Friday, July 21, 2006

Wedding Whammies: Part II

There's some wacky guiding principle in my life that I can't ever have just one social thing to do on a weekend. I may have zero hangouts planned, or a multitude. The former is preferable to the latter, because if its the latter, there is much running around here there and everywhere. As my friends get older and plunk down some cash for their very own patch of real estate, we find ourselves moving further and further away from each other, kind of like a Hoberman sphere. If we plan to hang out with two different friend entities (friendities?) any given day, we could honestly go from Laurel, MD, to Springfield, VA, back to, say, downtown Baltimore, and then back to Laurel.

Such is life in Metro DC.

This weekend, though, was supposed to be different. This weekend is Little Bro's wedding weekend, and that's the only thing we signed up to do for obvious reasons. Since kids aren't invited to the wedding (and, frankly, we wouldn't want to bring the Boy since we would actually like to have grown-up conversations, dance, and not worry about the availability of a changing station), we arranged a babysitter six weeks ago. Hubby's sister agreed to wing in from the Stinking Onion to babysit the Boy on the big day. Since this is a big job -- three hours of awake time including dinner and the bedtime routine, followed by three hours of being around in case he wakes up screeching -- we weren't all that comfortable hiring a local sitter who doesn't really know the boy. This houseguest/babysitter thing was going to be perfect -- we wouldn't have to worry about cutting out of the wedding early, or trying to convince anyone to let the Boy sleep over, or cashing in a tremendous favor that we couldn't repay.

Which, of course, is why it was destined to fail.

Hubby's sister sprained her knee last night, poor thing, and even if she were in a condition to travel, would be in no condition to chase after the Boy. Heck, I'm in no condition to chase after the Boy, and both of my legs are working just fine. So now, we are left frantically searching for a sitter who meets these criteria:

1) Has met the Boy;
2) Is comfortable with diaper changes;
3) Can stay late/stay over/won't mind us showing up at his/her house late to pick up the Boy.

Did I mention we need to find this person tonight? That's possible, right? To find someone to do a six-hour babysitting stretch with 24 hours' notice?

Looks like I might be flying solo at Little Bro's nuptials. Sigh.

UPDATE: I won't be going to the wedding stag after all! Huzzah! A friend of mine who knows the Boy pretty well turned out to have a bit of a hole in her dance card this evening, and she will watch him. She's really friendly about it, too, saying, "Now I actually kind of feel like I'm involved in the wedding in some way." Phew. Blessed are our friendships and our families, for they really take the sticky out of sticky situations.

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