Only my family – either biological or adoptive – could be as weird as this. After the memorial for my Granny (who has plenty of her own funny stories attached to her) we have headed out to the rolling hills of Maryland. Hills may not be what Maryland is best known for, but once you get away from the ocean you get into these beautiful, rough hills. Not much has changed here since I was a baby, besides a few additions to houses or strip malls here and there. The woods are still thick and wild, the roads are still convoluted and bumpy, and the folks still pronounce ‘water’ as ‘wooter’.

My father, on top of being the class clown, was also a preacher once upon a time. While this really doesn’t have any major impact on my regular life, it does mean that he gets called upon at times to do weddings, funerals and baby dedications. This time it was a baby dedication. We would have visited Maryland regardless, I’m sure, because we got our adoptive family up here addicted to Cincinnati chili ages ago. If we didn’t visit (with chili) when we were so close, the Maryland folks would’ve ground us up and used us instead of ground beef in the next batch.

Anyway, today, the baby dedication, was further proof that insanity is contagious. I’m not sure whether the people here infected my parents, of whether my parents infected them. Maybe it was a case of two infected parties meeting and realizing the craziness they held in common. Two kinds of crazy are better than one. I don’t know, but it’s awesome.

The baby’s name is Raven, not just because it’s a pretty name, but because her parents are dedicated Raven football fans. It’s even funnier because they’ve had at least one dark-haired child before, but this one is turning out to be strawberry blond. The best part is that her middle name is Grace, which is wonderfully fitting, because the Ravens frequently need a good deal of it.

Then some guy I didn’t even know came in and started playing the accordion. Of course, the first song he played was the theme from The Godfather.

Tomorrow we begin the arduous trek home. Right now my fervent prayer is that my parents find a CD besides Veggie Tales to play for my niece.