"Home"

I found this at Kwizgiver's blog who in turn found it at Live, Love, Work.

Home. I love that word--anyone who has lived in a happy, comfortable place must feel that way. At the best of times "home: is a haven, a safe place to relax and center the self. It isn't always so, never has been so for some.

My current physical-space-home is just perfect in terms of layout and comfort. I really love it. I've said that many times over the years. For the past five or so years, it hasn't always been a haven, or a particularly emotionally-safe place, but that is improving again. Still, there are times when all I want in life is to sit in my nest and block out the insanity of the world and be still. I'm fortunate to have a place to do that, a place that is warm, dry, pretty, quiet, stable, and otherwise full of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

My first home has been on my mind a lot lately, thanks to a family member spotting it on the market for a new owner. I miss that house. It was (is) a very good house, built by my dad with only one other like it in the world. My current house can't probably say that last part, but I think my dad would approve of it: the walls are straight, and it's well-constructed with some fun architectural details that don't get in the way of practicality.

Would I be just as happy in a tent? No. I'm never likely to say that. I like my house.

The Long View

Last year, actually about 13 months ago, our new director started. He had been the director at a library about 40 minutes north of us and in another state, and prior to that had worked in a couple of academic libraries I'm connected to (one is at a college where one nephew matriculated, the other was my work-study job while I was in grad school). His former library is also about a half hour from where Sparky is going to college, so he's familiar with the school. It's been a fun year of sharing stories.

It suddenly dawned on me--a literal flash of light occurred--that his previous library was in the same library consortium as the one where PsychoBoss worked after she left our shared workplace 20 years ago. I have kept tabs on her electronically through the years and about 5 years ago--maybe less?--she retired. Nothing untoward about all this, except when I mentioned that I had worked for the former director at [Library Nearby His] he said something to the effect, "Oh, I don't think I met her; she was...er, uh..." Retired? "...yeah, gone, before I started up there. Scuttlebutt says she had some...uhm, creative financial methods."

O M G

And still she managed to skate, for 20 years, leaving a trail of fiduciary irresponsibility in her wake with no punishment. Astounding!

(I just tracked her down on LinkedIn and found that she's working as a deployment counselor for the Air National Guard. Or something. I hope she doesn't have any contact with money. Then again, the military is a giant sinkhole of fiduciary irresponsibility so maybe she's met her match.)

My main feeling in all of this is how idiotically trusting people are sometimes, followed directly by sweet relief that she is far in my rear-view mirror. However, now that I've searched her on LinkedIn, she knows where I am. Still, I have carefully kept my mouth shut and never, ever used her name online. Today was the first time I've said it out loud in a VERY long time. It was weird saying it. Let's hope it doesn't conjure her back into my life.

Ten years ago today....

Yes, this year marks my 10th anniversary of blogging. Since I almost never post anything current, I've decided to throw some of the posts from that year over onto this blog.

The first few posts of my first year of blogging weren't that thrilling, but this is a fun snapshot of what my life was like then.

Life is hectic.

Saturday: Worked all day (9-6). Came home and finally watched Survivor. Weird episode. Crashed into bed after a bath.

Sunday: Promiseland. Church--good sermon, on forgiveness, how-to. The Beast ended up filling in to count money. I ended up chatting up the rest of the congregation. VN asked again, "How's the house?" She is SO angling for an invitation... ;-) Somehow I think I volunteered to copyedit the Powerpoint sermon stuff for the pastor. How does this happen?!

More Sunday: Ate BK in the library staff room with the family. Worked 1-4. Chaos at circ. Ref was steady but under control, except for the Jobs PC which has apparently blown into kingdom come. Flashing lights, power off, different flashing lights, power off, more flashing lights....nevermind. Sparky stayed and "did homework" while I worked. Mostly he really was, although Z and his sister were there for a bit.

Still More Sunday: "Can Z spend the night?" Ugh. Fine, so pick him up on our way home from work. Home--Sore feet, pizza from P*ul##'s (Z actually ATE at our house!!), Beast in full crash-and-burn mode with sore everything. I end up staying up till 11 and forcing the kids to sleep at that point.

Monday: Into town to return Z to his house. PowerChurch for 90 minutes. Home. Back to town to take Sparky to Ch@llenger Center for program on Mars. Home. Back to town to pick him up, stop at store for 5 things. 10-items-or-less line is apparently dorkville--takes 15 minutes to check 3 people through and I'm trapped. Home. Leftover pizza with fresh salad (from Dorkville). Beast is at volleyball, Sparky is dictating his Young Author story to me while I word-process it. Three chapters done, he hits the shower and then we Hobbit. He goes to bed at 7:30.

Monday late: The Beast's doing taxes--I am totally "See ya!!" Bath therapy for me. Come back downstairs and write note to family out of guilt--still haven't called MOM!!! Too late now. Lights out for me at 10. Beast too! ...amazing we actually went to sleep at the same time...course, he was up at 4... Must be that nap he got yesterday...

Today: Out of bed--only one snooze--at 6. Left for school/work at 7. Phones not working, Crazy Cat Woman calls in "sick" as usual on the day after a Monday holiday so I'm at desks for 2 hours. Nothing gets done. My desk is a train wreck, fly box overflowing, TWO carts full of cataloging to do and more coming, and reserves out the wazoo.

And more work tonight.

THE GOOD NEWS? This is my last week of working nights, possibly for over a year! Hurrah hurrah hurrah. I can eat meals with my family for a change--that means I need to get my meal plan organized instead of higgledy piggledy. Which reminds me, I have meat defrosted and must make something of it, not to mention the Young Author panting down my neck with Chapter Four.

Read? Haven't been. But I have--somehow--lost weight. These pants have been friggin' falling down all day. Annoying.

I'd love to be annoyed with falling-down pants again. I have the exact opposite problem these days.

12 Days of Christmas Blog Challenge

10 Books you'd like to read in 2014 (3rd January)

Here are the top 10 on my Goodreads Up-Next List:

1. Perfect Escape - Jennifer Brown
2. Trapeze - Simon Mawer
3. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - Ben Fountain
4. The Fear Index - Robert Harris
5. The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen - Thomas Caplan
6. Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
7. Five Days at Memorial - Sheri Fink
8. Tenth of December - George Saunders
9. Fosse - Sam Wasson
10. With or Without You - Domenica Ruta

There are 25 on that list and 97 titles on the To-Read. I'm never, EVER, going to catch up!

11 Memories from Christmastide throughout your life (4th January)

These are purely random.

1. The Christmas of the Barbie Dream House
2. The Christmas I Got the Flu AND a Sickroom Visit From My Dad
3. The Clothes Christmas (no toys, nothing fun---it was either the year before or the year after the Barbie Dream House)
4. The Christmas I Got No Books (Beast never did that again!)
5. The Christmas of Revere-ware
6. The Christmas of 1994 (two family funerals the month prior to December 25)
7. Sparky's Third Christmas (his grandparents sent so much that he actually got bored with opening presents...smh)
8. The Christmas Katherine Went Gonzo
9. The Christmas I got a The Huge Box (it was big enough to be my coffin ... filled with newspapers and bricks--with a record album taped inconspicuously to one side)
10. The Christmas When Death Trumped Both an Emergency Hospitalization and a Ransacked Hotel Room
11. The First Christmas My Mother Ever Spent Away From (her) Home (at age 50-something)

Click on the image to play along

Holidailies

12-22 -
Show us your favorite holiday decorations.

I don't usually do photo posts, but I did take a few pictures for this one. Sparky refused to let me take his picture in spite of sitting on the couch next to me wearing a Santa hat. So aside from that....here are four things that mean Christmas to me:

Santa, as painted on porcelain-ware about 40 years ago by my sister Ellen.

"The Beginning of the Birds"--a gift received from a former coworker of Beast over 25 years ago. It's about the size of my fist and made of china.

As far as Beast is concerned, Christmas can't happen unless this candle is burning as we open our presents. It's a German tradition, and this is a German Christmas candle which has burned for about an hour every year for the past 27 Christmases, a gift from FIL and MIL for Beast's and my first Christmas together.

Our crèche. The "stable" is from another set, but I painted all the porcelain-ware figures in 1994.
No Jesus yet--he will arrive overnight on Christmas Eve.

We only put up about half the decorations and ornaments this year. We could probably start a shop with all the stuff still packed up... sigh

Holidailies

12-15 -
What do you miss the most from your childhood holidays, now that you are an adult?

The fact that I didn't used to have to plan anything, and things just happened magically (through a lot of hard work from my mom, mostly). Now I realize how much effort she put into things, and I don't even come close to that level of work. And I'm not interested in it, since there are no little kids around. Sparky couldn't care less, and Beast isn't in a great place for celebrating this year, so we're kinda doing the bare minimum.

A Week's Worth of Holidailies

12-03
Share your favorite holiday recipe. Where / when did you first try it?

During the 70s we, like everyone else that decade, discovered fondue pots. So from that point on, on New Year's Eve, we had a family fondue. Not cheese, not chocolate, but meat and veggies in peanut oil as we sat around the pot on the kitchen table. Mom made about half a dozen different kinds of sauces for dipping after things were cooked, and we had other stuff to eat while we waited for our food to cook. It was always fun because there was plenty of time for conversation and laughter--and for first aid for fork-stabbed hands. I miss the big crowd around the fondue pot, but we still do it here every year, even with just the three of us.

12-04
What is your favorite holiday tradition?

I really love advent wreaths, but I haven't done one at home in years. By the time I remember to get stuff together, it's usually past the first Sunday, so I don't see the point. Maybe next year I'll get my act together.

12-05
What is the best gift you have ever received?

I guess the Christmas of Pots and Pans was pretty good, mostly because we have pictures of me being stupid with them after opening each one. I'm just grateful for all the gifts, small and large, remembered and forgotten, that were given from the heart from people who really 'get' me. I even enjoy white elephant exchanges when everyone is on the same page.

12-06
What is the best gift you have ever given?

As above, I love to see that I've hit a bull's-eye on a gift. It doesn't really matter so much what the gift actually IS as long as the recipient's eyes light up and they forget to say thank you or anything much else because they're so stunned/excited.

12-07
Time to channel your inner child. Write a letter to Santa.

"Dear Santa, I have tried very hard to be a good girl this year. Please don't bring me anything but a changed attitude and a bag of Sourpatch Kids, but if you could manage a few days of Peace on Earth at some point in 2014, that would be so wonderful. Thank you."
To be honest, I'm much better these days at writing letters from Santa. Just as Sparky! ;-)

12-08
Grinch Week! What holiday tradition do you wish would please just go away?

Christmas cards. Not because I don't like receiving them--I absolutely do!--but because I hate doing them. They are hugely stressful and a giant waste of resources especially those that arrive with no letter or pictures. We aren't sending any this year again for the second year in a row. Maybe the third. It feels wonderful not to have that hanging over our heads!

12-09
Grinch Week! What currently popular meme / trend do you just not get?

Well, the whole "Christmas music 24/7 starting in November" thing annoys me. People have completely forgotten that religious Christmas songs are meant to be sung in the Christmas season, that is, AFTER Jesus' birth. And Christmas season lasts, yes, just 12 days, till January 6. So singing "Silent Night" in November is a million kinds of wrong. [this, of course, doesn't mean I cheat every year, but not 24/7 for a month!]

12-10
Grinch Week! Tell us about that traditional holiday food you just can't stand.

My mom used to make a kazillion kinds of cookies and candies for Christmas--a tradition I did away with years ago, by the way. She rarely made fruitcake, though, because...YUCK. Who the heck eats those things?? Actually, she did like a slice or two, but she was literally the ONLY person in the house, and even she couldn't justify making a fruitcake just for herself.

I'm really hoping to get back on this pony on a daily basis tomorrow. We'll see how that works out!

Blog Challenge

I'm seriously sucking at this blog-every-day thing. Oh well. Here are the last three days' worth:

Friday was supposed to cover [My] Earliest Memory. The one I usually answer with is that I remember sitting on the couch in the living room writing in my mom's address book. Those scribbles, and the address book itself, were still around when I graduated from high school 15 years later. However, I do have some vague memories of the previous suite of living room furniture (prior to the couch on which I was sitting with the address book). I actually remember the earlier stuff mainly because of a nightmare I had back then that involved either monsters hiding behind it or the furniture itself turning into monsters. Isn't it weird that I can remember a nightmare from 45+ years ago?!


Yesterday's topic--Your Favorite Tumblrs--is easy. I don't actually use Tumblr for anything unless someone directs me to one. I don't see the point of them, actually, but then I've never been much of a photo/picture blogger. I do have a lot of favorite blogs. Most are over in the right column. Most of the rest, the memes, are in the sidebar on my memes blog.


And today is about [My] Views on Mainstream Music. Oy. This is a WIIIIIIIIDE-open question, isn't it? I have come to the conclusion that while I admire rap/hip-hop and don't hate it as a genre, I really don't get it. It doesn't, usually, speak to me. Doesn't mean I think rappers are awful people, and I'll sit through the good stuff, and I actually do like some of it...but most of it I can't relate to at all. Mainstream pop I don't mind--it hasn't changed much over the years; now we have autotune and EDM, 10-15 years ago it was boy bands and harmonizing, when I was a kid it was squeaky-clean bouncy bubblegum. I don't mind it, but there's a limit to what I can ingest. I have gone off heavy rock, and feel the same way about it as I do about pop: a little goes a long way. I'd link to my Spotify account so you can see what I listen to, but it's got my real name on it, so I'll just list the first dozen randomized songs on my Starred list (which currently has 314 songs on it):

• Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People)
• When You're Gone (Avril Lavigne)
• Ballroom Blitz (Sweet)
• Kiss Me Deadly (Lita Ford)
• Meet Me in the Back (Melissa Etheridge)
• Shooby (Nicole Mullen)
• Rockferry (Duffy)
• Good Life (OneRepublic)
• Cry Baby (Janis Joplin)
• Mouth Wedding (Transglobal Underground)
• 99 Luftballons (Nena)
• Authority Song (John Mellencamp)

Blog Challenge

AHA! Just one question because I'm not late for a change!!

Of course the question/discussion point isn't among my favorites: Discuss your first love and first kiss. I'm not sure I can tell you if I had a first love prior to Beast. I had a lot of crushes prior to that, some of which were pretty heavy, but there really wasn't anyone I 'loved.' My first real kiss was with my high school boyfriend, who was not a great kisser, but he was a good place to practice for later on. (The non-real kiss was at a dance in junior high and involved one of my crushes wearing mistletoe on a wire attached to his hat so that whoever he stood in front of was under it. And he made his way around the gym kissing all the girls. Boy was no dummy. lol)

January 1 Memories

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived with her big brother and her parents in a big house with one black and white TV. When she was six years old, she adored her much-older brother who was in his high school band. He played trombone, which was fun to watch. That Christmas, her parents took her to the high school where there were lots of big buses parked near the band room. She watched as all her brother's friends loaded the buses with their instruments and suitcases and uniform hangers and hat boxes and other things she didn't recognize. Then all the big kids closed the luggage doors and hugged their moms and dads and sisters and brothers and got on the buses and left. It was dark and cold when the little girl and her parents got back in the car. They drove home and had dinner and watched something on their brand-new color TV that Santa had left that day.

Six days later, the little girl's mommy tucked her into bed and reminded her to be up early to welcome in the new year: 1971. And there was something about her big brother being on TV, but the little girl didn't understand that part.

The next morning at 8:00 everyone sat down in front of the TV to watch a parade. The little girl got bored kind of fast: it was all bands and flower-covered floats. She checked back in when there were horses, though! Finally, her parents insisted she come over to the TV because her brother was on. There were a bunch of people dressed like her brother in the same band uniform. It was impossible to tell for sure, but the trombones were first in line, so one of those people was her brother. Everyone was excited, and then they showed a man on TV--it was my brother's band director! It was so exciting to see someone I knew (sort of) on TV!

Fast forward eight years. The little girl was growing up and already a teenager. She played the flute--mostly because it was lighter-weight than any of the brass instruments. She was excited and nervous about high school, and then she heard a rumor that the high school band might be going back to Pasadena in the next few years. What!? While she was still in junior high school there was a meeting in the high school auditorium where she could look around at all the older musicians and get more nervous about high school. The meeting was about working hard to earn the money to pay for the trip, which would happen in about a year later.

So, the girl's first semester at high school was filled with new things all around her, the majority of which centered on endless hard lessons about marching: marching in straight lines (no problem, did that in junior high), marching in turns (ditto), marching on the football field, marching to hash marks and in double-time and half-time, marching with instrument up, standing at ease for lengthy periods of time, marching, marching, marching. One Saturday in November, the entire band (including rifles and flags) took school buses to a former Air Force base where they marched for five hours in the cold, marching up and down runways. They practiced the oddball street corner where the parade makes an acute (over 90-degree) turn in front of the TV cameras. They practiced the songs, the cadences, the sheer difficulty of marching nearly 6 miles without a break. Even a flute is hard to hold horizontal after that long. And the wind and cold made everything harder.

A few days after Christmas, the mommy and daddy--big brother didn't live at home anymore--took the girl to the same spot at the high school where there were several school buses to load with instruments, suitcases, uniform hangers and hat boxes and other things she recognized from practices. All of those high school kids hugged their moms and dads and sisters and brothers and got on the buses with the same band director and went to the airport. There were over 200 people representing the school on that airplane, and by the time it landed, everyone who wasn't part of that group promised they'd watch for that band during the parade.

Once the students recovered all their things, they boarded big fancy buses that took them to the UCLA campus where they stayed in the dorms. They took their instruments to a nearby field and practiced their songs and their field show several times. The next day they got up and rehearsed for a few hours and then marched at Disneyland and then got to stayed for the rides and shows. The next day was almost the same, except this time after rehearsing in the morning they went to Knott's Berry Farm to march, and then stayed in the park till closing. The next day they only rehearsed a little, and then went to the Pasadena City Hall where they had been invited to perform their field show, one of only a dozen bands in the parade who achieved that honor because of all the awards they had won that fall in tournaments. After the performance, the band took a tour of all the floats while people frantically worked to finish them before they were judged.

All the students were sent to bed very early that night with orders to sleep hard and long. They were awakened at about 4:30 a.m. on January 1, 1980, for breakfast, after which they dressed in their uniforms and loaded gear onto the big buses. By 6:30, they were lined up in pre-parade formation all the other bands and parade units. Lots of people were very nervous--one girl threw up in a bag on the way to the staging grounds, one boy had the flu and a fever over 100--but at least it was a perfect temperature and not windy at all. At 7 a.m., the first units began to move out. Soon the girl and her band were on the street getting warmed up by the cadences and few runs through their street tunes. Then, rather suddenly, the bad was in front of the big stands of hundreds of people on either side of the street, preparing to make that horribly odd corner, playing their hearts out. They knew they were on TV and they knew people were watching so they played their best, made an excellent turn, and then really kicked into first gear with Barnum & Bailey's Favorite. Because the girl was on the end of her line, she could hear comments as she played and marched, and people were saying amazingly good things. They were good, they really were!

Five miles later, there were still people cheering along the route, though it was more like a parade at home: people in lawn chairs, people who brought out orange slices and water bottles for people who were in need of perking up. Those people got the same show from us--hard as it was to hold up the instruments by then--as the TV cameras did. Then, finally, the band was in the park at the end of the parade, stripping off uniforms, packing up instruments, being given box lunches and drinks, wiping sweat from everywhere, flapping arms that had started to seize up from being in the same positions for too long, and laughing. They had made it, all of them: the girl who threw up from nerves, the sick boy, the out-of-shape kids, the flaky ones. They had all made it to the end!

That afternoon the band members had a choice: go to Santa Monica beach to see the ocean, or stay at the dorm and sleep. The next day, the girl and her band flew home where life would seem boring for long time.

Pride

One of the periods in my life of which I am most proud. Keep in mind that these performers are all 15-18 years old.

Even though the sound and video quality aren't up to 2012 standards, watching this makes me tear up every freakin' time I watch it. We rocked; we knew it, but we really had no idea how rare it is to be part of something this amazing.

Time passages

• Yesterday was Homecoming at Beast's & my (and Sparky's) college. Sparky was sick, but the weather was gorgeous.
• Our team lost. Booo...
• Thirty years ago this fall I was more homesick than ever before (or since) and also exhilarated by college life.
• It was fun to go back, weird to sit in a dorm and listen to boys/men shout swear words in the halls (not to mention the 100 dB rap music), and good to see the campus looking great.
• The campus library hasn't changed except for some of the books moving around. And there are more computers, of course.
• We had to come home last night because I work today. And teach Sunday School, too.
• Some of the people I work with SUCK BALLS!
• Most of the people I work with are simply awesome, even inspirational.
• The Head of HR for the City--and thus us--informed us that we full-timers should all be working 45+ hour weeks until a new director and children's librarian are hired. Excuse the FUCK outta me but, with one exception (see above) we already DO work over our hours on a regular basis, beeyotch.
• Last week is over. Thank God.
• I'm afraid to get a flu shot because so many people around me have been sick in the past week; what if the shot along with their germs makes me sick!? 
• Pinto, the youngest guinea pig, tried to commit seppuku Friday when I cleaned their cage: he leapt out of my arms onto the top of the cage and nearly fell off the back. Maybe we shoulda named him Spaz....
• I met someone for the first time last Sunday who was sure I worked in the same community as him (he's a firefighter several towns to our east). Nope. Really. NOPE!
• Beast and I got to new cell phones on Monday. They are officially smarter than us. lol
• I'm glad the professional refs are back. A week too late for the Packers, but...oh well, right?
• Having badgered Beast into making a doctor's appointment to get his cough and his "numbers" checked out, I think I need to get in to see MY doctor as well about some weird new not-so-fun things my body is doing.
• Time to get going: Sunday School, breakfast with Beast, work (post-upgrade, I hope everything works!), then home for the Packer game (and pizza?)

Plant life

Two years ago, I had nothing alive in my house but mammals. I have, spur-of-the-moment, purchased the occasional Sacrificial Aloe Plant over the years, but I haven't really had any plants, long-term since moving into this house over 8 years ago. There have been flowers (vased) and maybe some gifts of plants that didn't last long, but really nothing else.

My mom had a Green Arm. There were plants EVERYfuckinWHERE in our house: living room, dining room, her & dad's bedroom, kitchen.... Huge plants, small ones, baby pots, washtub-sized pots. She repotted and gave away and farmed out and otherwise had a whole greenhouse worth of plants in the world. Meanwhile...I had a cactus garden in my room as a teen. Killed 'em (too much water). I had plants in my dorm room--the ones that were my responsibility died; my roommates' thrived. Beast had a large aloe plant in his lab cube at his first job; it came in handy when burns happened (it was a lab, after all). When he changed jobs and brought home the plant, I killed it.

Anyway, I got tired of killing plants about 10 years ago.

Then, in 2009, Amy gifted me a plant cutting from one of her stock, which I guess I'll call Mit (a variant of what the picture shows). She also gifted me explicit directions on watering Mit. I have repotted it (him?) once, and it continues to grow in spite of a slight change in watering that works better in my head. She recently entrusted me with the offspring of her giant Bob Marley cactus--mine is named Rohan--again with pretty explicit watering directions. So far, it isn't dead, probably because I think I've watered it exactly once in about two months. Two people who came to the library's Christmas party here last month brought poinsettias. The big one is out-of-control happy, though the small one seems a little off. I got the gift of a couple of small plants for helping at church last year sometime and they are also still alive: I water them when I water Mit.

Last week another of my best friends sent me, out of the blue, a gift of 3 bamboo shoots. I had to put them together (this cracked me up--a gift I have to build=total awesome!). Today's the first day to change the water for them

My dining room looks like my mom's house. Maybe that's part of why I have been missing her this past week: all this greenery. So unlike me. So like Mom. I can only hope her spirit is hanging around to remind me to pay attention to all these critters. Because, in spite of receiving my Grandmother's decades-old Christmas cactus (and killing it) 20 years ago, I haven't really been invested in any plants before. The death of these guys has a deeper metaphorical meaning. Maybe that's why Mom was able to keep hers going so long.

We'll see.

Old haunts

I can't remember if I have mentioned that Sparky is attending the same college that Beast and I went to (independent of our wishes, by the way--he really wanted to go there more than either of us wanted him to). The school is about an hour from our house, so it's quite easy for him to get home and back on holidays, unlike either of his parents who were both at least 1000 miles from home and only got home on the Big Ones: Christmas and Spring Break.

We took him back last night after I got home from work, leaving the house at about 5:45 and dumping his stuff in his dorm room and heading to a nearby pizza dive establishment that also serves up a local specialty: p0nz@r0tti. It's inside-out pizza, deep-fried. Probably the worst food on the planet, and SO FREAKIN' GOOD (till you're done and spend hours burping...).

Amazing: biting into the crust was like biting into College. It brought every p0nz@ I've eaten right back to mind. Crazy-good. Also, last night was the first time I've ever finished one in one sitting. My eating, uhm, skills have increased over the past 30 years, I guess. hah

So we were enjoying the ambiance (ahem) and watching the people coming in to eat or pick up orders. There was a high school-ish aged couple that came in right after us with her little sister; they sat in the booth behind ours. There were families and groups of friends, some stereotypical people, some not-so. Mostly just a busy pizza spot for all intents and purposes.

This being the state that it is, a guy came in and ordered a (small) plastic cup of beer. I am not sure at all whether he ordered anything else, but bear in mind that this is NOT a bar, but every place in that state serves beer. It's required, possibly even state law (I think they have to serve milk too, FWIW, lol). He was clearly already off on his own little spirit-induced planet, which became extremely obvious when he began to play air-guitar licks along with the hard-rock station providing the background music.  This was baroque, visually noisy guitar-playing, very flamboyant. Sparky and I could barely keep straight faces.

Dude then offered his partially-eaten back of pork rinds around to the people behind him (two booths from us), then made a general incoherent announcement that he was willing to share: "Anibod' wan eni? Ann-nee-bod'?" At this point I noted that his beer was only down about 1/2" so he hadn't GOTTEN drunk on-site, but he was (as I told Beast) well past 12 sheets to the wind.

And then he noticed Beast. And Sparky. And came over to push Beast's shoulder and tell him that he could tell that Beast is "a grea' mutha-fuckin' dad!" then point at Sparky and say, "You oughdda be ... yer dad's a good fugg-kin' dad, I can tell! My dad was an asssssss-ho' but this guy....." prod, push "is a GOOD fuckin' dad."

Silence had fallen in the restaurant at this point. Everyone at all the tables was watching avidly from under their hats and half-closed eyes, ever-so-grateful this guy had leeched onto us instead of them, gauging what the chances are of getting out the door without him seeing them and following them out. No one moved.

Beast took it in good stride, keeping his eyes on the guy's face, but watching the rest of the room (that he could see) as well, agreeing with him, not encouraging him, but letting him ramble on. And ramble on he did, mostly in a language I don't speak aside from the frequent "mutha-fucks" and "bu'SHIT!" interpolations. Thankfully, he was so stereotypical of the area that I wasn't even in the room as far as he was concerned, so I could pay attention to the rest of the room (that I could see) and Sparky--who mostly looked shell-shocked but was following his dad's lead and nodding agreeably whenever the diatribe seemed directed at him--until Beast finally said, "Well, we need to get going." Another minute or so, and we were standing and putting our coats on and moving slowly towards the entrance. As soon as we stood, the high school-ish kids behind us were on their feet and moving, using us as shields to get out the door at the same time. I caught the girl's eye in the doorway and she said, "We were just waiting for you to leave so we could!" Yeah, they were the next in line to be 'advised' by this guy.

Sparky and I got to the car with Beast following a few seconds later; he had stopped at the kitchen door because he had been able to see the staff watching from there and wanted to let them know that the guy wasn't really hassling us, but he was right on the edge and could easily get to be a problem if he took something just the wrong way.

This sort of occurrence used to happen occasionally when we lived in the area; it was quite weird to have it happen again last night after living where we do now for 17 years. I don't think we've had to deal this directly with a drunk in eons. Maybe because Sparky was little for most of that time, but I think really it's a whole cultural thing; people around here have a whole different take on drinking than people in that area.

Aside from the nerve-wracking, somewhat humorous aspects of all this, I just felt so sad for the guy. He probably isn't any older than Beast and me, possibly younger, and his life is so small. Sigh.

Sparky...didn't really say much. It probably re-confirmed his lack of interest in drinking, though. I hope. Thanks, God! :-)

Today, Beast is feeling horrible--sort of food-poisoned--and he's wondering if, while shaking the guy's hand goodbye last night, he picked up some kind of bug. The guy's hands were NOT clean; we discussed that last night in fact, and Beast went and washed up at the dorm when we dropped off Sparky. In any case, he's crashed out "watching" Scott Van Pelt on ESPN in his recliner under a blanket.



Oh, and our garage door spring broke over the weekend. It's been a very bizarre few days.

What? Where? Oh, yeah....

So the whole month of October passed with nothing to say here. Sigh. I even stopped meming for a couple of weeks. Thing is nothing much really did happen, although I'm sure I could've found something to say about some of the 'nothing' that happened.

Like, for instance, my boss double-dealing me on hours and holding out a promise of going full-time and then acting like it was a bit of a misunderstanding when I came back with a yes answer after doing some due diligence. Or perhaps the trip to the E.R. with Beast a couple of Saturday nights ago during which the cops babysitting the drunk next door came over to tell us to settle down and stop yelling (at the doctor). Then there was the phone call at work from Sparky about the fact that we hadn't paid the bill for his first semester of college.

There were some good things too: Amy visiting, a nice Homecoming with Sparky, a wicked-funny reunion event for reasons having more to do with cattiness than anything else, getting lost with Jen in our former college town while trying to get into Walgreen's leading to an extended giggle-fit, the fact that Beast only spent that one night in the hospital, and Fall Break with Sparky spending 80% of his waking hours in the basement ignoring us.

Beast's back, overall, is improving. Allergy season may (MAY!) actually be over, finally, for me. Sparky is doing well academically, and still enjoying the fun of dorm life. We have a new guinea pig, as yet unnamed; he seems to be getting along fine with Ruka who has taken on a bit of a protective role suddenly and surprisingly.

I really must try to get back in the habit of stopping by here to update things. It's become fairly obvious that I do use the archives to figure out when stuff happened in the past 8 years. So I need to do myself a favor and write about NOW for the future.

What a difference six years makes

Tomorrow is the beginning of our last youth group mission trip. Looking back six years to when we first started as youth group leaders, what I remember most is feeling totally panicked over this part of the job. The people who were in charge before us left us a little bit high-and-dry; there was nothing we could go on with anything--they even refused to give us the remaining checks for the bank account so forget asking them for help in finding a site for mission work!

We muddled through. And Katrina happened about two weeks before our first meeting in the fall of 2004, which led to an easy decision about where we were going. The major problem was WHERE and how to hook up with people who needed assistance. So God stepped in and sent other church members to the Gulf Coast to scope out a site. We ended up taking two high schoolers that year, but making it a combined mission experience with about 10 adults and 4 younger kids, not all of whom were members of our church. It was complicated. And frustrating. And absolutely amazing. It made me into a mission-junkie. Beast, too.

The following year we were on our own and I discovered that there are organizations 'out there' that coordinate trips for harried youth group leaders. In the end we blindly picked (were pushed into by God, really) an organization called Youthworks which has 50-60 sites around the continent that they staff and plan for every year. The sites range from rural to urban, and provide places for everyone ages 12 to 18 to serve. Since that year, they have expanded to multi-generational sites where whole families and church groups of all ages can attend. I so much want to do one of those! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In June of 2007 we took Sparky and three high school girls to Minneapolis for a week. That's the short version. The longer version is that I spent most of the first six months of that year in a state of panic over the paperwork that needed to be filled out, the money that had to be collected. I must have sent out at least six letters to the group and their parents about the trip over the course of the year. I worried constantly that we were going to have any number of problems or issues or scary events. Instead it turned out to be life-changing in all the good ways. The girls accepted Sparky unquestioningly (he was a year younger than them, not yet in high school), the college-age leaders were astounding in their faith and work ethic and joy, the work sites were indescribably rich in teachable moments, the church in which we 'lived' was spacious and had a pop machine (!)...and we got to go to Mall of America as a treat for our group at the end of the week. All that was great, but the most important, awe-inspiring thing was watching all of us explode in the growth of our faith and understanding of our purpose here. All my worries, all the panic, all the concerns about safety and planning and potential homesickness...all for naught.

The only downside of that trip was the fact that it was a combined middle school and high school trip. We are not cut out for dealing with 13-year-olds. We have specified high-school only trips from that year on.

In 2008, we took a larger group (about 10, I think) to the city where Beast and I lived for 6 years, and where Sparky was born. It was easier in many ways, not the least of which was knowing our way around town. The church was outstanding, the work was rewarding, the leaders were good.

In 2009, it was time to step away from urban sites. The kids elected to go to an an Ojibway reservation. We stayed at a school instead of a church, it was much cooler the week we were there, and the leaders--both those from Youthworks and those from the other church groups there that week--were absolutely unbelievably great. The pace was much slower, there were fewer 'a-ha' moments for the kids, but I think eyes were opened, perhaps more slowly and over a longer period of time afterwards, just as much as in their (our) service in the cities we'd been in.

Last year we went to our denomination's youth conference. It was a different experience from working all week, but we were every bit as sweaty and dirty and uncomfortable and tired as we were on mission trips, and there was every bit as much Spirit there in somewhat more obvious ways. It was a blast. In some respects last summer was a harder year because it required more internal 'work,' more honesty, more in-your-face challenges. For me, at least. I was wrecked at the end of the week.

For our final trip, we are headed east for the first time. We are back in a city. And the place we're staying sounds like the Hilton: beds (OMG--no air mattresses! Just sleeping bags), air conditioning, on-site showers!! And, where the first year I was staging the packing easily a week before we left, this year I haven't actually started packing. I don't even have clothes to take: I need to hit the store today for jeans and capris. In short, I'm probably the most under-prepared I've ever been for anything. And I'm ok with that; whatever is going to happen will happen regardless of the contingencies I've planned for.

We're taking Ruka to the rat-sitter this morning, then stopping at an ATM and Farm & Fleet for money and clothes, and then it's hope to start throwing shit into bags. I need to send a Facebook reminder about timing for tomorrow, and then I'm calling it done. Bring it on, God!! I'm ready for our swan song!

Iceland's volcano

All bets are off this upcoming week as far as what's going to happen. According to the USAirways site:

Cities Affected

Brussels, Belgium ; Paris, France (Charles de Gaulle) ; Frankfurt, Germany ; Munich, Germany ; Amsterdam, Netherlands ; Zurich, Switzerland

Date Range

4/15/2010 12:30 PM ET through 4/20/2010 11:30 PM ET

Revised Ticket Policy

US Airways has relaxed ticketing policies for the impacted cities listed above. US Airways will allow one itinerary change without penalty for customers with travel to, from or through the cities listed above during the specified date range. See our revised ticketing policy below for rules and restrictions. Call 800-428-4322 for more information.

• US Airways will waive the advance purchase and standard change fee.
• You can move your entire itinerary up to fourteen days before or after the scheduled origination date (subject to original booking class availability).
• You can apply the full value of your wholly unused tickets toward the purchase of a ticket to an alternate destination, although travel must originate within seven days of the scheduled origination date. Changes to origin and destination may result in an increase in fare. Any difference in fare between your new ticket and the original ticket will be collected at the time of booking.

The German students are scheduled to go home on Tuesday.

Which would be April 20. Who knows, though: they may still be here next weekend. Or they may actually get on their flight to PA and then get stranded there for who-knows-how-long.

Let's recap:

• July 1996--Days before we are scheduled to fly home from England, TWA 800 crashes off Long Island. While our flight home was not cancelled, airport security was freakin' bizarre. The flight wasn't exactly relaxing either, on top of traveling with a 3-year-old boy.
• September 2001--My niece Rosellen and her boyfriend-at-the-time are midway into their flight from Birmingham to Chicago when all hell breaks loose on the East Coast of the U.S. They end up rerouted to Amsterdam and thence home. I doubt Boyfriend has ever boarded another airplane; that was his first flight ever, and the first time he had left the country.
• July 2005--Sparky is on a People to People trip with about twenty other 11-and 12-year-olds. Beast is in the hospital with fucked-up discs in his back. MIL calls at 7 a.m. as I'm racing out the door to see Beast to ask me precisely where Sparky is right now, and when I tell her "Paris...no, on his way from London across the Channel on a ferry," she sighs gratefully...and tells me not to watch the news. Right.

I've omitted all the other rather shocking things that have happened in the world while we were on vacation, but a short list should suffice: Jeffrey Dahmer's arrest, the shooting at the Capitol, Princess Di's death.

Point being, I guess, is that stuff happens and we have learned over the years to roll with all the possibilities of Things That Can Happen To Screw Up Your Travel Plans.

Requiescat Mr. Jimmy

This post was originally published 6/15/06 elsewhere. We received news this week that Mr. Jimmy Lepre passed away last Saturday after a decline over the last few months, but not without inspiring many of us who met him with his strength of character and loving spirit. Jimmy, I know you are with your beloved again. Bless you both.

On Thursday morning, after our orientation (interrupted by 5 or 6 cell phone calls), Ed began dividing us into work teams and assigning us jobs. Our group of about 10 was--I think--supposed to head to someone's house to do drywall. Ed received yet another call, this one from an elderly man who has needed help assessing what was next in recovering his house.

This gentleman is an active, fit former-fireman. Coming just six months after the death of his wife, Katrina wiped him out emotionally. He has a tidy little nest inside his FEMA trailer, and his house has been mucked out (twice: he paid for the job once, and then called Ed for help when the $3,000 he spent got him a half-assed, unfinished job which Ed's volunteers full-ass finished). The roof was replaced (I think he paid for that and again had to have volunteers finish the job properly). Then he apparently just ... shut down.

One of the things the D'Iberville Volunteer Foundation and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance have done is continue to assess each and every resident. They stay in touch and check in with them by phone and by visits regularly, though they do not force residents to begin or do any work until the individual is ready, assuming their health is not in danger. So they knew that James needed more work done, and they had talked to him about it, but he just wasn't ready. At 84, he wasn't sure it was worth it to him.

He called Ed Thursday morning as we were getting our assignments. In spite of being assigned to drywall someone else's house, Ed switched half our group over to go assess the electrical needs and get started on drywalling James's house. We pulled up across the street from a nice 60's-era brick ranch house which looked--from the outside--clean if a bit careworn. As we exited the van, looking a bit like a circus clown act, we realized we were parked in what used to be someone's living room; all that is left is chunks of concrete slab and a gravel driveway.

On that cheery note...we proceeded across the street into the garage. The inside of the house had been taken down the the stud walls. There were pipes and wires protruding from the ceiling and walls, and there was wrecked linoleum on the floor of what used to be the kitchen and dining room. The rest of the house had bare concrete floors. No insulation anywhere. Windows and screens in need of replacing, standing open like the front door: a lovely old solid wood door too water swollen to close completely. The front yard had a few dead tree limbs and a lot of weeds, the wrought-iron on the porch rusty under the white paint. Not horrible, but definitely not livable. The bathrooms had all their fixtures intact, including the tile on the floor (which, now that I think of it, will probably have to be removed).

Our team that first day consisted of the following people:

Beast, Sparky, me
two youth members: TS and JY
AD, a church member who used to be a youth group leader
another couple from church: MS and LS
a woman who teaches with one of our members: SB, and her two teenaged sons, AB and JB
another teacher, KM, and her family: RM Sr., RM Jr., and SM

Beast, MS, AD and me got started assessing the electrical layout. It was a mess--they ended up replacing everything except the circuit box, and rewiring the whole house. I was assigned a notebook and pencil and followed MS around making a shopping list.

RM and several others began measuring for drywall and insulation. The other women started talking to the homeowner, who insisted that everyone calls him "Mr. Jimmy." Oy. He was very clearly depressed, bent over under the stress of decision-making and despair. Still, he was lucid and able to answer all the questions about wiring and so forth that were put to him, and gradually began to join in the free-for-all. He mentioned that the linoleum in the kitchen would have to come up eventually so that some other floor could be laid. People started scraping it up in the loose spots with spade and some other tools.

Shopping list completed, we headed back to Volunteer Village to get better floor-scraping tools, and then to Lowe's for our first shopping expedition. Mr. Jimmy came to VV and insisted on taking the scrapers back for us, tossing them into his jeep. That was my first hint that as depressed as he was, he is still physically strong.

Long story short: by Saturday, we had his linoleum floor up, including the sticky backing which had to be removed with solvent, there was insulation in most of the walls, and the guys had sweat about 5 gallons each while climbing in the attic.

In the process, several of us had a chance to spend time chatting with Mr. Jimmy. He is a born storyteller, he loves girls, and he is an absolutely charming man. He told us about his wife, and her love of gardening; their house was a showcase, he said, and people used to drive past and take pictures of all the blooms.

So, the women decided to take the money raised by the children in the elementary school where they teach and fix up his front garden: new (easy-care) plants, pulling weeds, paint on the wrought iron on the porch, a soaker hose so he doesn't have to drag the hose around the house.... The dead branches and tree debris was stacked by the street for removal, weeds were shot with Roundup, and the gardens were mulched.

We worked at Mr. Jimmy's Thursday, Friday and Saturday straight through. The rest of the group was doing other jobs: painting one house and drywalling another one, and I did some of the drywalling on Monday, too, in a house just down the block from Mr. Jimmy's. On Saturday after we'd cleaned up the work area for the day, and after to some urging from his new girlfriends, Mr. Jimmy sat down in the garage with all of us gathered around and performed five songs on his guitar. There was not a dry eye in the house. He eventually agreed to come to our camp and do a concert for all of the volunteers on Monday night. It was the loveliest concert I will probably ever attend. There was not a dry eye in the vicinity, and a few audience members were singing along quietly with him.

On Saturday, his daughter and son-in-law, and grandson and great-grandkids arrived for what seems to be their weekly visit. [They live near Mobile.] They had some work to do for him on the house (long story), and they mowed his yard. The little kids (ages 5 and 9) were agog with all the work being done in the attic, and my job that day was to keep them out from underfoot so they didn't get boxes, wires, plugs, tools, etc. dropped on their heads. They are pistols, those two. Mr. Jimmy was grateful for our presence again, for giving them something to do: "They get bored here. There's nothing for them to do," he said.

Both after the concert and before we left his house Tuesday for the last time (electrical completely redone, inspection passed!), Mr. Jimmy told us that we obviously love to work, that he couldn't believe how hard we ALL worked, and that he felt that he might be able to move into the house before the end of the summer. I don't know: he's got HVAC, drywall, flooring, fixtures and plumbing to deal with next. BUT!!!! He was standing upright, smiling, gesturing--a totally new man ready to face life again. I will undoubtedly never seen James Lepre again, but the light of his lifetime of stories and the sound of his voice singing "Bill Bailey" will stay with me forever.

Yes, we helped this man, and some others. But what we got in return is just as valuable, if somewhat amorphous. I feel like I've regained my sense of purpose, reminded myself of strength I didn't know I had, seen the horror of what nature can do to us and been properly reminded of humankind's place in the world, killed some of the stereotypes I've had about Southerners, crossed off a few more states in the list of those I've traveled in/through, and survived another 'camping' trip. I wish I'd been able to eat a beignet (my stomach was not willing to face one), and I wish I could have stayed in D'Iberville longer. I wish these people didn't have to go through this horrible time, and I wish I could understand why someone would want to rebuild a beach house on the site of the one that washed out to sea last year.

Mostly, I can't wait to do this again sometime, somewhere. But only if Irene McIntosh is in charge of the meals!

Eulogy

originally posted 11/5/04:

How do you sum up half of your gene pool?

This is the 10th anniversary of my dad’s last, fatal heart attack --ten years that began by being overshadowed by the death of his daughter two weeks later. Later, two of my siblings would tell me, separately, that she was his favorite.

Dad didn’t have a fun life, or an easy one. Born in November 1919 on a homestead claim in western Colorado, he was the only son in a family desperately trying to get ahead. His father was so poor that he couldn’t even work on his own claim: he farmed at home when he could, but mostly for neighbors. What drove them off their (unproven) claim was a series of horrifying experiences:

• A pitchfork falling off a hay truck pierced my grandfather’s neck. Grandma had to pull it out. The tines missed everything important. No doctors. He survived.
• Rattlesnakes loved the root cellar. One nearly bit Dad, but Grandma cut off its head with a hatchet before it got to him.
• One of dad’s sisters died on the Western Slope of scarlet fever. No doctors. She probably would not have died if they’d lived in town. There was no money for a marker for her grave; it has daffodils growing over it now, 84 years later.
• The final straw was financial: Grandpa spent the whole summer of 1922 (?) working for a farmer who, at the end of the season, had no money to pay him.

Life in suburban Denver was much easier and safer. They got their feet back under them.

Until the Depression hit.

The streetcar ran down the street in front of their house, but it cost a nickel, which were scarce. But every summer and fall weekend day, Dad would load up his wagon with garden produce from their big yard and walk the two miles to the sanatorium (now the hospital) to sell it. He’d then walk home, refill the wagon and return, earning a couple of dollars each week to help support his family.

As a child, Dad watched his dad build houses, and was often drafted to help in any way he could. By age 16, he was eager to design and build his first house, from basement to roof. I think he sold it for $3,000, in 1936. It is still standing, directly across from where the high school is now. I could see it from my English classrooms.

The one thing that reminds me the most of my dad was his hearing aid. That was the basis of humor, annoyance, subterfuge, and intentional misunderstanding for my entire childhood. It was easy to talk about Dad, in his presence, if we pitched our voices just right. Or at least we thought we were putting things past him; now, I wonder how much he just chose to ignore.

Here’s an example of how I internalized his "disability" (although he never, ever referred to it that way): When I was quite young, while riding across town with him, I was proudly showing off my new knowledge of letters by spelling every traffic sign we passed. All parents recognize the inherent tediousness of this activity. We passed one yellow sign which I spelled out: D. I. P.

Dad said, “Pip?”
“No, Dad,” I earnestly responded. “D-i-p.”
“Mip? What does that mean?”
“Dad! D.i.p. DIP!”
“Oh, zip, okay.”
“No! DAD!! DIP!!”

I felt as if that went on for miles, but later I realized that it was only about 2 blocks. I remember getting more and more frustrated because he couldn’t hear me. In hindsight I know he was probably winding me up, and trying to get me to stop spelling the signs, but at the time I was sure it was his hearing aid batteries going out.

That was one of the two types of "jokes" my dad could do. He was hopeless at telling actual jokes or funny stories; he’d always start laughing. However, he loved listening to them, especially puns, and he’d always follow his attempts at them with "the lowest form of humor" and a roll of his eyes at Mom’s rapidly retreating back. She hated them. My brother would perform Bill Cosby and (clean) George Carlin routines at the dinner table to make me shoot food out of my nose and to watch Dad chortle helplessly and endlessly.

He loved a good story. He would cry with laughter at my brother’s firehouse hazing stories, and in trying to retell them would have to stop, in hysterics, after two or three sentences.

Dad’s job, from my little girl perspective, was to build things. He built houses, office buildings, anything really--even mortuaries. My older sisters and brother spent the night with him and Mom in a mortuary he built in Hobbs, New Mexico. They all survived. Ghost stories never scared me because of that family tale. Another time he designed and built a mortuary in a cemetery for which he was partially paid with four burial plots. His parents are in two of them. My mom’s name and birth date are on the stone next to his name and dates in their plot.

Mostly, though, Dad built and rehabbed houses. He built the house we all grew up in--there is only one other house anything like ours in the world. When I was on the way, he added a bedroom above the single-car garage. It is a wonderful room: about 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, with four windows and a giant closet. I coveted that room. Still do. He also built about 200 other houses over the years, most of which are still around. He made a scrapbook the last few years of his life, driving all over Colorado taking pictures of whatever buildings and houses were still extant. It's a treasure.

Since Dad was always building things, I got to "help" him by handing him nails, retrieving forgotten tools, bringing him something to drink.... Usually it was pretty boring, but he would sometimes get to talking, and that’s what kept me coming back to help. He never yelled at me, like Mom tended to do. When he got mad because things weren’t working for him, that’s when I’d disappear.

Church and God were the foundations of Dad’s life. I can’t think about him without thinking about his earnest desire to live the life God had given him. He had, by the time I became aware, an easy, friendly relationship with his Creator. He also had an easy way of discussing "God stuff" in the sense that he never backed away from telling us how angry he was with God when things went badly: his business failures, my sister Ellen’s near-death, etc. He always tried to bring Sunday’s sermon home, asking how it applied to my life. His favorite biblical person was David, because he messed up so much but God still favored him. I grew up really almost thinking that Jesus was a member of the family, one that lived a long way away and was, apparently, camera-shy.

Speaking of cameras, every Easter, Dad took a picture of The Kids in the yard wearing our new finery. We have over 35 years of these photos, on slides: first with just two girls, then with four kids, then back to two, and finally just me. We’d often come close to freezing waiting for him to adjust the camera, with mutters of "come ON, Dad, hurry up!" the constant commentary behind them. I love this series of pictures.

Another perfect memory of my dad from young childhood is reading. We--well, I--would pile two couch pillows just so on the floor by the couch for him to lean on. One time I was so eager to read that I brought all the pillows I could carry into the kitchen in a stack, six or so, to let him know I was ready: "Too many!" he said with a smile as he dried the dishes.

He would lie on the floor, and I would sit on the couch behind him with all of Mom’s bobby pins, the box of barrettes and hairclips, and his comb. While he read, I would "play with his hair." He used VO5 in his hair, which meant it was sticky enough to stay put when I created a new style. He then would admire it in the always-cracked hand mirror from the bathroom I kept handy. By the time I came along his hair was white and his forehead had gotten pretty high. But he rarely complained, and was pleased to announce as he aged that the reason his hair was so thin was because of our messing with it.

[ASIDE: I tried this a few times with my son. The last time we had a reading session of the beautician variety, he got my comb so badly tangled in my hair I had to have the comb cut out of my hair with wire cutters! Some things just don‘t translate as well as you‘d think.]

Dad had his first heart attack in 1967, just after his dad died and his business went into bankruptcy. I was 3 or 4. During his recovery, my brother ran over his foot with a lawn mower, and Ellen was in dire health as well, though improving. It was a very bad time, although I certainly wasn’t aware of all of it. Hospitals were regular parts of my preschool years.

Dad had his second heart attack in 1981. Mom was overseas: that sister had just had a baby. Dad and I were spending quality time together without Mom. The school secretary called me out of a college-planning meeting with my counselor to drive me to the hospital. This same woman had, 40 years previously, introduced my parents. Small town?

He ended up having triple-bypass surgery, after Mom returned home about a week later. I ended up losing my part-time job--at the library--at the same time all this was going on. Thank goodness my brother was an EMT and could figure out what was going on when Dad reacted badly to the meds he was on.... Dad was back at work just a few weeks after the surgery.

Dad’s third heart attack happened in 1987, in Milwaukee while visiting my sister and me (and our families) who were both living there at the time. He had another bypass during which there were intimations that this surgery, being an emergency, was much trickier than the last one. We met lots of interesting people in the waiting room. The one thing I remember the most vividly is his disgust, upon finally being moved out of ICU, that the first meal was jello. Oh, how he hated jello! A gift from his years in the Army Air Corps, where, according to his stories, he was fed nothing but rice and greasy lamb, and jello.

I think everyone in the family, including Dad, felt from that point forward he was truly on borrowed time. He made a point of telling each of us "important stuff:" memories from his childhood and early adulthood, exactly how he wanted to be remembered at his funeral, where the money and important documents were, and how he’d like us to live our lives to honor him. It was all very calm and relaxed, not maudlin or terrifying. He knew his time was short and he wanted to live it the best he could.

He knew Mom wouldn’t be able to handle the house by herself, so he found a nice retirement building for them to move into, which they did on November 1, 1994, moving out of the house in which they‘d lived for nearly 50 years. On the 5th, Dad celebrated his 75th birthday. He went to church for the last time the morning of the 19th--his grandson Don’s (the favorite daughter's favorite son's) 19th birthday--walking across the street from the hospital where he’d spent the night having some tests. He had to do his prepared talk at church that morning; it was about the thankfulness he felt for his family. By that time, he knew his favorite daughter was dying. His heart spasmed that evening in the shower. It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Ellen was too sick to travel to his funeral on the following Saturday, but the rest of his kids were there.

Facebook strikes again

OK, weirdness: the guy on whom I had a Major League Crush in 9th grade just friended me on Facebook. I had been sort of stalking him from afar, giggling a little, but too embarrassed to friend him. We were never actually friends, I just worshipped him from afar--though I was over him pretty much by the time he graduated, a year before I did.

Judging by the photos in his profile, he's now a fairly serious bodybuilder. It was a little brain-stretch to fit my memories over his current look, but the eyes are the same. And his kids are adorable.

Facebook=really strange. My friends list continues to grow increasingly diverse, and reminds me again of all the different strands of life that are woven into my personal history.