...all in the same weekend, but not, as far as I know, all for the same person.

We're leaving first thing tomorrow morning for the trip westward. (Hmm. I wonder, did the band Stabbing Westward live east of their mother-in-law? 'Cause if so, I totally understand the band name...) First is a stop at my mother's, for dinner with my sister Sarah, who is graduating from community college. I would like to attend the ceremony (well, as much as I'd ever like to attend an event for which there are two exciting minutes out of 120 irrelevant ones) but it starts at 7:30 p.m., and we have to continue on another 3 hours to my mother-in-law's house tomorrow evening. Not arriving at midnight with two overtired and butt-numb children is somehow important to me.

We need to be at mother-in-law's Friday, so that Willem can get up at the crack of 9:00 on Saturday and head to a 2-day bachelor party for his friend Mike. I'm sure they'll all behave in mature, responsible ways. And I'm doubly sure that I do not want to hear stories of said behavior afterward. The brain trust which is my husband and his friends have decided that the party should take place in Canada, which makes any potential bail-me-out calls complicated enough that I think I'll be able to safely ignore them.

Meanwhile, rather than sit around and "play it by ear" and "see what happens" and "maybe go out later" at my mother-in-law's, I've made plans to head to Niagara Falls with the kids for the day. Chances are it will be a Grandma-accompanied trip, and don't think it hasn't occurred to me that if I'm driving, I could slip the border guards a note about her rampant sex-trade-methamphetamine-dealing-marijuana-growing-jawywalking lifestyle.

Sunday we'll do the aforementioned sitting around at Grandma's and pointedly not doing anything until it's too late. Monday it's even farther west, not quite to Buffalo, for the graveside service for my great-grandmother. Then back to my mother's house that night, and home on Tuesday.

At which point I plan to collapse in a pathetic, lumplike heap on the couch and watch a week's worth of true-crime documentaries and kids shows (hopefully I'm mentally competent enough to tell the difference between the two... I'm not that concerned about the kids learning about serial killers but God forbid I sit through an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine without realizing it. The horror.).