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The One Where We Get Rick-Rolled

Today was one of those ‘are you kidding me?’ days. It started out with Briony being awake and SCREAMING at 01.30 this morning. For those of you words-not-numbers people, that’s ONE THIRTY. IN THE MORNING. It was so ridiculous that language fails me. From 01.30 until 02.00, Geoff + Briony + I sat on the couch in his parents’ living room looking at each other like ‘what the HELL is going on?’ Even Briony looked like she wasn't quite sure about what to do next.

My official mommy diagnosis was teething + hungry + my baby girl being taken over by SATAN. She got Orajel. She got Motrin. She got a bottle. She got prayer. And then she got another five hours of sleep. SO not enough for her mommy, but no one asked me. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

We got up, had breakfast (which Briony threw onto the floor in FISTFULS like someone else’s child), and then someone needed to drop Marilyn off at her volunteer job. I think I was the fastest volunteer in the history of volunteerism. I was seriously on my feet and lunging for the keys before she had even finished asking, yelling over my shoulder that Geoff was in charge for the next fifteen minutes. And I don’t feel like a bad mommy AT ALL for saying that the ten minute drive + my five minute stop at Starbucks to pick up the largest coffee that money can buy was freaking glorious. (I realized after I got home that I was in sweats with no make-up and nasty hair. Kind of horrifying.)

I returned home to Geoff standing helplessly at the bottom of the stairs holding Briony and saying to me that she would not nap and she would not stop fussing while she was awake. I handed him a bottle and then jumped in the shower while Geoff tried to offer six ounces of formula to appease the demon that had taken over our previously lovely baby girl and simultaneously attempted to dress said demon child.

And then we set off in the general direction of Vancouver. It seems that God had finally heard our cries for help, because Briony nodded off almost as soon as we started to drive. HALLELUJAH.

We picked up Cait from Emily Carr and then headed over to the Gastown area where we met up with Aaron on his lunch break. We had a nice little walk and an awesome lunch before returning Aaron to work and Cait to school. It was *so* nice to see them, and to see where Aaron works. I don’t know why things like this matter so much to me, but they do.

(Oh, and it’s important to note that at the precise moment Cait climbed into the car, Briony turned normal again. Seriously. And she was her awesome self the rest of the day. WOMEN!)

So you might think that our luck had officially turned around. But, my dear Reader, you would be sadly mistaken. Because this is the point in our story where we made a critical mistake. We decided that we’d head out to Richmond for an hour. Geoff had somewhere he wanted to stop and I figured that Briony and I could take this opportunity to cruise through and pick up a few things on my list from Ikea.

We got through Ikea in record time and it was around 15.00. We decided that we’d better head for home instead of making Geoff’s stop (stupid, because we totally could have done Ikea another day – or stopped at the Coquitlam location instead – but whatever). This was all fine, except that – while we were in Richmond – there was a major accident on one of the major bridges out of Vancouver and they’d closed all but one lane to deal with the aftermath. If you’re familiar with the city at all, you know that this VERY BAD NEWS. Because Vancouver lacks adequate routes out of the city on a very good day.

It wasn’t our route out of the city. And it wasn’t even rush hour yet. But none of those simple, logical facts matter because the near-closure of this one bridge backed up every other route out of the city. Badly. The short version is that we were in gridlock for a long, long time. Capital letters GRIDLOCK. Gridlock like we were sitting at an intersection while it cycled through green-yellow-red green-yellow-red many, many times before we got to move a single inch. Forget about a car length. A car length would have been awesome. A car length would have been PROGRESS.

We made it home in around three hours, which is terrible. Briony was cool for most of it, but then I resorted to stuffing Cheerios into her mouth to keep her happy (read: quiet and not yelling to be released from her car seat in an essentially stationery vehicle). And when I ran out of Cheerios, it became Mum-Mums. Fortunately, I had a few crumbs left at the bottom of our second and final package when we pulled into Geoff's parents' driveway. I think I would have used our house key to carve small chunks of flesh off my arm and fed them to her if it would have meant a happy baby. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. But don’t think I hadn’t considered it.

We got back just in time to drop Briony off with Marilyn, throw on a different shirt and some lip gloss, and head out to meet our dinner reservation with Geoff’s sister and her family (a belated Christmas gift from us). We got to the restaurant before they did and Geoff and I seriously collapsed on the couch in the lobby. I had just enough sense to realize that it would be entirely inappropriate to just curl up and sleep there, but it took all my willpower to stay upright and remember to blink. We sat there and just looked at each other, too exhausted and frustrated to talk or think or feel.

Just then, the song playing in the restaurant ended and a new one began. But not just any song. It was Rick Astley.

Geoff and I turned to each other and began laughing uncontrollably. He barely managed to blurt out: ‘It all makes sense! We were Rick-Rolled. THIS ENTIRE DAY was one gigantic Rick-Roll.’

And we laughed and laughed and laughed.

Labels: Aaron, Briony, Caitlin, Family, Mommy Stuff, My Life, The Boy, Travel

posted by Lindsay @ 12:24 AM