakfast at the restaurant in the back of the American Legion hall, and luckily the owner/cook saw me walk in and knew that I hadn't eaten, since I was the last one to arrive and she might not have fed me otherwise. Then, we finished getting more stuff out of the barn; I got out of a lot of that because my brother needed help taking the freezer/trailer of ice back to the ice man. It's unclear to me exactly how much of a show I gave to the men who were sitting in the trading post playing poker -- the reason I went with Michael was because he needed someone to stand on the back of the trailer to tip it up so that he could unhitch it, and I wasn't heavy enough to do it. So, I balanced on the edge of it and started jumping up and down until the trailer came unhitched, and I'm just going to have to hope that none of the guys saw my ridiculous display.

After all of that, we ate leftovers, Uncle Mark and his family left, and Aunt Becky opened gifts before loading up and taking off around three p.m. It was clear that no one in my family had any energy to do anything else; I took a nap, my parents did some stuff around the house, and my brother fell asleep. My mom had intended to make me another real homemade meal tonight, but no one had the energy, so we ate more leftovers and hung out until every started falling asleep. We're all such party animals.

Even though it's early for me to go to bed, that's what I'm going to do -- I need to get up tomorrow morning and pack, since we leave for the airport around noon. I'll be in San Francisco this time tomorrow, and then it's back to some truly brutal slogging for the next couple of months :( Goodnight!