Last Weekend

So last Friday me, Nadia and our two kids Autumn and Jack drove from Minneapolis to Milwaukee for the weekend for our niece’s graduation and four out-of-the-ordinary things happened.

First of all, Friday June 6^th was the 13-year anniversary of my wife’s dad’s death.  He died while on vacation in Milwaukee, visiting his son’s family (my wife’s brother).  It was his wedding anniversary and he was at a Milwaukee Brewers game with his wife and their two young grandkids when he suddenly died of a heart attack in his seat.  Just horrible.  So half-way to Milwaukee my wife Nadia was commenting on how it was ironic and sad that we were going to visit her brother in Milwaukee on the same day that their dad had died there 13 years ago.  Suddenly on I-94 the car started making a horrible scraping sound.  We got off at the next exit which led to a small town and I pulled into the parking lot of the nearest gas station.  The front of the heat-shield under the engine had come loose and was scraping the ground.  Holy hell, we were in a small town in the middle of nowhere and I thought we were f*cked.

I went into the station and the kid behind the counter told me there was a garage just down the street.  We headed down the road and suddenly there was Steve’s Auto Shop there on the right.  Nadia’s dad’s name was Steve.  A nice young man with a ‘Steve Jr.’ patch on his chest was standing there almost as if he was waiting for us.  He told us to pull in and said to keep the car running, don’t even bother to get out.  He jacked the front end up, crawled underneath, replaced a couple of screws and said we were good to go.  He would not even let us give him any money.  It reminded me of the scene in ‘Groundhog Day’ when Bill Murray would change the flat tire for those old ladies.  It was totally crazy cool.  ‘Steve’ had saved us.

The second thing that happened was later that day when we had made it to Nadia’s brother’s house.  Our niece had gotten a bunch of checks for graduation presents and she had them all stacked on a table.  I walked by and happened to notice the top check was from a ‘Lucille Daggett’.  That name sounded familiar so I asked my sister-in-law who Lucille was.  She said it was her aunt.  I told her I come from a Daggett family on my grandmother’s side, Meryl Daggett.  We laughed at how wouldn’t it be funny if we were related.  She then asked her Dad in the next room about it and he came in and said Meryl sounded familiar.  Then we threw around some other familiar family names and then he said, wait, here’s a weird one from long ago:  ‘Dorcus’.  Oh my god, we have a Dorcus in our family tree too!  I am having my aunt send me a family tree, but it seems likely that we are all related by blood through the Daggett family…so my sister-in-law may also be my distant cousin or something.

The third thing that happened was Saturday night at the graduation party when my 2-year old son Jack and I were wrestling.  It was about 8 pm and we were just about to head back to our hotel soon.  I was on the couch and he was jumping all over me and the couch when suddenly Jack started crying.  I am not sure what exactly happened but he was crying and holding his arm.  He is normally pretty tough but he would not stop crying and was holding his arm close to his stomach and would not move it.  I thought I must have broken his arm so we rushed him to the nearest ER.  They took x-rays and nothing came up so after awhile a doctor came in and said his elbow is probably just dislocated.  Then she just snapped it right back in place.  Totally better.  Jack was back to his ol’ happy self like it never happened.  Phew!  We did not get back to hotel until 11pm, but were so glad it was nothing serious.

The fourth thing also involved Jack.  For some reason throughout the whole weekend he kept telling us when he had to pee.  So we would rush him to the bathroom, take off his diaper and he would go in the potty.  He had gone in the potty-chair at home every once in awhile, but this was the entire weekend!  He was so excited, and so were we.  He did not pee in his diaper all weekend.  So when we got back on Sunday we stopped and bought him a pack of Spider-Man big-boy underpants and now he is out of diapers.  He potty-trained himself over the weekend!

Anyways, I hope you all had a good weekend and I hope this one coming up is even better!  I’m going to see Bob Weir’s band Ratdog tonight at the Northrop Auditorium…and looking forward to hanging out with my friends Mitch Marshall, Thor Ekblom, and my old friend Travelin’ Dave who is driving up from Milwaukee.