It’s been a while since I’ve posted so bear with me as this will be a long one. We were in Austin, MN (yes, you read that right) for several days to visit The Wife’s family and witness the wedding of The Wife’s cousin to his sister in-law. Before I say anything about that, I just have to say one totally unrelated thing: people who put auto-looping MIDI music on their web pages should be summarily executed.
I was hoping that the trip to MN would give us a brief respite from the brutal central Texas summer, but alas, it was not to be. The first day there, it was actually hotter in MN than back home in TX and the humidity was definitely worse.
It was nice to see The Wife’s family again, most of whom I have only met one or two times. The last time was at our wedding where I think I spoke a total of 10 words to each person, a curse of most brides and grooms.
So this was my first trip to see The Wife’s family as her husband and it was also my first trip to Minnesota. I think being married gave me a new perspective. Let’s face it, everybody’s family is weird. It’s just that you get used to your own family’s weirdness. When you get married, you’re suddenly a part of this whole other family whose history you’re probably only vaguely familiar with. It makes for some interesting moments, especially during a wedding weekend.
Unfortunately for us, the trip was plagued with various unforeseen problems.
The first was my fault. I decided that it would make great sense to pack my suit and have it dry cleaned in Minnesota. We were arriving Thursday morning and the wedding wasn’t until Saturday evening. I’d have plenty of time to get it cleaned and it would look great, no wrinkles from being crammed into my luggage. However, I miscalculated the availability of dry cleaning in a town of 20,000. Thinking that I’d have plenty of time for next day service, I called one of the two dry cleaners in town on Friday morning to get directions and make sure that I’d be able to get the suit done in time. The first place basically laughed me off the phone. The second was a similar experience. I guess there’s not much call for next day dry cleaning on a Friday in Austin, MN. I had to call a dry cleaner in another town thirty minutes away. They assured me that they could have it done the same day, so armed with a map and my suit, I headed for Albert Lea, MN. I dropped the suit off at 11:30 and the woman there told me that it would be ready by 1:30. Hooray for “one hour martinizing.” I drove back to Austin for lunch, after which we took The Boy to a nearby park to tire him out some. At 2, I decided that we should all go get the suit and then return for a nap. We arrived at the dry cleaner in Albert Lea at 2:30. I was informed by a different woman than the one who took my suit in the morning that she was behind and that it wouldn’t be ready until 4. Great. Now, we had to decide whether we would waste another hour driving back to Austin and then returning later or stay in Albert Lea and kill time until the suit was ready. We decided on the latter. We had passed a mall on the way into downtown, so we headed there in an attempt to amuse The Boy. I loathe malls no matter what size town they’re in and what a godforsaken place this one was.
All of the stores had racks of merchandise sitting in the main traffic area of the mall with no one watching them. I’m not sure if they always do this or if it was because that particular weekend was “crazy days”, which I think is a sales tax holiday. All I could think was “shoplifters paradise”. Apparently, the anti-smoking lobby hasn’t hit rural Minnesota yet, because it seemed like half of the people in the mall were smoking. I spotted more than one kid with a rat-tail haircut and one old guy who looked like Justin Wilson wearing Mork suspenders and sounding like Ned from SouthPark, but I think it was his natural voice. Thankfully, the suit was actually ready at 4 and we were able to get the hell out of there in time for the rehearsal dinner.
The second mishap occurred during the wedding reception which was held right after the ceremony in another part of the church. After eating, The Boy was bouncing off the walls so The Wife took him to one of the VCR-equipped classrooms with a Dragonball Z tape that he had begged to borrow from one of The Wife’s older cousins. We normally don’t let him watch the show because there’s too much fighting in it, but we were making an exception. The Boy’s one-year-old cousin, Maggie, was already in the room being watched by a teenage girl who is a family friend and we had been told that she would be willing to watch some of the other young kids as well. The Wife left him in her care and they were soon joined by another cousin, 7-year-old Ren. For reasons that I won’t get into, Ren has a history of behavior problems and we probably wouldn’t leave The Boy alone with him, but with the teenage girl there watching the other cousin, we figured it would be fine.
About 20 minutes later, The Wife sees the teenage girl out in the crowd with us. Since I had never seen the girl, it didn’t register with me that The Boy was now alone with Ren. I went to take some things out to the car and The Wife started towards the classroom thinking that it would be a good idea to check on them. Not five minutes passed between the girl leaving the boys and The Wife arriving at the classroom. The details are still fuzzy, since no adult was present, but somehow Ren either picked The Boy up and dropped him on his face or somehow pushed him down such that he landed on his face. Either way, I came back from the car to find The Boy screaming in The Wife’s arms with blood coming from both his nose and his mouth. Lucky for Ren, he wasn’t anywhere near me right after I saw this. It’s the first time The Boy’s been that gruesomely injured and it definitely elicited the primal parental protection instincts. My first thought was that I wanted to do to Ren what he did to The Boy. Of course, that’s neither realistic or appropriate (in this situation anyway). We ended up taking him back to the hotel room and putting ice on his lip for the rest of the night, missing the dancing (and drinking) that was to follow the reception.
It turned out, thankfully, that the damage was minimal and The Boy was basically fine the next day. I’m not sure what was said to Ren, but I know what I would’ve liked to say to him.
Finally, our return trip was marred by a 2 hour delay due to weather. We got in after midnight instead of before 10.
It wasn’t all bad. Oddly enough, one of the highlights of the trip for me was the Spam museum. For those of you that aren’t aware, Austin, MN is the home of Hormel and Spam. They recently built the museum and honestly, it’s one of the better interactive type museums that I’ve ever been to. It was quite the pop culture shrine. The current picture of the week was taken at the museum. The computer controls are integrated into the breakfast diner scene, the yolk of the egg is a trackball and the pat of butter on the toast is a button.
