Alternate Beginnings

It’s 5 PM on a Friday and I’m on the train leaving work. It’s been a long time since I’ve left right at 5. And there’s lots of time before the 8:30 PM flight out to Washington. Yabba-dabba-...poo??? Awww, crap. The iced venti non-fat extra-caramel caramel macchiato that my friends at work got me is hitting a lot earlier than I had expected and it’s hitting hard. It must be from all that milk in the venti. Or maybe it’s the two extra espresso shots I’m not used to getting since I usually order grande’s. Either way I gotta go and I gotta go right now. I see Cathy in the parking lot with our bags and I can tell she’s confused when I tell her she needs to go back to the car. She can drive as crazy as me when she needs to so I’m squeezing those cheeks and holding it in for dear life. We get back home and I feel so much better. Back to the airport. Not good. I go again as soon as we get there. While I’m sitting in the stall, I look at my watch and realize that we’re starting to cut it close. I’ve never missed a flight before, and I didn’t want the reason for the first time to be because I had a case of the squirts. We check in baggage and get through security with just enough time for me to make one more pit stop before getting to the gate. I sit on the toilet and this time I feel relieved. Oh shit, where’s the toilet paper??? There’s a new unused roll that’s up in the dispenser and I can’t reach up there to get it started. And my plane is boarding! Ahhhhhh!

That is how my weekend started.

It's 11 PM on a Friday night and I'm stuck waiting in line at a car rental place after a long and cramped typical flight from Chicago to Seattle. The clueless customer at the counter makes it pretty obvious to the entire world that he's not from around there, yet he declines the handy navigation feature. Better watch out, Washington, a tourist is on the road so the streets are no longer safe. Not to worry though because after miraculously getting a rental, he comes back a few minutes later and asks if there are other cars available…smaller cars…a car he can actually drive. That’s right, he wanted to return the car he got because he didn’t know how to drive it…and it was an automatic! I’ve got to admit, there are lots of things I don’t know how to do (float, tread water, drive by a funeral home without shouting something inappropriate), but I would rather spill the beans and admit to getting a freaking pedicure before losing all manhood and telling everyone and my mother that I wasn’t able to figure out how to drive a car. I’m still waiting in line.

So that is how my weekend started.

It’s 3:30 AM on a Saturday and I’m in a rental minivan on the way to Anacortes. Between today and the day before I’ve slept a total of a whopping, get this, four hours. Kinda funny in a sleep-deprived sort of way that he who has the least amount of sleep is the one driving the six other people in the car who happen to be sleeping because our nice family-sized minivan has a DVD player in it and someone decided it would be a good idea to play Happy Feet. I really tried to give it a chance, but I had to stop playing the movie after hearing the lyrics, “Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head.” Too late, I lost my head a long time ago.

And that is how my weekend started.

There are tons of movies that have alternate endings, but why aren’t there any with alternate beginnings?

Watching the sunrise at a picnic table in Anacortes at dawn:






Actual wedding location, 110 days from now: