The Fish Pond

Blame It All on Guitar Hero

So where have I been? Have I been getting my house in sparkling condition to get it put on the market? No. Have I been working out hours each day? No, but I have worked out about 45-60 minutes, three times a week. Have I been spending a whole bunch of time with my kids, loving them up and teaching them and engaging in wonderous creative educational projects? Well, sorta. I AM spending time with the kids.

See, the kids love to play Guitar Hero. Only, they aren't very good at it. Trout can get about halfway through Slow Ride before she fails out. I, on the other hand, am a former musician, and while I never played guitar, I can read music, and that makes it so that I can do pretty well despite my tiny fingers. I completed the easy level a couple of weeks ago, and I've been working my way through the medium level. I only have Raining Blood and the guitar battle at the end to do. That said, I don't think I'll be going any further; I looked at the hard level and just have to say HA to that.

Anyway, they make me play for them. They pick the songs, I play, they sing and dance. We bond.

And few things are cuter than Nemo doing a little booty shake while Sunny sings along with Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Little Man is destined to be some sort of skater rocker dude when he gets older, if his propensity for putting on grungy shorts, a long sleeved t-shirt, a blue flame winter knit hat and his Tony Hawk hoodie over top, and a single glove and jamming air-guitar style with the Guitar Hero controller is any indication. Trout's a bit square, but she loves to bang her head anyway, and metal is her favorite kind of music right now, High School Musical notwithstanding. And she worked and worked and worked and worked so hard to play Slow Ride all the way through, so hard, and she finally made it on Friday. That determination will serve her well.

In spite of all of that, we have actually done something constructive around here. End of the school year activities have kept us all busy. Sunny finished up her gymnastics class, Trout will finish her art class this week. We haven't decided exactly what to do about summer camps; I think most kids tend to be far too overscheduled. We are thinking one camp per kid, preferably all at the same time, and then leaving the rest of the summer open, because we will need to move this summer. I don't want to make the kids change schools during the year.

Little Man went on a field trip to go strawberry picking, and somehow managed to pick an entire quart of rotten strawberries, I guess because he doesn't like them. I went through them that night after he went to bed, and managed to find one strawberry that looked like it might be edible, so I washed the crap out of it, cut off three bad spots, and ate it. One single strawberry. Then I put the rest down the the garbage disposal and did my momly duty, namely telling my son that I "ate all the strawberries that were good and they were wonderful." That same afternoon we got the worst storm we've seen in the DC area in years, complete with tornadoes and the most impressive lightening I've seen outside of the deep south. I ended up having to run out the door to go pick up the bigs at the bus stop with the littles tucked under my arms in the pouring rain - we got soaked to the bone just running from the front door to the van right in front. Then we had to sit at the bus stop in the van for over half an hour wondering what was up because the school decided to hold the kids until the storm, which was travelling at over 50 mph, blew through. More than 100K people lost power in our county, including Uncle Orca/Agincourtdb. Our lights only flickered for a minute, though.

Last week I got a letter telling me my grandfather's estate is now closed, and it included a check. This threw me for a bit of a loop. I knew it was coming, but I was surprised at my reaction. I don't want a check, I want my grandfather.

Thanks to that check, though, and the economic stimulus check and my tax refund, we've paid off all of our credit card debt. We now have just the van payment and our house debt. Marvelously freeing.

Friday night I qualified for the gold medal in the Parent Olympics: while I was on the phone with BigDaddyFish, who was working late and was giving me a status update, Trout and Nemo were fooling around on our wood-frame, solid oak couch, and somehow Trout did something such that Nemo flipped up and over the back of the couch, banging his head on the couch, the corner of our toybox hutch, and the wall. I screamed "gotta go" and slammed the phone down while simultaneously leaping, hurdle style, over our kitchen doorway gate, grabbed the baby, clutched him to me and started checking for a concussion in a nanosecond, just in time for him to puke all down the front of me and him, in the living room with the new carpet. But never fear: I CAUGHT ALL THE PUKE with an octopalian combination of my shirt, Nemo's shirt, and my hands, all without dropping him. AWESOME. And then Nemo and I took an emergency shower, but I swear I still smell like puke.

So how many calories do you think I burn playing Guitar Hero for hours on end? Hit Me With Your Best Shot, come on, hit me with your best....

Insult, Have Some Injury, Please, and a Side of Salt for the Wound, Too

The past week and a half has kicked my ass. Done me in. Rode me hard and put me away wet. Really worked me ... alright enough with the cliches already. It was tough.

First it was the lyme disease. Then Monday, my uncle's wife called to tell me her father died. Her parents live in Delaware and because Trout's First Holy Communion was this weekend and that's not exactly something you can reschedule when you have 90 kids getting first communion (it's a big parish), I couldn't go to the memorial service. This may seem like a bit of a distant relation, but my aunt's parents and my grandparents had a relationship that from my experience is kind of rare - they were friends. They had never met outside of the relationship of my uncle and aunt, and wouldn't have if not for them, but they shared a faith and common values, and my aunt's parents were at most of our family gatherings for holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. I feel really bad that I couldn't be there for her mother like she was for us so many times.

Tuesday the doctor called to say the lyme test was negative, which isn't as good news as you might think. She said that a lot of times the test will show negative if it's too early, so she wants to repeat bloodwork in 4-6 weeks, and keep him on the nasty antibiotic for the full 21 days. He doesn't have a fever anymore, but he's still sleeping more than usual, and nursing a ton. I had him weaned down to once a day, at bedtime, before he got sick, but I just can't deny him that comfort right now.

I mentioned before that I've been having issues with my left knee and my right ankle. The left knee has been grinding when I go up and down steps, particularly when I'm carrying something with some weight to it, like full baskets of laundry, or Trout when she's in trouble and being defiant. The right ankle has been swollen and painful, especially along the inside of the ankle and down underneath to the arch of my foot. After months of BigDaddyFish badgering me lovingly suggesting I get it looked at, I did the research to find and orthopedist and I saw him Wednesday. It is a huge sports medicine group with a young staff, which isn't clear when you just look up orthos in the insurance company database. The doctor was younger than me, which is a great way to make yourself feel ancient when you're not.

After X-rays and watching me walk and grabbing my feet and torturing me practicing Hulk Hogan moves examining them, the upshot is that he thinks I have some mild arthritis in my knee. He gave me a CORTISONE SHOT in the knee, and oh my holy hell did that hurt. If I hadn't ever had an epidural where the doctor missed and hit a nerve it would have been the most painful thing ever. He wants to follow up in 4-6 weeks and then do an MRI if it isn't cleared up and not grinding by then. He also suggested I trim down as much as I can, and well, duh, but even he acknowledged it's hard to do that when you can't exercise much because of the knee and the ankle.

Ah, yes, the ankle. The state of my knee was the good news. The short version with my ankle is that I have a tendon that is degenerating for some reason. Frankly I think that they're ALL degenerating to some degree; I've always had loose joints and could hyperextend pretty easily, and I think all the loosening up that you do during pregnancy has just done a number on them. At any rate, I've got a brace for the ankle that I have to wear pretty much all the time, I have to get prescription orthodics made and wear them in a pair of high-end running shoes like New Balance or Asics which I have yet to purchase, and I get to look forward to some sort of full reconstructive surgery sometime in the future. It isn't bad enough to go there yet, though, in part because it's a mite inconvenient at the moment to be down for the count for months, what with the 4 kids and a move and all.

As if all of that wasn't enough, we've been having issues with Little Man being...well, sad and angry and violent. I've been reluctant to blog about it, and I won't discuss most of it here, but we are quite concerned about him and working on getting him what he needs to feel better. In the course of his acting out recently, he threw himself backwards into our woodframe couch, giving himself an enormous goose egg on his head. Later in the week he started to thrash about as BDF picked him up to take him upstairs to time out, causing BDF to drop him onto the edge of the baby jail playyard where Nemo was. Nemo wasn't hurt but Little Man has a huge bruise on his leg, and somehow in his efforts to not drop Little Man, BDF ended up breaking a toe.

The week hasn't been all bad, but it's been wearying. Trout had her First Holy Communion this past weekend, and we had a lovely day with my best friends and three of their children (they have seven total), including my godson. I even had the presence of mind to ask one of them to take a picture of our family, so we have a rare family photo. BDF's been tweaking his work schedule here and there and we've been spending a lot more time together, both as a family and one-on-one, which has been helping Little Man with his issues. We fishsat for our neighbors this weekend, and it reminded us how much we loved having fish around, so we just might get some more before we move, instead of waiting which was the old plan. The weather has been glorious, and I've been able to work out despite the state of my knee and ankle (he said biking and swimming are great, but don't do much else, NO running - I asked him if he realized the impossibility of running when you have four little kids but he told me not to do it anyway) and I've actually enjoyed it, and I am dropping weight slowly. The brace makes it so it doesn't hurt. This past weekend we were able to dig through eight more rubbermaid bins in the basement and get rid of more stuff and stage more stuff to go into storage.

Man, am I tired.

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The Barenaked Ladies have made a cd for kids called Snacktime due to be released tomorrow, and I had the privilege of reviewing it. See what I thought about it over on Props and Pans.

RIP, Heath Ledger

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/22/heath.ledger.dead/index.html

I am sad about this. Sad because he's so young. Sad that he apparently succumbed to drugs. And sad, most of all, that Michelle Williams has to explain to her two year old daughter why she won't see her Daddy ever again.

We are Redskins Fans

And we are mourning. I had a lighthearted post about funny things from thanksgiving and after, but I just can't now. It will have to wait until tomorrow.

Rest in peace, Sean. We pray for your family and friends. We pray for your teammates and colleagues in football. Mostly, we pray for your one-year-old little girl who will never get to know you.

We also pray that the person responsible for this is found and held accountable.

Fugue

Last weekend I dreamt of my grandfather.

I went to my uncle's office to meet with him about something or other, and then I left, but for some reason had to go back. I went back to the office, but my uncle was gone and the lights were off. There was a cube wall in the office so that you had to walk around the wall to the actual desk space where my uncle sat, and from behind the cube wall there was a flickering light, as though someone had left a tv on in an otherwise dark room. I walk around the cube wall, and there, on a couch pushed up against the cube wall, facing a television, was my grandfather.

I rushed to him and embraced him, held him, hanging on, weeping and laughing all at the same time. He felt solid, not ethereal, warm and solid and alive.

"Hanging on for dear life, huh?" he said. I nodded, too overcome to speak. I sat back a little, but continued to hold his hand.

"What I can't figure out," he began in his slow measured way, "is how to turn off this blasted TV. I can't get it to work."

"That's probably because you're gone," I said.

"So I'm dead, huh?" he queried.

"Yup."

Then he disappeared, and Nemo poked me in the eye in the process of patting my head to let me know he wanted to nurse, and I woke up fully, bereft that it had been just a dream; it had seemed so real. So real. My arms ached that he hadn't actually been there, that I hadn't held him.

Late last week I met with my uncle to actually do some paperwork pertaining to my grandfather's estate, and I related the dream to him. As I spoke, his eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, and he exchanged knowing glances with my Aunt. After I finished speaking, he told me that there is, indeed, a cube wall in his office, and a couch with a tv across from it. He had had difficulty turning it off lately, as someone did something to it and what he had always done to turn it off hadn't worked.

I've never been to my uncle's office in my life. He works for the Federal government, for an agency that is rather secret in its endeavors, and they want to keep it that way.

But my grandfather's been there.

Elegy Written in a Different Country Churchyard

The day was perfect, slightly overcast but not rainy, warm but not hot, a slight breeze blowing. The small country churchyard surrounded a tiny church, tombstones dotting the ground like they had been planted from seeds that had been scattered, both of which were surrounded by farmland and woods as far as the eye could see. My uncle had dug the "grave" such that it was, the day before, and it sat, covered with plywood so no kids fell in - not that it would have mattered much, it was only 2 feet deep. Someone had spread a quilt out next to the headstone, and the children ran and played amongst the tombstones scattered about the yard, skipping and playing and stopping to smell the flowers that decorated some of the graves.

We met the preacher, a 90 year old artifact from a different time. He had the weathered, cracked, yet oddly smooth skin of all the other older people from that town, a face worn by the ravages of sun, wind, and hard work. We had never met him, he had never met our family, but the town itself was so tiny and the people from the town so much alike that after 2 hours it felt like he'd known all of us a lifetime.

A card table was set up next to the headstone, and it held an oak box containing my grandfather's ashes, emblazoned with the brass nameplate that had announced his name to all who visited his workplace for 40 some-odd years, and containing a picture of him and my grandmother on their 50th wedding anniversary, taken some ten years ago. A couple of vases of flowers flanked the oak box. About 15 folding chairs were set out; they were all taken, mostly by the friends of my grandfather and his sister, who still lives in the same small town where my grandfather was born and raised.

My aunt sang, the preacher spoke a few words, but oddly enough, not "preachy," just a short message of comfort for those who had gathered. Another song was played on a cd player, Jo Dee Messina's Heaven Was Needing A Hero (grab tissues if you go to listen), and then my uncle and one of my grandfather's best friends, who'd known him since boyhood, each got up and told a story about my grandfather, both struggling with their emotions but making it through. Then we just kind of...sat. And felt my grandfather's presence among us.

We came back later to bury the waterproof box containing some of my grandfather's ashes, a portrait of my grandparents, and a whole host of other pictures and letters, some photos, some drawn by the children. My grandfather's wish was to have some place that people could visit, some tangible thing that would show "that we existed on this earth." My grandmother had donated her body to science, and he chose to be cremated, so he wanted the picture buried in the cemetary so people could go there and remember them.

The churchyard cemetary isn't maintained by the church - there isn't money to do so, so the families have to take of things themselves. The children insisted on helping bury the box, so it took a while to cover it, despite its small size. Afterward, we took the time to wander around the cemetary, clearing weeds off some headstones, finding old ancestors from the civil war and before. The sun came out as we strolled through the grass, as though the heavens were smiling down on us.

Later, we took the rest of my grandfather's ashes and scattered them on his land, now our land, land that he loved and returned to again and again. My uncle got an ATV and took turns driving all of us all around the land, most of it farmed but some of it wooded and unruly. We picked at the soybeans growing there, at the plants trying to climb out of the woods into the fields. We breathed fresh, clean air, and relaxed, and understood. Above all, we felt my grandfather's presence all around.

BigDaddyFish commented at one point how he kept expecting my grandfather to come driving up the lane to the churchyard, how he could feel him there. I told him my grandfather wouldn't have driven, he would have run, just as he did in his boyhood, run up and down the dirt roads with his boyhood pals Jack and Scottie. I don't know if it was that that soil, that land formed him, was so much a part of him, or if it was just that his spirit was there, but it was palpable.

Many times over the years my grandfather was asked how much his land was worth, and his answer was, "Well, it's in probably the most worthless part of the country. I guess it's worth whatever you can get anyone to give you for it." For worthless land, he held it dear. My grandfather is now home, returned to the earth on his worthless land, worth all its area in gold.

Sudden Upsurges of Grief

There are times that you expect to be rough. Holidays, for sure, especially the first one after they're gone. Birthdays, anniversaries, the anniversary of their death. You prepare yourself for those, as best you can; you insulate, become more reflective, make sure you buy enough wine.

But the truly hard times aren't those times after a few years have gone by. It's the other times, the times that sneak up on you, tiptoe in and stab you in the heart when you least expect it.

My therapist says they're called Sudden Upsurges of Grief, or SUGS, and even after 22 years, I still have them.

Just like I did when I was 19, and was shopping for school clothes at the mall, and seeing girls shopping with their mothers made me lose my shit, right there in the middle of a sunny August afternoon at the mall.

Like I did when Trout was a tiny baby and slept all the time and I didn't know what to do with myself.

At BlogHer, several of the bloggers brought their family members with them. This isn't a big deal - I did the same. But more than one blogger brought her mother with her to assist with care of her little ones. And seeing them together, hearing the women who were presenting on BlogHers Act mention Liz's Mom's reaction to the gathering, was a quite unexpected SUG, and I had to fight back tears.

I don't know how my mother would have felt about the conference. I knew her as my mother, the mother to a child, and not as a woman, with thoughts and feelings and understanding about the world that to me, as a child, a mother didn't have, because she was all about me, right?

I've always wanted to know. How she felt about breastfeeding, if she would have gone back to college, how she coped with my father's mental illness, did her political slant change over time. What was her favorite color? How did she handle my father's long absences when he was in the military and my sister and I were babies? If she were on her own, how would she live her life?

Who was she? Outside of a wife, a mother, a daughter.

I want to know the grandmother she would have been, the woman she was. Now, 22 years later, at the age she was when she died, I still don't know.

And it's heartbreaking that I never will.

Easing Up

Things are finally starting to ease up a bit around here.  This morning Nemo got his postponed shots from his 6 month checkup (AND they found his missing testicle, thus saving us a trip to the pediatric urologist), Little Man had his get ready for school physical, and I'm starting to catch up a bit with the cleaning up of this pigsty hovel squalor lovely home.  BigDaddyFish had to be in to work this morning before dawn so I was single parenting this morning, but the kids had been prepped and they cooperated, so we made it out the door and to our respective destinations on time with only a token amount of yelling and nagging reminding on my part.  The planets must be aligned right or something.

Friday BigDaddyFish went to the eye doctor to get glasses for the first time.  He claims he can't see, but his vision tested out at 20/20.  I wish I couldn't see that well.  He is ridiculously light sensitive, though, so he had to get glasses.  They are mighty cute, I must say.  He won't get them until a week from now.  He is getting regular glasses for inside that help with the light issue and make it so that he can see the screen again when he spies on looks over the shoulder of his underlings, and he is getting sunglasses to help with the light sensitivity outside.  He picked clunky plastic frames for the sunglasses, very retro; it's a look I couldn't do worth a damn but he looks real cute.  Sunny, Nemo and I went with him to help him pick things out, and when we were done and BDF was paying up (thank God for great vision coverage), the optometrist came out and started playing with Sunny with these funny little finger puppets that look like monsters.  The optometrist overheard me talking to someone else about the fact that I have four kids, so she went and got two more of the little monster finger puppets and gave them to Sunny so she would have enough to share with all her sibs.  It was a very very nice thing to do, and I get so cynical about society sometimes that I like to point it out when people do nice things.

Friday afternoon was the big meeting with the attorney to read my grandfather's will and open the estate.  It wasn't that big a deal, I think, because we've all known the contents of the will for years, so no surprises.  What we aren't prepared for is that the attorney himself is 82, and some of the things he told us about how this works contradict what the younger attorney, who is out of the country, told us about how we have to handle things.  My grandfather had over 20 different accounts and they all have their own ways of doing things, so it is pretty complicated.  We are waiting for the younger attorney who is out of the country to get back and confirm that what the older attorney told us is not based on an old law or something before we do anything.  After the meeting, my uncle took out the stack of sympathy cards they've received - at least 2 1/2 inches thick.  We sat there for a good 20 minutes so I could go through each one.  I knew my grandfather had touched a lot of lives, but it was nice to see tangible evidence of just how many.  It was heavy stuff; I had to go off and be by myself for a while afterward, just to kind of process my emotions.

I finally caved and got Nemo's medicine at the older pharmacy with bad hours.  At least they make the medicine correctly.  Nemo is much happier and sleeping well again.

Saturday we did the shoe and summer clothes run to the outlet stores near my in-laws' house (watch for the upcoming rant about girls' clothes).  It was also my MIL's 60th birthday, so we spent it up there with them.  At one point on Saturday Sunny was freaking out because she was trying to get her shirt on.  First she said she couldn't do it, then she was whining because she wanted my help RIGHT NOW, but I was nursing Nemo and couldn't help her right then.  I finished him up and told her I was ready to help her and she said "No, I'm unda contwol."

I guess I could use some being "unda contwol" myself.  Baby steps.

Sunday Trout had her year-end bowling party for Girl Scouts.  She earned 4 Try Its this year - not too shabby for meeting only one hour every other week.  I'm not sure if I'm going to be a co-leader next year or not.  Right now it feels like too much, so I'm leading towards no, but we'll see how I'm doing in September when Nemo is older.

I know, this is a boring old post.  Just catching up on what we're doing in our lives right now, basically just slowing down and preparing for summer.  At least it's not super depressing.

Philosophy on Life

We are all sick here, except Sunny, who of course is the biggest mess maker of the bunch.  Seriously.  Nemo is running a fever and is snotty; a trip to the pediatrician told us "It's a virus."  Don'tcha almost hate that?  So we are letting it run its course.  Little Man and Trout are both a bit snotty, and BigDaddyFish and I have that achy fatigue thing going on, where all you want to do when that big truck hits you is lay down under it and just let it roll over because getting out of the way would require energy, which you don't have.

So!  Here is the eulogy I gave at my grandfather's memorial service on Saturday, which went very well.  I made it through my remarks without losing it completely, and my MIL told me that two little old ladies who had attended told her "I hope she [meaning me] is around when I go so she can do my memorial service."  Don't know that I have a future in professional eulogizing, but that did make me feel like I did a good job - it's hard to do my grandfather justice because he's that big a guy.

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My grandfather was my favorite person on this earth, after my immediate family. He was honest, hard working, witty, tenacious (though some would call this stubborn), kind, and loving. He had an incredible strength of character, a man of integrity with a strong faith. His life was a perfect example of how to LIVE life to its fullest. No matter how far he travelled and what he did, though, he always, always put his family first. Although he was not a demonstrative man and was never one to come right out and say it, we knew he loved us – his actions told us so.

If he was in town, he never missed the things we were doing. He was there for ball games, both home and away. He was there for dance and music recitals. He was there for awards ceremonies. He was there whenever we needed him, for whatever reason. He was always there.

When I was little, whenever we would visit he would take my sister and me out to People's Drug stores, and would buy us either a piece of candy or a small toy. I'm not really sure if he had any reason to go to People's Drug besides just spending time with us, as I don't think I can count on one hand the times he bought something else. Once I grew up and became a parent, some of the things he said to me led me to believe that he was doing it to give my mother a bit of a break as much as anything else, but for my sister and me, it was a great time with Granddaddy.

He used to make waffles for breakfast, and though I know his secret ingredient, I've never been able to make them quite the same. He used to make popcorn the old fashioned way, on the stove, and he always topped it with the just the right amount of salt and cheese. I've never tasted popcorn that tasted like that, and I always thought I was using too much or too little or the wrong brand of something, but I was wrong. It was simply the love that he put into it that I missed.

When I was in college my family was in a bad financial position, and I studied all the time to make sure I had the grades to get the financial aid I needed to finish. Not only did he get irritated with me about that, as lack of money was never an excuse to not get an education in this family, since he would pay for it because he believed in it so much, but he took me aside one day and told me “Don't study so much. Don't forget to have fun. College learning isn't just in the books and classes.”

When I had my children, he was right there on the floor with them, doing airplane rides and elevator rides and rolling around on the floor playing with them, just as he did with me and my sister and cousins when we were babies and young kids. Until the cancer made so that he couldn't.

And he couldn't live like that. It was a violation of his nature. For me, the way he chose to die, to meet death on his own terms and meet the Lord on the Lord's own terms is as much an example of his strength of character as the way he lived.

For Christmas in 2002, I gave Granddaddy and Granny and my kids' grandparents a decorated composition notebook and a list of more than 100 questions about their lives. Granny answered about 10 of the questions and didn't do any more, and none of the other granparents did anything with theirs, that I'm aware, but in 2003 Granddaddy got snowed in at the Denver Airport for three days, and using his time wisely, he completed his book.

It is among my most prized possessions.

Right now, I'd like to read a couple of stories about his life, in his own words.

Here I read the story about Christmas and the peanuts, and then these two gems:

Write your testimony of life, marriage, and religious beliefs.

I think I have pretty much answered on the previous pages, but to expound and maybe preach a little bit pay particular attention to the following.

Just because you are you doesn't mean anybody owes you anything that you are not willing to work and prepare to earn.  If gifts follow be grateful to the giver including the gifts of God which are the most precious.

Nothing is free except the elements.  Everything must be paid for my someone or something.  You by and large get out of life what you put into it.

Your genes are something you can't help so do the best with what nature gave you.

Each day is a treasure, make the best of it.  Yesterday is gone and tomorrow can't be predicted.

About marriage.  Marriage is something that has to be worked at constantly.  The most problems of most marriages is complacency or/and feeling you own your partner.  Some marriages just should not have happened.  If you get into one of these and realize it try to get out before children are born.

Marriage is not a 50/50 proposition it is more like 60/40 on the part of both partners.  Each have to be willing to give just a bit extra.

As far as religious beliefs I think they are likely to change many times during ones lifetime.  As a child, if you are raised in a religious home you have blind faith and completely believe anything you are told.  As one gets older many people question everything and your belief wavers and weakens.  If you are lucky when you get older you realize that you were right as a child.

I have a firm belief in God and the Trinity which separate Christians from the other faiths of the world, but don't discount these faiths entirely.  Study them.  Each of them have powers of meditation and relaxation that can make your Christian faith even stronger and in many ways improve your health.

Have a Wonderful Life.

Write something nice about your family and what they do to make you happy.

How can you say anything nice about such a bunch of rascals?

Seriously the most I can ask for is that they are there, managing to make a living, staying out of trouble and hopeful[ly] will always love me and my memories.

Indeed we do, and we will.

Crossing Over

In the movie Secondhand Lions, there is a saying that "They died with their boots on." (Great movie, by the way)  That meant that the people they referred to died doing what they loved. 

Once it became clear that cancer wasn't going to let my grandfather die with his boots on, he decided to meet death on his own terms.  He lived with his boots on, and when he couldn't anymore, he couldn't bear living.

Last night, at 9 pm, my uncle, Nemo, and I were at my grandfather's bedside, the Orioles game on TV, my uncle and I deep in discussion about nothing in particular, family memories I think, and I glanced over at my grandfather and saw that he was gone.  Gently, peacefully gone.  His breathing simply became more and more shallow and then ceased altogether.  Four generations together, oldest and youngest in the family.

A good way to go, I think.

I love my grandfather tremendously, and will miss him intensely.  I will be sharing memories of him for a little while as I work to process this.  Thank you all for your continued love, support, and prayers.  They mean the world to me.