Philly Trip: Day 3

Day 3 was unexpectedly eventful and full of surprises, so fair warning:  this post is long!

On night two, Adelaide was screaming somewhere around 2:30 a.m., and all I recall is bolting upright and wrestling with my sheets in a frenzied adrenaline rush, confused but determined, not sure what the noise was or what I could do to stop it.  I was still half-asleep.  A soft, low beam of light beckoned me from the crack in our bedroom door, and beyond it, Adelaide seemed to be experiencing a rather Shakespearian drama (tragedy, not comedy).  Jed sat up calmly and said, "Are you OK?"  I threw myself back down on the bed, and pulled all the covers up over me:  "I don't know what's going on!"  Then I fully awakened, realized my current plight was much less life-threatening but altogether still in the middle of the night, caught my breath, and stumbled out to help the Shrieking Siren. 

Sometimes I have sleepy-time episodes when I travel.  This is not news to many of you.  Anyway, this one was mild, but marked what I'll call the beginning of Day 3.  Day 3 was kinda crazy.  Here's the rundown:

-  Everyone slept in again.  Score.  After our nighttime battles, we all stored up for it.

- More family and friends to greet!  Everyone's slowly arriving!

-  By the time we made it to the diner for breakfast, to the grocery store to stock our mini-fridge, and back again to the hotel, it was time for Adelaide's nap.  I hung out with her in the room.  Here's the deal:  Josh and Katie's couples shower was scheduled for this day.  We needed to get our gifts, which seems simple enough.

- BUT...After a week of trying to reach the church organist, Kevin, about meeting sometime this week to practice our song, he responded this morning that he could meet tonight.  So we let the family know that I (just I) might be a little late (MIGHT be a LITTLE late) for the shower.

-  Adelaide napped for THREE hours.  We had to wake her and get going.  GPS to mall.  A few wrong turns.  Arrived at ginormous mall, spotted one of the registry stores, parked, finagled kids/stroller/bags/own heads into store, found registry, not much stuff left, asked for help finding Sears.  "Oh, that's in the OTHER mall."  Apparently, this ginormous "mall" is actually two malls in one, so "other" didn't mean super far away, but it did mean that we finagled kids/stroller/bags/own heads back to the car and over to the "other" mall to Sears.

-  Met the least useful employee ever at Sears who pointed us to the registry kiosk nearby, then just rested her entire torso on her cashier counter, watching us, and answering our questions with squinted eyes at the computer, gum smacking, shoulder shrugging, and "I don't know."  Point lost for Sears.  We just wanted to print it.  She said we could, but that it only printed downstairs, and she'd have to go get it.  That made lots of sense to us.  :/  Another point lost for Sears.  We were watching the clock and starting to sweat.  We THEN couldn't find the print button.  The girl lying on her counter didn't know.  She didn't trouble herself to get up and walk over to the computer to help, until the very last moment, with a sigh and the speed of a sloth.  By then, I'd found it, and she slowly diverted her slouchy meander in the direction of the secret place where these things print.  Jed and I would have been in stitches if we weren't in such a hurry.  Meanwhile, we scanned the registry on the screen, scrolling up/down/back up/down, first with me using the mouse, then with Jed.  Still no lady.  Finally, we made a decision and just left.  When it was time to pay, Jed mentioned to a new lady that the item was from a registry but that there seemed to be a great deal of trouble getting an actual hard copy of a registry, and could the nice lady look up the registry on her computer so that she could remove this item from it? 
   "I'm sorry, sir.  What?" she said with a thick accent.
   "Excuse me?" said Jed, trying to decipher what she said.
She finally called a manager.  By then, we were in a full sweat, watching the clock tick.  The manager arrived and used her keys and pushed a bunch of buttons only to ascertain that she could not look up registries at the cashier stations.  She assured us that she could, however, print one downstairs for us. 
    Forget it.  Josh and Katie could just get two and return one if it came down to it.  (Sorry, guys.)  So we paid and rushed out the door.  We had Josh's half of the couple's present, and now we were too late to take Jed and the kids back to the hotel before I left to meet Kevin, the organist.  So we all piled into the car, set the GPS, and put the pedal to the metal.

-  Traffic.  CRAZY, rush-hour traffic.  Fortunately, Kevin had called to say he'd be about fifteen minutes late, which we answered with our traffic story and that we'd probably be a touch later than he.  He was so laid back.  We like Kevin.  You're about to find out why.

- We finally arrived, the whole family, unfed and a bit frazzled. 

-  The church is a giant, stone Cathedral, and it's gorgeous.  The inside is cavernous, and the organ with all its pipes in all their grandeur, sits in the back balcony above the first floor.  We took a tucked-away narrow, winding staircase, in sort of a stone tower, up to this choir loft where I stood face to face with Kevin, an oriental man of short stature, likely in his forties.  He wore jeans, a white t-shirt, black suspenders, black socks, and no shoes and sat at the controls of that massive organ with such ease.  His voice was calm and soft:  "So, do you want to talk anything over or just jump right in?"  Jump in.

-  He ended up raising the key a step and a half, which means a decent little jump up, especially for the higher reaches of the song.  But he was right.  In that room, with its awe-inspiring resonance, with its presence that becomes one of the "voices" of the song, the higher register was better.  I was thrilled, because I'm an alto who normally sings low, bluesy, growly types of stuff, and this room made me sound like a trained soprano.  Well, sort of.  In that loft, the organ pipes are right there.  They push the air over the balcony and out into the room, which means those in the balcony can't hear the organ very well.  So Kevin and I went over and over how I would learn to keep tempo with the organ.  It was fun, because it really stretched me musically.

- Levi came up the stairs, met Kevin, gaped at the organ, accepted Kevin's kind invitation to go sit down and play it, then hammered away at the keys with his skinny fingers.  Then he spotted some kettle drums and proceeded to accept Kevin's invite to play those for a bit.  There we were in that ominous cathedral that would try to be intimidating if one didn't know better, and we were in one of its sort of special, behind-the-scenes places pounding away on the instruments.  I couldn't help but chuckle at it.  "Thanks, Yahweh," I smiled. 

- We raced, in our heads, back towards the hotel for the shower.  In reality, we sat in more gridlocked traffic.  How is it that traffic is like this going both ways?  Anyway, I know there are plenty of explanations, but we were soooo late!  AND we still had to jump into one more store to finish our gift.  So much for getting it all done in one day.  I blame it on Adelaide's three-hour nap, but the wee one desperately needed it.

- The shower was absolutely lovely.  Yummy little quiches, tiny cheeseburger sliders (not the regular small sliders, but, honestly, about the size of a half dollar in diameter: so tiny!), hummus, salsa, veggies, and chips all covered the rectangular tables along the wall; and many familiar, happy faces greeted us from the round tables all over the floor.  People were talking and laughing and catching up and telling stories, and we were so glad to have arrived at last, letting out our breath, and hugging necks.

- Josh and Katie were adorable, opening presents, answering questions as part of the game we played throughout the night, and having their little private moments. 

- After a crazy day, you know we crashed when we finally got to our hotel beds.

With all its quick bursts and restful pauses, Day 3 proved that the festivities had officially begun!