It's quiet around here today, with the menfolk gone. Right now I'm sure they are eating bacon cooked on the little camp stove and donning their NASCAR gear. I'd love to think that it includes some sort of earplugs, but I'm a realist.
So Baby Sister and I have the house to ourselves, an all-weekend slumber party. Last night we painted each other's toenails, talked about boys, and watched The Breakfast Club. I awoke this morning to find she had frozen my bra. Little hooligan.
But she certainly wasn't a hooligan at the Relay for Life on Friday. She, in fact, won the Good Baby award, falling asleep at a somewhat reasonable time and staying asleep until the sun came up. She was surprisingly un-crabby and loving the endless laps in the stroller the whole time.
It was a great event. Early in the evening, there was a lot of chatter as people set up their tents, put out their decorations (there was a beach/luau theme this year):
We all walked the initial team lap to start off, then took shifts as the night wore on. I really like this first picture, Old Friend's mom, in her Cancer Survivor shirt and sash, flanked by her kids.
As night fell, they lit the luminarias, paper bags with names of people who have fought this disease. Most were friends or family of the people who had decorated and dedicated them, although I did see one for Frank Zappa. They looked beautiful, a line of soft light stretching around the track.
There were some in the bleachers too.
I walked a total of 8.5 miles, about average for the group. This makes it sound like the event was a health-and-exercise-fest, but really people were plying you with pizza and doughnuts every time you turned around. The champeen walker (and maybe eater) for our group was my brother Rock Fan. He walked 20 miles and literally did not sleep the whole time. As he finished his 20th mile, we made a finish line for him out of a couple of jump ropes and gave him a standing ovation. He was thoroughly embarrassed.
Here he is about two seconds later.
So now everybody is catching up their sleep, recovering from the junk food and the walking and the 2am Trivial Pursuit. I think I'll go do that now.
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