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kissing cousins
07/02/2008 = 04:53 AM

On Monday, we had about fifty million things to do.

The last item on the list was "food shopping," so we could go right home and put away anything perishable.

Before "food shopping" was to go to the Mom's, drop off the book I borrowed (and a brownie) and get a bag of returnable bottles to bring to the supermarket.

So before going to the Mom's, I inserted, "Grab a quick lunch so we don't shop on empty stomachs," and we decided on Chick's, because it's on the way to the Mom's from our previous errand.

Due to unforeseen circumstances at Chick's, however, we had to revise the list.

Instead of "Grab a quick lunch so we don't shop on empty stomachs" and "Go to the Mom's, drop off the book I borrowed (and a brownie) and get a bag of returnable bottles to bring to the the supermarket," I wound up improvising as follows:

• Pull into Chick's.
• Point to red Honda in lot and say something. I thought I said, "I want that car." That Man of Mine swears I said, "If I was Juma, that would be my car."

Juma, for those of you just tuning in, is my first cousin: she was adopted as an infant and only just found her birth father (my uncle, the Mom's brother) about a year and a half, two years ago. She and I have been emailing steadily since October of this past year, but had never met in person.

Till just as I was getting out of our car and she was walking toward us, sipping a large diet Coke and looking, well, looking like very shocked family.

Now here's where the list diverged.

"Grab a quick lunch at Chick's" became "Hug, cry, hug some more, spend over an hour talking about everything over a lunch that steadily became less quick and more 'holy crap, where did the time go?'" and "Drop off book and brownie at the Mom's" became "Drop off book, brownie, and Juma at the Mom's."

My gourd. Big freak out.

More so on her part than mine, I'm sure, because she had never met anyone from her natural family yet and wasn't expecting to until seeing her father (my uncle) for the first time when he flies in later this summer.

If she hadn't gotten an itch for some downtime and softshell crabs at a beach near where she grew up but not particularly near where she lives now, that would have been the case.

Instead, me first, then the Mom and any other family the Mom dredged from the bottom after That Man and I dropped off the book and brownie, picked up the bottles, and attempted to finish my list without my saying "oh, my gourd" every five seconds (mission somewhat accomplished except for the "oh, my gourd" bit, which couldn't be helped).

If I was that squee, I can't even fathom the depths of Juma's squeeosity. I'm guessing it registered at least a nine-point-nine on the squeeometer.

I did not have a camera with me.

Juma did. That Man of Mine got a picture of us. Behold, a rare sighting of the Golf Widow in her natural habitat (somewhere involving onion rings).

I am the brunette; Juma is the blonde.

I do wish I'd had that camera in my own hands, because I would have aimed it at the Mom when she came out of the garage with the bag of returnables and saw what I was dropping off besides a book and a brownie. I don't care how much she might have been looking forward to the brownie; Juma trumped it completely. Priceless.

Mom's mouth = capital O.

That's all you need.

Tags: family

drinking: diet cherry citrus fresca.
watching: North Mission Road
comments requested: isn't my cousin pretty?