Red Hot Mutha'

For the past two weekends we have been going to out-of-state weddings. The first was my brother's in Pittsburg PA which turned out very nicely. Although Pittsburg looks alarmingly like Cleveland, Steve and Baby V and I had fun. Baby V did awesome on his first plane trip ever!

This past weekend, we had just came back from Conn. for Steve's niece's wedding. Of course, baby V did an outstanding job and everyone thought he was the cutest!!! But I have to explain the adventure that the V-man and I had together.

It was hot, like nintey-seven degrees hot and the church wasn't air-conditioned. None of the windows opened anyway; they were all stained glass. (Wouldn't have mattered because there wasn't any breeze) We sat on the wooden pews for a few moments and Vincent started getting really hot. His faced flushed red, he started throwing up and there was this awful heat rash which seemed to be covering his body more and more by the second. (It could've been me being dramatic, but he wasn't going to get brain-damaged on my account.) I took him outside and stripped his clothes off but that didn't seem to work. The limo driver must have seen me struggling so he invited me in the limo to change Vincent. We sat in the back for a while, Vince looking around comfortably as if he belonged in the limo and was quite used to it. At this point, the wedding was starting so we hurried out to see Steve's neice walk down the aisle. Very beautiful dress! I grabbed the keys to the car from Steve so V and I could go sit in the P.T. Cruiser with the A.C. on. I didn't think there would be much left to the wedding, so I figured that the V-man and I would go wait in the car for the remainder of it. It didn't happen that way. Look, I'm not stupid. I can drive a friggin Harley but I couldn't turn on the P.T. 'cause I didn't realize that you have to step on the clutch. (My Nissan is automatic.) I silently cursed American cars, and then I spied a package goods store and we hopped in the stroller and took off for it. I was thinking about A.C. for my baby and it didn't matter to me that this bar had plywood walls and no real windows. From the store's doorway, I figured I could get a good view of the church and simply walk back across the street when it was all over. Except for a few bearded and tattooed men, Vince and I were the only mother-son team in the joint. We were sitting in air-conditioned paradise, so it didn't matter. I waited and waited for the wedding to be over, but the catholics can't do anything fast, so I decided to be a good patron and order a light beer. Still we waited and there was no sign of the wedding party marrily busting out of the church. I ordered another beer. I imagined that the image of me in a sea-foam green silk dress and silver cuban heels slipping a beer with my son in a stroller might look a little odd. Then the sky suddenly grew dark, Vince was crying, and I figured that we'd better get going, as we might be bad for business at this point and it appeared it was going to rain. I pulled Vince's awning down over him to protect him as much as I could. Someone gave me a trash bag to put over the opening. I slipped off my shoes and my hose and stuffed them in the diaper bag. (I did this in the bathroom, okay?! I wasn't wearing any underwear to avoid the dreaded panty-line, but I was wearing a wonderful full-length D.K. slimmimg slip that I scored at the Sax outlet.) By this time, the sky was looking all the more omnious and the first few drops were beginning to fall. It was now or never. Vince and I shot out of the bar, like the proverbial bat. We honestly didn't have far to go. At that point, when the PT. Cruiser was only yards away, the sky opened up. Within seconds I was drenched, but thank goodness Baby V was dry. I put the V-man in his car seat as quickly as possible, struggling to put away the stroller, but gave up promptly when I realized I had cut my foot somewhere along the way. I got in the car to examine it, took off the silk dress that was now quite stuck to my body and sat in my ten-dollar slip, dripping. (It was originally sixty bucks!) Who should suddenly appear but Steve! The wedding was over! I wanted to go back to the motel to change in something-anything-but Steve wouldn't hear of it. Vince was in his seat, cooing excitedly. For the first time that day, Steve told me I looked cute. Not when I had perfected every stroke of my make-up, or when my hair hung in perfect Veronica Lake-like waves, but now, when I looked more like Marilyn Manson than anyone else at all. We were going back to his sister's house, and I could dry my clothes there. The five-minute journey hardly provided me a chance to fix myself, so when we stopped and Steve's mother handed me a plastic tablecloth to wrap myself in, I obliged. I stood with sea-hag hair and ruined mascara, clutching the blue plastic tablecloth around me, trying to get Vin out of the car so the family could meet him for the first time. I turned round and and I don't know who they were staring at more, me or Vin, but all I could say is "here's the crazy lady from Baltimore", and tried to carry on coversation as normally as possible as one could wearing a tablecloth while meeting distant relatives for the first time.
Get used to it, Vinnie. This is your mutha!