Emergency, emergency...
everybody to get from street. That’s just our family catchphrase (lovingly lifted from the classic comedy, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.) for moments of controled chaos and panic. So the emergency for this Sunday night? Martha just got off the phone from wishing her cousin a happy eleventh birthday and announced that she has decided to take a few days to visit Auntie Karen and the family before school starts. (Many thanks to Karen for buying the train ticket for her...money being one of the reasons that we had been delaying even considering the trip. And she didn’t want to drive, since the car Karen gave her last summer just barely made it down here. There are no more long road trips left in its future. ) So now we have about 18 hours for her to pull a few things together (and mothers of girls know how many things constitute a “few.”) before she grabs the train in Glenview. I hadn’t even wrapped Annie’s birthday gifts, so I’d best do that so that they can be hand delivered. Of course, I still haven’t sent my sister’s birthday gifts (has it been that long since the end of April?) so I’d better get cracking. Quick, let's think about anything else we've been meaning to send up north. Oh, yeah, those heavy duty waders for Karen to wear to crime scenes...
now where did we put them?