Monday Morning. At this point, I should point out that not everyone is going to the confirmation. There are a limited number of tickets to be given out, and the ex has assured me that she has begged, borrowed and done all kinds of horrible things to get as many as she can, but she still can't scrape one up for GF. She is invited to the party afterwards, thanks so much. And that's pretty much it. GF, who has never lived in New York, will have to find a way to amuse herself from roughly noon until about 4:00. In a strange city (we're not in Manhattan, here; this is essentially Long Island suburbs). With which she is unfamiliar. The ex had no suggestions. No "why don't you stay at the house here?", no nothing. Just a "Oh well, I guess you're out of luck" attitude. Not a classy way to behave. But that's just my lame-ass attitude.
I give GF a couple of ideas for places she can go (Green Acres Mall was one of them). Shortly thereafter my mother comes by to pick me up. And...off everybody goes. Mom did a dry run the day before so she's pretty sure that she knows where it is: "It's across from the White Castle, right?" Uh, no, Mom. That's a liquor store. I forget which church she'd found (there's one very close to the liquor store), but that wasn't it.
The place we were looking for was St Thomas the Apostle Church in West Hempstead. It's quite a lovely church. We got there at 12:15 for a 1:00 service. We were told that the doors wouldn't be opened until 12:30, but there were already several people inside. Nonetheless, we managed to get seats pretty far forward. There were three of us, so my mother tried to sit waaay down the pew to give it that "taken" feeling. Erm, OK.
12:45 and in comes the ex, along with her parents, her new hub, and her aunt and uncle. Wait, the aunt and uncle got tickets but I had to come alone? Her new hub, who was also supposed to be left out, got a ticket but the person who's basically lost in the area, couldn't come? TOTALLY class-less.
A few minutes later a woman comes up to the ex and hands her two tickets. This is nearly 1:00, now. One of the tickets had been available all week, her son was supposed to give it to Daughter, etc. etc. etc., the other ticket belonged to her mother, who for some reason managed to get through the door without having to turn it in. Bottom line is that the ex didn't really bother trying to get the one more ticket. All it would have taken was a follow up phone call to a couple of people--"Hey, did anything turn up yet?"--and it would have been a done deal. True, this woman could have called the ex, but it's not really her responsibility. So basically Ex spent plenty of time trying to give me the "Why It's Not My Fault" bit. My response? "Yuh-huh, yuh-huh, whatever." No point in arguing about it now. You dropped the ball on this one, honey, in several ways. I duck outside and start trying to call GF to get her to the church.
When I finally get through (for whatever reason it took several tries), she's in the mall, getting a manicure. She can't leave right away. I give her directions and tell her to call when she's close by so that I can meet her outside and give her the ticket.
When I return to the pew, the service is about to start and the pew is totally full. Yes, I've been bounced from my seat. All of Ex's relatives have taken up the pew, along with my mom & stepfather. Sigh. This is NOT a stellar ending to the trip, but whatever. I let them know that GF is delayed but enroute (more or less) and go sit down.
The service was rather nice, and St. Thomas is a lovely church; really it is. It was kind of odd that nobody mentioned the Pope passing only two days earlier, there was nothing different about the church, nothing. I thought they'd at least bring it up, but what the heck. Everything managed to stay about the kids and that was pretty cool. At about the 45-minute mark my phone started to vibrate so I ducked outside to answer it. GF was in the immediate area but maybe a little lost. I got her directed and waited for her. She finally showed up and we went inside to sit in the very back pew. (Incidentally, the seating in the back was rather sparse but yeah, OK.)
After the ceremony, everyone lined up in the basement hall to pose for pictures with the Bishop, and we went back to Ex's house for a little bit to regroup prior to the party, which was at a local restaurant (and wasn't expecting us till 4:00). I'd just like it on the record that I did NOT ask Ex snottily whether GF was invited. Heh.
The dinner party was at a place in Garden City called The Lucky Duck, which confounds both its name and its location by being rather nice and reasonably priced. They also take a more traditional approach to meals by giving you a separate pasta course. Most places nowadays put the pasta next to, or underneath, the main course, but having a pasta course is the way to go. And here was a nice touch: the dinner menu (if you click on the catering link you'll get an idea how it was structured) has Daughter's name across the top of it. Sure, it's an easy thing to do with a computer and inkjet printer, but they didn't have to do it at all, so it was pretty cool of them. Of course, GF and I were still down in the cheap seats at the far end of the table (along with my mother), but what the hell.
My original plan for getting back home involved going back through Manhattan and hitting the Strand once more, but it turned out that Ex's aunt and uncle were also ready to leave and planned on taking the train home. This basically entailed taking the Long Island Rail Road into Manhattan and then taking a subway out to near the end of the F Line. Or, they could take the LIRR into the Brooklyn terminal and still have to grab the F train to near its end. Either way, it would have taken them forever. So I, in a fit of kindness, offered to take them home, driving down the Belt Parkway to the exit that was quite near their home and continuing on our merry way, across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and through Staten Island, then across the Outerbridge Crossing to the NJ Turnpike and on home, probably two hours earlier than we'd originally expected to get in.
