Long weekends with Pete the Pineapple

On these holiday weekends I especially miss being far away from family. When I was growing up it was a given that my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin would come over for every holiday, plus all of the nine birthdays among us. There was no thinking, no planning, just a simple potluck on our back deck and everyone banging in and out of the screen door.

Here, we have to make our own fun and sometimes we just don't have the energy to set it up, you know? Many of our friends do have lots of family around and aren't available anyway. Still, we managed a productive and pleasant weekend. Jo played with the kids next door. My husband ripped out a huge hedge, with an assist from the mini-backhoe that our neighbor happened to have rented for the day. We discovered that the same neighbor has a hot tub outside when his wife invited the kids to "swim" in it. We went to the world's cheapest amusement park (hours of fun for $5 worth of tickets).

As I sat on the front lawn this morning tearing out ground cover from where the hedge once grew (4 sale cheap free: 12 thousand pachysandra plants) I did have plenty of company. Every person who passed had a friendly comment or at least a few words of commiseration.

At the dinner table we took turns telling stories about Pete the Pineapple and his unfortunate demise (we were eating grilled pineapple at the time [oops, so much for locally sourced food]). Jo had the best twist, when she turned Pete into a secret agent who went back to the store to warn the other pineapples about the dastardly family who'd almost turned him into a tasty dessert.

I hope your weekend was much better than Pete's.