Life's been good to me so far

It's funny how wholesome and nurturing I can feel for providing tons of carbs and sugar to my kids, that I don't actually think are objectively good. Tonight I laid out a loaf of italian bread on some racks to get stale for french toast in the morning, baked an apple pie that we'll have for tea tomorrow afternoon, and baked brownies and then bagged them up to go with school lunches throughout the week. So motherly; so organized; so diabetic.

We did have a high protein dinner?

I've really loved our long Thanksgiving weekend. Every little bit of it. It went about as good as it possibly could have in just about every way. Weather cool to cold with a breeze and clear skies, food all turned out yummy... My mother actually seemed happy almost all of the time - happier than I've seen her in years. My Dad made it, which was in question (we basically always have good visits when he comes). He got along with my mom, and it's hilarious how the two of them kept pulling me aside to tell me HOW OLD the other one is looking.

Counseling has done wonders for my ability to NOT be emotionally exhausted by being around my mom. There was a moment when my sister and I were sitting on my deck swing, and I gestured toward what had been the fire, out in the yard - "Is that smoking again?" My mom turned around from her spot off to the right, holding a cigarette, and defensively said, "This is only my second one all day!" We laughed until we cried.

My brother and his girlfriend were semi-social and rarely dramatic. They even played Apples to Apples with my mom and a rotating group of kids for about 2 hours, one afternoon. Shaun and Cristy came, loved the food, told me interesting things about the art world and attacked us with silly string.

I stayed up late and slept in, with nowhere outside the house to be, for several days in a row. That in itself really seems like a miracle. Grant is still somewhat depressed, but was absolutely heroic as a facilitator - doing everything from multiple loads of dishes for days as I continuously cooked, to setting up and breaking down projector movie night for a big group of kids, and running out for takeout at 3 different places one evening. And, we had a pretty sweet date, today.

Aaron is coming out of a short phase of being depressed, and it's awesome. I love it when he's just bubbly and happy. I think he's going to struggle back and forth throughout his life. He never stops talking and trying to connect, which seems crucial to me. We stayed up really late alone last night, watching an SNL Thanksgiving Special on Hulu and laughing our heads off. There have been a lot of cuddle piles with kids, one notable one with ALL of my kids, which is increasingly rare.

I posted some highlights.

The only off point is that I've felt uncomfortably bloated or had some kind of vague indigestion for about 5 solid days now. I think I've just splurged on nonstop dairy and fattening rich bs, and eaten way too MUCH (I give myself a break from Weight Watchers for holidays). It's also been a pretty sedentary time. My body will be happy to return to it's previous lifestyle.

Additional glitch: my mom put our electric kettle on the stove, and then went back outside with all of us, figuring she'd go check on it in 10 minutes. Luckily, I went in for something else after just 4 or 5, at which point there was already smoke billowing everywhere and sparks were flying. I lunged to turn off the stove and grab the kettle off the burner - the bottom of it had melted to the point that it fell off as I picked it up, and much of it fell to the floor as a tarry black mess that splattered the cabinets. The thing in my hand had exposed wires throwing sparks at that point, and the stuff left on the burner burst into flames.

After some smothering, an evacuation period with fans, lots of razor scraping and some magic eraser-ing, we were left with a good story and a terribly guilt stricken grandma. I tried to assure her it is ok and everyone makes mistakes, and I tried not to tell her - when she said her phone was dying - to please not charge it in the toaster oven. She was mostly able to joke about how this is going to be one of those things she never lives down, like when she lit her hair on fire trying to light her cigarette, when I was 10. Or when she accidentally took a sip of her bottle of ashes-in-water, a couple of years ago. But come on, who even remembers that stuff?

We started "the Christmas season" all at once, as of last night. With Christmas pandora in the evening, Christmas movies to fall asleep in front of with bedding on the floor at night, and then today we all went and got a tree. I wholeheartedly love this time of year.

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We are definitely back to the grind, tomorrow. After the french toast and drop offs, I'm going in the little kids' school in the morning with field trip money, and holiday show ticket money, and a letter withdrawing Elise (that's a long story for another entry, maybe). I have to write a letter to the school board re-establishing her as homeschooled, and do schoolwork with her, obviously, like we started last Mon-Wed. I've got a special trip planned for us. After school, Aaron has an allergist appointment and I have a homework date with Jake. If we have time, we will decorate our hedges and make a big ol' batch of gingerbread dough to turn into tree ornaments. All that may end up pushed back to next weekend, which is fine.

Note: we finally got around to renewing our picture hosting domain, so I will actually put pictures here sometimes, too. It's still harder than tumblr or facebook makes it, but it will at least be possible again :)

I talked to my Dad on the phone for the first time in awhile, tonight. It was good, and terrible, and...really fucking awful.

I just don't understand how my parents have painted themselves into such corners, and are falling apart to such a degree. It makes me sad for them, and sad that they aren't available to my kids as grandparents, and terrified that I don't want to ever be in the sort of positions they are :/

I don't know how you can just not consider going back to school or trying out a different industry, year after miserable struggling year, not eventually think to prioritize dental care as things deteriorate, not even contemplate counseling as decades pass and you get more and more muddled up and avoidant about all sorts of things.

My Dad has got approximately 4 teeth left. He's worried that he feels sick a lot of the time partially from decayed pieces of teeth gone by, that are still in his gums. He's embarrassed. He doesn't have any insurance - health or dental - and he lives paycheck to paycheck in a way that's very dependent on tourist (and hurricane) season. He's viciously dreading Obamacare because he works as an independent contractor - and hasn't filed taxes in over 10 years.

My Dad is only 53, guys. His arthritis is terrible, and he's never had any treatment or meds for it aside from self medicating (he was diagnosed at 20), and...oh God I just don't even know how to deal with it. He's living in near isolation and sees no light at the end of the tunnel. He absolutely will not accept help of any kind from me, either - even right after we got the settlement when I tried to gift him with something he'd wanted for a long time, he refused, and to this day if I mention ANYTHING the kids need or that costs more than I expected during our conversations, he says, "Aren't you glad you didn't spend that money on me?" :x

He is still him, with all these visible and invisible issues, and he wants to tell me hilarious stories that really make me laugh, and he sounds like he sounded when I was little - meaning, strong. Invincible. Really, really smart.

There are good things, my Dad has a few things - he lives on a canal his boat is parked in, so he can take it out whenever he wants and he gets a lot out of that. That sounds really glamorous, ok, but anyone can have an old, used boat in the keys and the canals are NOT glamorous where he is. I mean he literally has a 700 square foot duplex he's in with his girlfriend, and a car that breaks down parked out front, and lives on a canal with a boat, just like everybody else in the neighborhood. He's a mechanic and works on it himself. I'm just saying, it makes me happy that there are a few ways in which he is still living his life. He really seems to enjoy his job, too, which is kinda perfect for him.

He just also has this shame, about being broke (regardless of what I say about how I could give a shit less how much money anyone has) and his health, and the brokeness and the health also truly limit his options, and so we almost never see him :/ I feel like he is the person who taught me to advocate for myself, whether in fighting my way through the financial aid office and appeals process to go back to school or hunting down resources for my kids...but the whole concept of him advocating for himself seems too foreign. He truly acts like I just don't get it, and/or am living in a dream world, when I suggest options or avenues for him to improve any aspect of his life. It's so heavy, to think of what it must feel like to be really sad about all sorts of things that you've also just given up on ever improving.


My mother was recently diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), i.e., the precursor to emphysema. This explains her quarterly ER trips for bronchitis, and her need for albuterol (as a non-asthmatic person) to always be nearby, and has in no way slowed down her smoking. It's an interesting combo, to go with the Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIA)s, or pre/mini strokes, she's had several times in the last few years. She does not exercise in even minor ways, and barely eats food. Really - one small meal or two snacks in a day feel like a lot, to her.

My mother is 49, ya'll. She's the age many of my kids' friends' parents are - and my kids' friends parents are vibrantly healthy people who take vacations, join yoga classes, knit things, have social lives and/or church communities...my mom lives in this teeny tiny place, in a crime ridden yet rural area, with a car always on the verge of breaking down. She has this night shift security job she's struggled by with for the past 5 or more years, where there is no opportunity for advancement. She reads the Twilight books over, and over, and OVER in a way that is probably not ok.


When I was growing up, my various houses (we moved...a lot) could be pretty terrible, but my grandparents were all very good, and actively engaged grandparents. My Dad's parents had some health issues at times, and didn't work, but they lived on their own, had enough money to get us (small) birthday and Christmas presents and leave $20 bills under our pillow if we lost a tooth while we were visiting overnight. They left baggies full of quarters around "from the Easter Bunny." They came along on Disney World trips, when I was little. They cooked us delicious meals and read us stories, when we stayed with them for weeks at a time. Took us in their above ground pool and on their riding lawn mower. We crouched in their windows at dawn with them, watching for deer and rabbits. I have nothing but good memories.

My mother's mom and stepdad (her "real" dad was the "pirate" - read, "international drug smuggler" I'm descended from), who were married from before my birth, both worked full-time until about 5 years ago. They always provided huge Christmas Eve celebrations for the family, including my own children for quite awhile. Laura and I spent every weekend there, as little kids, and weeks of the summer later on. When my mom checked out, that was where each of us ended up living for our high school years. I was driving Nana's car when I learned to drive, on the weekends, and they got me my own phone line and just...

I heard all kinds of stories, from my parents, about how their parents were shitty when they were young. Inconsistent, borderline neglectful, functioning alcoholics, broke as hell, etc etc. What I inferred as the natural order of things, is that people may be kinda derelict, as young parents, but then they get it together enough to take care of themselves, and pick up the grandkid slack, at some point in middle age. This seemed to be the way of the world, a pattern that could be counted on. My various stepdads and their parents seemed to follow this same trend - adults who played too many video games, smoked too much weed, got fired a lot...and their parents, older people who owned homes others could go back to in times of need, and never yelled at children who came over, despite the terrible abuse of yore that would be referenced at times. A need to size up in bras, or to get braces or have wisdom teeth pulled, was something taken to grandparents for review, when I was a kid.


The point is, my parents have not held up their end of this bargain at all. They eagerly accepted the help from their own parents, and talked shit about how their parents had sucked back in the day, and then they just kept on being total derelicts with no self-awareness, once we were grown. I mean. Do you know what I mean?

Grant's parents are not in much better shape, healthwise, though they are engaged grandparents and fully realized human beings - by which I mean, they have friends, and interests, and hobbies, and are living their lives. "Opa" provided half a house for us to live in for 5 years, too, allowing me to stay home with babies and toddlers while Grant built his resume, which is (beyond WAY above and beyond) priceless and lovely and I will never be able to adequately thank him for it. Oma has always been a great place to visit, a sure call and card on birthdays, she stayed with them all while we went out of town to Maryland in August. More importantly, since those kids needed them so much more, they have full on RAISED my sister in law's kids from day 1 of their lives - which has often been an awful lot of very complicated work.

So, I don't mean it as any reflection on their characters, when I say that it is still so scary and awful, what poor health they're in, and how totally without financial resources they are :/ My mother in law has a degenerative bone condition that causes chronic pain and a gradual loss of mobility. She and her husband have also been utterly financially devastated by him getting cancer, losing his business as a result, etc. They're in such a vulnerable position...my father in law has untreated back issues that nobody knew were debilitating him to the degree they apparently have been for a decade, until very recently. The amazing government job he had for a long long time, is no more.

Both of them, like my parents, have moved hundreds of miles away in recent years, and so are not at all easy to help out. There is also a scary, fast-forward effect, wherein more times passes between visits and thus their aging seems to happen in rapid fits and starts since they've moved. Grant and I have rarely gotten used to how old any of them looked the LAST visit, before we're seeing them again and it's progressed...

His parents are early 50s, too. It makes me wonder if maybe that's just how it is - time, and our bodies gradually falling apart.


My sister is really angry about how uninvolved our father is with our children. She remembers how great HIS dad was with us, and wants that for our kids. I get it, I really do, and I also think about it sometimes - but I don't feel mad at him. I feel like our kids (Laura's and mine) are in a totally different situation than she and I were, and NEED external relatives so, so much less. WE read to our own kids, and look at animals together, and take them swimming ourselves, and buy them their bras and their braces...they're safe, at home. They would love him, and they do love him, when he's around, but. Their lives are full, either way. Likewise with how my mother beats herself up semi-annually and vows in a passionate way to be more involved as a grandmother. I just kinda smile and nod. It's not something I'm very invested in. They don't really notice her coming and going.

My anger towards the both of them is more like, "WHAT THE FRESH HELL IS YOU FOOL'S PLAN, for 10 years down the line when you're utterly incapacitated? You're just gonna leave it in my hands, to either take your care on full time or put you in some state run, Medicare type home somewhere? Drink some water, put on some supportive shoes and go for a walk, and start repairing your credit, you assholes!"

That is partially me railing at mortality, and inevitability, as I am wont to do. Mom, Dad and the Grim Reaper all collectively piss me off.

I don't want them to die. Even more than that, I don't want them tottering around suffering and decrepit for long, torturous decades that are not much of a life.


I have these beacons, these inspirations that I look to as role models (and for hope).

Nancy is one. 65, travelling, attending births, speaking at conferences, working on her next book. She gets up every single day and walks or swims for 30 minutes. She has a great haircut, can laugh at Louis CK and is always searching for new music. Her clothes are mostly from Etsy. She really listens, when people talk. Nancy's bringing her mother (who lives alone, drives, etc) to our house for Thanksgiving.

Our pediatrician is another. He's 70, and spends every summer in South America doing charity work and care for brain injured kids. He moves with purpose and energy but stops and takes his very patient time with everyone who comes to see him. He and his wife have adopted over a dozen special needs kids over the years. His jeans are ripped up and he has a long rat tail and the embossed wooden sign hanging out in the strip mall outside his office says, "Dr Spiderman." I was actually shocked to learn his age just a couple of months ago, after going to him for many years and several kids, and then thought, oh yeah. Liver spots on the hands. Around his eyes. I can see it.

I think about my Cuban great grandmother, my Abuela, jogging around the island each morning into her 90s.


I am very aware of how much I'd like to age well - meaning, with tears and laughter but not bitterness or denial, without too much loss of mobility, with introspection and honesty. I would choose pain over loss of cognition, given the choice (which nobody is). Financial security, at least enough to cover essentials like my Nana and Pa have, would be nice.

One thing my "pirate" grandfather had that I think is enviable, is a quick death following a life lived just as he wanted it to be. The man drank all his waking hours, slept on couches (and boats) all over town, told jokes, collected stories, had affairs, got high, hung out with his dog and so forth literally until the night before his liver quit and then he spent a few unconscious hours puking up blood, and died without waking up.

My Nana, by contrast, my poor Nana, following surgery gone wrong, has been wearing diapers and struggling to discern reality from hallucinations for 4 years now, as people spoon feed her in the bed she can't get out of :/ I love her, but she can't stand to have us around and I can't help but wonder at times whether she would have wanted it this way, if she'd had a choice (which nobody does).

Both of them were, I believe, 62 years old - his death, her strokes. It was the same year. They were only 15, when my mother was born. My mother's stepdad, my Pa since I was born, is 80 and caring for Nana. He's starting to fall apart, now, but it's very recent and obviously somewhat related to the enormous burden of her care. All throughout his 60s and early 70s he was walking, dreaming, doing yard work, telling old stories, planning and executing their vacations. He took us out to see hot air balloons take off at dawn, and drug us to hot, bright, dusty things I didn't care too much about (rodeos, air shows with the Blue Angels) that were still better that NOT seeing things or going places. The world has always been very big to him, since he traveled all over it for most of his life before he married my Nana as a retiree and started a kind of second life.

I suppose the lesson to take from every really vital and with it old person I could aspire to be like is, MOVE YOUR BODY AROUND. Every day. Get out of the chair, up off the couch, etc. Keep learning, yes, and keep feeling and communicating, but also keep moving. It's mandatory.


It is so past my bedtime.

It's hard to finish entries these days. Sometimes I just give up and post the partials a few days later, like now:



I keep getting hit with these weird examples of getting disproportionately upset about something and then realizing I'm making it about me in an unconscious way that is totally irrational.

Exhibit A: Isaac and Elise got to school AT 8:30 (which is when school starts) on Monday and Tuesday this week, which means that by the time they got to their classrooms they were a couple of minutes late - probably almost 5 for Elise since her class is across the campus from the drop off line. She told me last night that her teacher is lecturing her on not being late and she feels like she's in trouble in front of the class before she can sit down. I GOT SO PISSED ABOUT THIS. I understand being late is a disruption, but why in the hell would you penalize a 5 year old? Does this woman think Elise chooses when to get up and how to get ready and then drives herself to school? Rather than shaming her in front of the class, why not send a note home in her folder talking to me about it, since it's obviously completely up to me? Anyway, yeah, I was considering nasty emails and thinking about feeding Elise rude rebuttals and had to stop and be like, ok. Simmer down you weirdo. This is totally about how I was always late and often absent, never had necessary supplies or forms, and was constantly in trouble for all of it as a kid, and consistently felt penalized and shamed for things beyond my control (because, I assure you, attendance and punctuality and art projects were not on my mother's list of priorities). Sigh. They got there early today, as per usual, and I'm considering whether or not it's even worth bringing up in any context.

Exhibit B: Robby - who is my 17 year old nephew, for those who may have forgotten - is in something of a crisis up in North Florida where they live. Basically (Robby is gay), he's fallen in love with this guy and he moved out of my mother in law's place (he dropped out of school awhile back and was supposed to either be getting a GED or going to JobCorps) to live with the boyfriend at his parents' house. They've been adorably happy in this totally unsustainable way, that involves neither of them working or going to school or being awake during the day. I've never seen him in a steady relationship that lasts more than a couple of weeks (it's already been months) and that's great, but the boyfriend's mom moved out and away and pretty much abandoned them there. I don't know the whole story, obviously, I was getting all of this in dribs and drabs because now they need a place to go. My mother in law has given them money and food a couple of times but they just burn right through it. She says Robby can come back and stay with her anytime, but not the boyfriend - and in a way I get that because Robby has snuck him in against her wishes before, and he has burned her in the past with friends taking advantage (I really don't THINK this is about it being another guy). But in our talks about it, as some kind of proof that the boyfriend is questionable or whatever, she said to me, "Tina his mom just up and LEFT? What does that tell you about this family? I mean what kind of kid is this that his mom just leaves him?"

This is my Deep Breathing moment...Robby's mom is in jail. My mom just up and left me, when I was 15, and I was lucky enough to have grandparents to stay with. Just. Ugh. It just put me in this whole fit of wanting to say COME AND LIVE WITH ME ROBBY DON'T DEAL WITH THIS INJUSTICE, COME BE LOVERS AND BE HAPPY AND EAT THE FOOD I COOK - when really this is not so simple, the two of them do drugs (partying sometimes, not addicts, but uh uh), they obviously need to get some motivation to start providing for themselves, Teresa has actually been unnecessarily accommodating and supportive in many ways and still has the twins there in her house, and I get where she's coming from completely. And I have an overly full life as it is in just about every way (time, money, resources, etc all going full tilt) - my kids have to be my priority.

Just. GEEZ! It's not like Teresa doesn't know her daughter has opted out of mothering all along, or doesn't know my history! How in the world could my very loving and awesome mother in law act as though it must be a teenagers fault if they get abandoned?!

(I looked up hostels near them and explained what they are to Robby and gave him links...and I'm mailing them baked goods.)

UGH, I am such a MESS right now!

My mother just called me, my grandfather (Pa of Nana and Pa) had his heart surgery today and there were touch and go complications, and now they're in "wait and see" mode, and dude:

1. She just described surgery and the ICU setup and procedures and complications in depth to me, which is not something I really enjoy, and she is obviously needing me to make it better, tell her what to do next, and so on, which is something I try hard to avoid these days.

2. I'm really not ready for Pa to die :/

3. Nana is on pins and needles in a nursing home and can basically never go home if he's gone

4. I'm not sure I can fucking handle it if someone's else's planned surgery goes radically awry. Keeping in mind that my Nana only had strokes because they screwed up hers. And I still need more. Because someone screwed up some of mine in the past.

This really sucks.

So far it's went:

-Sleep in while Grant takes Elise to preschool and goes out to the store
-wake up to breakfast pizzas & oj, flowers, hugs from Ananda and Aaron, a homemade necklace from Jake, and dozens of well wishes on facebook
-take a nap with Grant, til he goes to get Elise and then comes back and crawls in bed with me, and Isaac, and Elise
-bedroom door closes for highly satisfactory Mommy and Daddy time
-talk of him grilling me a marinated steak and shrooms later
-trip out to Mama Mia's for bruschetta and cappuccino, in the beautiful weather
-MORE NAPPING
-sister shows up to deliver lovely edible arrangement ordered by my mother, which I happily share with children and niece and nephew

(this is where I'm at now)

I mean honestly if this is my thirties I'll take it.

Tangent: this past weekend G and I went up to Winn DIxie in the BEAUTIFUL gorgeous weather on a bike and a skateboard, racing down the same streets we have since we were 13 years old, and it struck me that we were racing down the same streets together that we have since we were 13 years old.

PostScript: Guys, seriously, why can't we talk about whether or not you like it when people talk about sex on the internet, or my weird mood swings, or the pictures I post, or my crazy friends, or college - ? These exploding political threads busting my inbox at the seams, honestly people, sigh. I mean I think about current events at some point every day but I wish I could get a quarter the input and involvement on everyday posts. Ultimately, heated debate of any kind just makes me tired of the subject of debate. <--This is me flippantly whining with a chuckle, ok? So don't come in here like OH MY GOSH YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THE SUFFERING or I'm just gonna link you to a Rick Astley video.

Ok, yi'zall, I am like, 500 pounds lighter and so freaking relieved, because I have had An Epiphany.

As previously stated, yes, my brother can be a pain in the ass. BUT. (Also previously stated) I've been feeling SO put upon, SO insanely irritated, SO emotional about all of this, way beyond the point he's actually a pain to. I've also been unable to open myself up and do much of anything for him, which sort of defeats the purpose of bringing him down at all.

It's my Mom. Totally and all my mom. I've been suffocating, drowning in the pressure of feeling like she's looking down on me and being so pissed and unforgiving if I enforce any consequences. I don't want to feel obligated and responsible for Bob because otherwise I'll be disowned and lose a parent.

When he actually told her we were going to kick him out, and she actually cried and yelled and then didn't contact me and ignored my sister's email, I got to a worst case scenario situation that somehow...gave me objectivity. Like, ok, THAT? That is not Bob's fault.

She's never thanked me. Not for tucking him in and stroking his hair as a baby, for watching him during all her shifts while he was a toddler. Never thanked me for taking him outside with me everytime I left to play, for meeting with his teacher and helping him with his homework in 6th grade, for playing checkers with him at Starbucks. I never got any gratitude for having him living with us for months at a time as a younger teen, for buying him new glasses, for helping him study for the GED.

What I have gotten, VERY CONSISTENTLY, is "Why did he break that while I was working? Weren't you even watching him?" and "Why did Grant get irritated with him for breaking his Dad's stuff and scaring your kids with his anger?" And a lot of "You don't understand him like I do, Tina" and "He needs me".

Well. Maybe he does. Maybe he did. She hasn't usually been available. He gets a substitute, halfway mom who is either, you know, 11, or has her own kids to deal with. And that has to be good enough, not because I suck that badly but because I am what he's got.

He told me, CRYING, yesterday, that he feels like she's done the same thing his Dad did - dissapear out of his life without looking back. I understand she's extremely preoccupied with MAJOR stuff... but she calls me all the time. She was emailing me for awhile there, saying "Bob's trying to call me again, can you just call and see what he needs?"

So yeah. I'm cutting that loose. I love my Mom, no matter what, but I'm gonna try HARD to not give two shits what she thinks of how I'm doing with Bob because, really? IT DOESN'T MATTER. He's a grown ass man which means she no longer has power which means, NOW IT'S MY TURN. As my sister has pointed out, anyone else who was in her position would walk on eggshells talking to me about him because there's just so much stuff I could say back to her about it. But I never do.

And I'm not going to start. I don't think she's aware I'm making new journal entries. I'm just going to quit giving a damn about her where Bob is concerned. Completely.

With that in mind, and knowing that we are unofficially "not talking" and with nothing else to lose in that arena...I broke down and really got a lot out of viggorlijah and gardenmama's comments and talked with Grant a lot and actually looked at this situation.

I've been very fixated on jobs for a lot of reasons. But, I've completely overlooked other areas of progress, as a result. LIKE, he's went from the first day Frank took him out where he would only ask if people were hiring, to the second day when he actually applied at places, albeit badly, to the third, when he shook managers hands and introduced himself politely and things. The truth is that I know on some level that it's setting him up for failure to demand things he's not capable of. And when you're talking about someone who types "bus" into the search engine and then combs through every result, confused, for half an hour afterward and who doesn't know the months or what "prefix" means on an app...the expectation should be that he continuously improve and keep trying with help, not that he go out on his own and land himself a job right away.

It wasn't quite like that (us expecting him to just land himself a job) - he has had the days with Frank, we did take him out shopping for appropriate clothes, I have helped him with apps here at the house. But I think the expectation for him to go out and do this independently, and immediately, was premature with him. Unrealistc. Totally logical for a normal 19 year old, but if he was a normal 19 year old he wouldn't BE living with me.

But what I really mean about progress is, non-job progress. He does a ton of chores around the house everyday - many WITHOUT BEING ASKED, which is brand spanking new for him. He's GREAT with the kids, all the time. And though he gets mad still sometimes, it's not nearly as often as it was 2 years ago, and I honestly can barely even imagine him moving onto destroying property or hitting oranges with bats to vent it, now, which he used to do routinely. DAILY. Now he just glowers and scowls for 20 minutes, when he's pissed.

Yesterday morning I thought about all this a lot and talked to Grant a lot and then we decided we'd go talk to him about it. We knocked on his door...and he wasn't there. Awhile later I found out it's because he actually put on his interview clothes, left the house, walked and went and applied to all the places he thought were too crappy before, in the plaza 5 blocks away. I told him I was proud of him and he was like...glowing and blushing, it's funny.

So we sat down on the deck swing and made him sit between us, which made him laugh uncomfortably because that basically means hip to hip to hip, and told him listen, we love you and we're just not going to let you fail. You're past your deadline and that means you're doing this OUR WAY now, like, you're sitting down to dinner with us and eating healthy food, you're going places with the family if you're gonna be a part of it, and you're gonna get a job, and you're gonna volunteer and we love you. And then we hugged him. And he got all teary eyed.

AND THEN.

He said we should pray about him getting a job and maybe if it works he'll come to church.

This is fucking momentous coming out of his mouth people, you cannot imagine.

So then he and A and A triple teamed the little kids while we went "last minute couple of things" Christmas shopping, including fleece for me to sew him a stocking to match the other huge, home-sewn fleece stockings. His is black with skulls. It's kind of awesome. I also got him bright, his-sized Spiderman underwear, also awesome. And some dark brown cords I hope can begin to branch him out from all black all the time. On sale at Target.

He came out to my friend Kristin's house, where I had a marshmallow-making date, and he played ping pong with her neighbor's kids and helped get an attachment off her pasta maker that was stuck on and carried everything out to the car for me.

I went in his room to get my sewing machine at 11 last night. HE WAS IN BED ASLEEP. It was the weirdest moment of my life.

I'm sure things will be hard and crappy sometimes. I don't think my epiphany = magic. I still have a lot to do and deal with every day. But I'm finding that shrugging it off and saying, "we have six kids" is not so bad. It's a hell of a lot better than an hour long WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO ABOUT BOB hash out everyday.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it is Christmas Eve and I am obligated to contact my grandparents, and probably even my MOM. We'll see. Other than this I am not at all stressed about Christmas, like, the craft-presents that aren't done will get done someday, the mess isn't bothering anyone, we're having a good time chilling with the windows and doors open and good weather and Christ is born, Emmanual, God With Us.

Anyway yeah, viggorlijah and gardenmama, I really liked everything you had to say x a million.

Dude, I just realized there are chickens in my dining room. WTF. All cluckity clucking like they aren't INSIDE. I guess they're taking care of the breakfast crumbs, except, no really, gtfo.

I am alternating between, "Happy, in a subdued, heavy and calm way" and "sad, in a loved and blessed but still down" way.

The pediatrician called back and my Jakey is ok, just a flu and he's been seeing fevers go for days and days with this flu. Lots of fluids, keep on nursing. Jake's in sweet sleepy spirits most of the time.

My Mom talked with the neurologist and he's saying my mom and Pa need to make a decision about whether or not to "let" my Nana die by no longer feeding her.

Elise is stringing words together and wants nothing more than to kiss me 500 times a day. She makes hilariously confused faces at me when she sees me crying my eyes out.

My Nana is only 61. She was in good health with a full time job 3 months ago. She was going in for a planned, scheduled preventative surgery.

Aaron is not only riding all over the house on his back-from-the-shop unicycle (and the repair was free as it's under warranty, woo-hoo!) but he's done little HOPS on it twice now that I've seen, AND he just finished his first chapter book. He also teared up with me in the kitchen discussing Nana, he understands so well. "This is how it would be for me and Annie if Laura died, isn't it?".

My Mom will be so alone if my Nana is gone, she's newly separated from her douchebag husband and her father just died a couple of months ago, TOTALLY unexpectedly and out of nowhere. She's lived at the bedside for the past 2+ months...

Grant is holding strong not eating sugar or white flour with me. The last time we did this particular thing together was late 2004, and we lost a ton of weight and it was great. We're also doing Wii Fit together and watching this new to us show Kings that is a great thing to cuddle up with when the kids are in bed, while I work on Isaac's ripple blanket. I'm going to need more yarn soon. My blasted cat has learned to cut my strand in half with her teeth, too, which is hilarious yet irritating.

We all had so much HOPE because of this hydrocephalus thing, they were putting in a drain to take out excess fluid and that would explain how she was acting, it would FIX how she was acting, but instead she now talks in what my Pa calls a "Linda Blair voice" and has conspiracy theories and has lost what little vision and short term memory she seemed to have.

Numb and heavy, I worked with A and A to clean out their entire room this afternoon. I feel better just knowing that room is squared completely away, it was HORRENDOUS. Tonight, slightly lighter from Grant being home to talk with for awhile, we put their faces in the Daily Prophet on the Harry Potter website, complete with swirling mist and captions like, "Newest Azkaban Resident".

I had this ridiculous thought today, so shallow and dumb but it just cracked me in two to think, when thinking of Nana actually DYING, "I should have written her secret barbecue sauce recipe down somewhere safer..." I cried until I could laugh at myself. I think I keep blocking it out, because she is in the back of my mind all the time now.

I reach up for a loaf of bread and remember reaching into the pantry pregnant with Annie and her warning me the baby's umbilical cord would get strangled around it's neck if I reached up that way.

I see that the top is off the cannister of oats and remember her warning me about oat bugs.

I pick up a package of sausage and remember the weird Pennsylvania Dutch accent that made her say it weird. Summer sausage, usually. Or "Keeyoobossa".

And I always come back around to the ironing board outside of the utility room, popsicles with the wrappers around the sticks delivered straight to the pool (Don't let those stick end up in the drain, Pa will have a fit!) and then I end up leaning against the sink with Grant holding me and it just sucks, you know?

My Nana made a lot of wacky mistakes, she cut our hair while it was in ponytails? She said rooms "reemed" of smells, she drank too much when I was younger.

But she stopped, because I was going to have a baby.

I took showers with her, when I was little, light streaming in the window and Pa mowing outside.

We made fun of her too much. She said, "If you keep eating that way the whole pregnancy, you're gonna be as big as a house!" and Laura said, "SHE HAS A TENANT!" She said, when I started my period for the first time, to "wipe until it's ALL GONE" and Laura and I talked years later about how it just keeps coming, Laura said, "Does she want me to light myself on fire?" and we almost died laughing. She was always leaning her head into the dark room threatening us with some imaginary dire consequence if we didn't hush and go to sleep, because we spent all weekend there so many weekends.

Bows stuck on her head at Christmas Eve (27 Christmas Eves), my horrible menopausal overbearingly temperamental boss at the warehouse as a teenager, I told her I was pregnant and she actually stood up and yelled, "DON'T EVEN TELL ME IT'S FUCKING BOBBY!" But we laughed about that years later. She laughed about it with me last year.

She grilled us steaks every Saturday night and she is why I love Elvis and why I hate Savage Garden and newer Cher. She dusts the lightbulbs and the top of the fridge religiously. She made me use a damp cloth to go over trailing philodendrons LEAF BY LEAF to pull tiny little white bugs off by the hundreds so the plants wouldn't die.

She is why I always had good bras and Laura got braces. And she tried, so hard, standing in the bathroom with Frank with the light off to see his glow in the dark tongue ring. "Man, that is SO NEAT".

When my Nana wants to pull something off the front of your shirt, first she has to say, "Now, I'm not getting fresh with you" and she still holds a grudge, I'll bet from her bed in Lakeland Regional, that I bit her so badly when I was 2.

When we stopped on the way back from Boston she told me "that baby is just fine. There is not one thing wrong with her, you can see it plain as day. She is perfect, Nana has spoken".

And she is perfect, and as Ananda pointed out today, she will probably never remember those first two Christmas Eves.

Writing this all down makes Nana seem so close that it makes me nervous, like I need to keep glancing behind me in the too-quiet house and I just want to close this and run and dive into my bed with Grant and Elise.

How are they supposed to make this kind of decision? To give up? It is wild, just wild, how different the rollercoaster of ongoing hospital stay and shifting updates is, than the finality of death. Part of me thinks it's right, that she would not have wanted to be this way, me wondering whether it's right to take the kids around her how she is and my mom a mess taking her abuse day in and day out. Diapers and can't move one side at all and spoonfed by other people. Another part of me thinks, what is wrong with this neurologist? She's not hooked to life support machines. Or anything like that. The only drugs she takes are psych meds, xanex and wellbutrin and sometimes sleeping pills. There's a new anti-hallucination one, that is obviously not working. Part of me thinks, take her off all the drugs and see if her brain does any better. What is there to lose? I mean he says 60 years ago she would have already been dead, but what does that even mean - 60 years ago there wasn't enough compassion to feed a person or change their diapers? They didn't have spoons back then? I'm recommending a second opinion. I'm trying to let Pa know we love him even if he is not part of "Nana and". I'm trying to be there for my Mom. I'm trying to block it out, unsuccessfully. I'm doing not enough, because I am too far away. I feel guilty, because it is easier being far away.

*heaving sigh*

So, I couldn't write about it here because I didn't want her to see it, but yesterday (Monday) afternoon I drove up to Lakeland for my Mother's birthday. She is 45, and seeings how she is newly separated from her cheating and cowardly husband, her father just died a month ago, and she is living at the hospital with her mom who just had two strokes and is now brain injured...well, let's just say "What a shitty birthday".

-It was very bizarre to have an overnight trip BY MYSELF, I just went, without Grant or Laura or kids or anything
-I am really glad the Prius is so easy on gas
-I adore my iPod and like talking hands free with Grant's phone (Blackberry, he's such a...blackberry...owner :P)
-my mother is EVEN THINNER...she's dropped from 165 to 118 through stress-induced starvation over the course of 6 months...it's really crazy. In jeans and a hoodie when I got to the hospital I felt like I almost looked older than her.
-she was really happy to see me, and I was so glad :D
-I was very happy to be able to send her to Nana and Pa's house to sleep in a bed for the night while I stayed with Nana - she needed it.
-I was really shocked at how hard it hit me to try to spend the night in a hospital room, and how much crap it stirred up for me :x
-I was very happy with how easy it was for me to get into my Nana's head and understand what she's thinking and make her laugh and things...
-VERY VERY moved to watch Pa kiss her, do her therapies, feed her breakfast one bite at a time, encourage her, and generally just embody what marriage should be. I teared up over and over, even though he is going through these motions with no drama or sentimentality at all.
-intrigued to watch her make new milestones...she's gradually using her left hand again, and now the wrist.
-heartbroken in general to watch her call the cat and warn me about wildebeasts and see her doing random repetetive motions she doesn't realize
-humbled at how grateful I was that *I* am not the one there 24/7, because it is so, so exhausting...my mother is basically giving her a sip of something, answering her questions or adjusting her blankets as she goes from hot flashes to cold spells EVERY MINUTE.
-it kept striking me over and over how radically different I apparently eat than other people...I've just tried to keep moving in a healthier and more energetic and weight loss oriented direction, and nutrient dense because I'm tandem nursing still and can't take supplemental iron anymore and all...basically I usually eat a lot of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables in various forms every day, only whole grains, only trace amounts of dairy and limited meats, heavy on the nuts and beans and olives. Fats are either smart balance or olive oil. We use sea salt. And, well, there are inordinate amounts of fair trade chocolate ;) Which really does taste better! I love food and eat a lot and it's all really good...I don't ever feel, like, deprived. Then I set foot in a Denny's? A hospital cafeteria? Or I go driving down the street looking at drive thrus? Let's just say, holy shit. It's impossible. There are NO truly healthy mainstream choices for a person on the go. It's easy to integrate however many standards or caveats you want to into what you eat at home, but then you go back out into society at large, and, geez. I felt so heavy and awful by the time I was headed back, and sniffling and sneezing and I even have new pimples where there were none. I've gotten to some kind of point where everything processed or "Fast" or fried at a diner has the same/no taste and just seems disgusting, which on the one hand is obviously positive...but on the other hand leaves you feeling like a seriously elitist fool when surrounded by grief and rednecks in a central Florida town. I thought about this kind of stuff a lot...I was in a hospital where most nurses and visitors I saw were very morbidly obese and I'm watching my relatives (and Grant's :/)all fall apart mostly due to cigarettes, alcoholism, diabetes and so on related complications....so why do I still feel guilty when my mom is trying to convince me that some peppers in a cheese smothered omelette with hashbrowns and reheated sausage "are vegetables"? Like there's no way I could possibly argue? Blah. I tried to find a Whole Foods with the navigation as I was leaving and the closest one was FIFTY EIGHT MILES AWAY.
-Central Florida in general is so not my Florida, food and crap totally aside...egads. I feel like I'm on another planet or something.

Other Updates:
-my Pa, my Dad's dad, has been denied the triple bypass he needs because his heart and lungs are too weak to manage it...they've basically sent him home to die :/ My Dad has been having a really hard time with this, and I am preoccupied with it, and him...
-Teresa, my mother in law, is no longer able to have pain relievers she desperately needs for a bad neck thing because they're causing bad side effects, and can't have surgery for it because of a degenerative bone disease, and is in a brace and it's just scary :/ Scary scary, she is a wonderful woman and a great mom to Grant and a kickass Grandmother and, also, is raising Mindy's kids and has been pretty much since birth...*sigh*


It was so nice to get home. So many small excited people happy to see me, such a warm yummy husband and a nice old house. We had tacos for dinner. And for the record if you fill a taco shell with refried beans, sliced avocado, sliced black olives and diced tomato, it will be really good and really good for you and *I* won't wake up in the middle of the night with allergy attacks or be eating 25 weight watchers points at once like if it were mainly meat and cheese with sour cream on it.

This evening I made a big old wok of stir fry vegetables (terriyaki), a big pot of chickpea noodle soup, and a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and some of my strawberry filling. All from scratch, all good. And a lot of 10 minute boil in bag brown rice to go with the stir fry.

---

Every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep last night, I saw my Grandpa's dead body in the funeral home. I cried a lot in the funeral home. I'm still not completely sure why; it was some combination of having known him in life and seeing his dead body, being near a dead body in general, and the overwhelming pain and grief my mother was feeling. Basically I was standing in an emotional tidal wave and there was no way not to get sucked under.

This is the third time I've been near a dead person. It always unsettles me terribly.

It's just so fucking intensely obvious that it is not the person anymore. SO MUCH of how a face looks, is the personality that animates it - even in sleep, even in a coma. I really don't understand how anyone could see a dead body and not know that souls exist. What was there...is gone. What is left...is something else. Vacant, and decomposing.

So those first few hours in bed, I had all these cyclical, exponential thoughts. Round and round, wider and wider...
That is going to happen to me one day - all this flesh on me will be just a carcass.
It's going to happen to everyone I know or ever see.
Everything is so temporary, so changeable, we are all gradually falling apart physically.
Sometimes, people go into the hospital and don't come back out.
Sometimes, there is something going wrong inside your body and you have no idea until it's too late.
It's going to be our parents, before we know it - mine and Laura's, Grant's and Frank's.
Not just that Grandpa died, but my Mom and Dad and Teresa have all been in the hospital for serious things now, in these past years.
My Nana!
When I was in the ICU, I had such a thick and solid wall up, blocking out my emotions, that nothing I perceived can be trusted. But it seemed, it really seemed as though everything was trying to fade to black, as though that's all there would be, if I let go - just black.
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Hell?
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Heaven?
I was so afraid of my parents going to hell as a 6 year old in Baptist school.
Everything is so temporary, my mother refusing to come to church where I was getting baptised, my mother getting baptised in a church, my mother in the My Dad years, the Jud years, the (golden) Todd years. My mother now thin and fragile and different, no boundaries, but looking like her old self for just an hour before she left.
Except skinny like she was 17 and in my baby pictures.
I say these things, these wild hyperbole over the top things to joke like I'm so old, but they're ACTUALLY TRUE:
-The bridge I drove over all the time in my remembered childhood is rusted railings falling into the sea and 9 foot trees coming up through the asphalt
-my baby videos are silent flickering things converted from old reels
What will my Dad have left to live for, if his Dad dies? He drives a cab, he lives with Madie, and he takes care of his Dad. That is the important part.
My daughter will be 9 so soon.
My baby will be 2 so soon.
My brother was my 2 year old baby.

It was a long time getting to sleep full of intense dreams.

---

Grant is still sick. We have been talking a lot about all of this. And I ran a lot of errands with Ananda today - Publix, post office, CVS for a picture print, PetCo for hay and litter.

God feels so real to me. Not just real...always real. He seems so CLOSE. I keep praying and having the sense of turning to yell to someone and finding myself nose to nose with them, and being like...oh. And adjusting my volume. It's how I felt in Boston, and at camp. I spent an hour on the phone with my Dad today. And my mom called 3 times. I pray Mother Teresa's prayer; Speak with my mouth, touch with my hands. I don't know how to explain what I mean except that I FELT my prayers working, in the funeral parlor, I felt my mother's pain and I felt how she needed it and I felt it working. Not taking the pain away. Just the sharpest corners, the roughest edges, making it something she could wade through somehow. Holding her up. There are all these little things I start to want to do - to eat crap when I'm not hungry, to slack off when I shouldn't, to give in to little temptations of all kinds, but it's easy...easy to not do them. It's annoying how easy it is, because I want to be more tempted and do them and like them. But it's just so clear that I'm not supposed to, and don't need it. That it isn't what I'm really looking for. And then the words and tones are right there, to say these things to my mother and to my father that are so hard to say, so harsh to say, that need to be said, and then I'm in some state of curious surprise that I didn't offend anyone because I wasn't offensive.

I guess this is kind of cryptic. But it's amazing. I feel so calm, but calm in this very humble, very raw way that has to do with deep connection and faith in surreal times.

I do hope that I sleep better tonight.

My biological maternal grandpa - my mother's birth father, that is - I call him Grandpa.

He's never been a big part of my life, and when he has it's been pretty negative.

But he always meant a whole lot to my mother, which I tried to understand. It was not always easy. He could be very demanding of her and take advantage a lot and then insult her to death...I got in some screaming arguments with him for the way he was treating her in her own house, after she drove hours to get him because the cops were after him or some nonsense, as a teenager.

He lived on houseboats most of the time, off the coast of Key West. He did a lot of really small time international drug running. I could never talk about this when he was alive because he was wanted under multiple names in multiple places. We had "grand jury detectives", whatever the hell that means, come to our apartment when I was in middle school and serve my mother a subpoena to appear in court - she was offered the witness protection program if she'd turn him in. But she never would. We had a childhood dog once named after him - "Alias". I visited him in jail in the upper Keys when I was about 11. He went to jail with my x-x-stepdad (not Todd, the one before him) in Jamaica and they ate chicken backs (scraps bones, almost starving) and peed in buckets and slept on the floor for months. My mother would call and ask to talk to "the white man" and they'd bring back either her boyfriend or her dad because those were the only white men in the jail. They'd been on a run together. They came home rail-thin, heavily bearded, with scurvy. Scurvy! I always said he was a pirate.

There were times when my sister and I would get our own hotel rooms in fancy places in Key West, when he'd just gotten back from somewhere, and for a week we'd be eating every breakfast at Denny's and spending every evening in a hot tub. And plenty of times when he was homeless for too long between runs and ended up crashing at our place, sometimes leading shady characters to our door.

He died today. He was 60. It was some kind of sudden thing with vomiting blood that led to rapid detorioration - it hasn't even been properly figured out and diagnosed yet. They couldn't keep transfusing him fast enough.

I haven't talked to him in years, and liked that just fine, because he was mean and spiteful and honestly just all around wack. He drank beer all day every day and smelled horrible and used to wake up on our couch and act like my brother was a deck hand - "Swab, get me my cornflakes" (a beer). Beer my mom was buying for him when we were on food stamps. The last I heard he was talking a lot of shit about my "illegitimate children", who's names he couldn't even get right.

*sigh*

But, my mom. My mom was kind of all he had, because he really drove people away from him...and he had driven her away, finally, this past year or so. They hadn't talked in months, she'd neglected to call in January for his birthday and also at Christmas. Both of which are huge things for them to miss. But he didn't care that Elise was in trouble, didn't care that I was in trouble, caused problems for her and Todd and then also didn't care that she needed help when she was getting divorced, after all the years of her helping him. So she finally was like, yeah, I won't call you anymore then. Basically.

She tried to drive down and see him before he was gone, when she got the call. She didn't make it. She stopped here, in Homestead, and I spent the evening at my sister's house, trying to cheer her up, feel her out, help her somehow. She was numb, we got her to smile and chuckle some because we are always "on" around her, performing. Lots of hugs. It's strange because she knows neither of us cares personally about Grandpa. But we both care a lot that she's upset. And especially just coming out of a divorce, already skinny and strained from stress, to lose her father. She was a total daddy's girl. She didn't get to reconcile, or see him alive one last time. I called Grandpa's sister for her, to urge them to please wait to cremate him until my mother can see his body. Which is really important to her.

My sister says she was a wreck before I arrived. Which I can understand. But I was honestly surprised it wasn't worse...she wasn't shaking much, was walking around a little, was drinking tea, when I arrived. It wasn't what I was afraid of. She says, "Wait until tomorrow" ominously, because tomorrow, she's going down to Key West. I'm taking her to church first. And hoping that it helps. Strange ressurection Sunday, for sure...

I called my Dad, to talk about this. He drives a cab in Key West. He is not in direct contact with my mother and hasn't been for a long, long time, but they hear about each other through Laura and I. Anyway, my Dad, he was like, "WHAT? I gave him a ride 2 days ago! Damn!" and so on. It turns out my Dad's been giving him a lot of rides. And so he can testify that Grandpa had an actual apartment for over a month, a girlfriend who was pretty nice, and was hanging out at bars and doing coke and up to all of his old tricks right up til the end. Trying to get my Dad to deal for him out of the cab, my dad refusing cuz he doesn't want to lose his license. Which I conveyed to my mother and hope can be comforting in some sort of dysfunctional way. I think I'm going to end up interrogating my father for more, because it seems through some odd twist of fate that it's the only way she'll find anything out about the past year of her dad's life. My parents only talk TO each other if I'm hospitalized and they accidentally end up in my room at the same time.

I would appreciate prayers for my mom...she's at a pretty tough point in life. Beaten down really hard. Her mom, my Nana, just had a major surgery 2 weeks ago that she traveled to Lakeland to be with her through. And that came right at the end of this horrible mess with her marriage ending in the worst convoluted betraying way. She's ended up living with her brother and his wife, working as a waitress because the economy in Titusville is so bad, driving this old piece of crap she hates.

So all this is dominating my thoughts in a big way tonight. Since about 6pm or so when it started for me.

It's strange, you know, there have been so many points in the past few years for us, watching and waiting while someone is in the hospital. My mother herself, Isaac, Elise, me, my Dad, my Nana. And you sit there with this baited breath and refuse to think the unthinkable. It's crazy that it really happens. That sometimes...you don't get better.

My mom is looking at my weird protruding belly and BEGGING me to get it fixed before it is an emergency :x

ETA BECAUSE I FEEL GUILTY - Positive Things About my Late Grandpa
-he was really great at sailing
-and cooking
-and cutting hair
-and sometimes told a really, really hilarious story
-there was some wisdom mixed up in his non-judgemental way of thinking that I could probably learn from
-he was really into appreciating the little things and realizing how much more we have - even "poor as hell" in America - than people in 3rd world countries have
-there was not a predjudiced bone in his body, he was actually probably my only totally non-racist relative growing up
-he had a peace sign tattoo on his arm that I liked a lot when I was younger
-and made me feel a certain kinship with a whole subculture I'd never have been aware of otherwise - "dock people" in Key West, daily life on houseboats, all that sort of stuff
-he was really great at training dogs and always kind to animals

---

Before this shift....
My day with the kids was great. We got this HUUUUUUGE box of strawberries from Knaus Berry Farm to make pies and muffins and waffles and syrup and all kinds of stuff out of. And some of their fresh baked bread, cinammon rolls, peanut butter cookies, and milkshakes, which we had in our backyard while we watched our chickens peck around and huddle together.

I have Jeckyll and Hyde kitchen. I started cleaning it really thoroughly this afternoon - clearing and scrubbing counters, cleaning the cabinets, spraying appliances, the floor, whole shebang - and got almost exactly halfway done when we had to go to the birthday party. There's actually a line you can trace all the way up and down where it abruptly goes from spotless and sparkling, to filthy (spattered flour, caked on dripped batter, piled dishes, crumpled wet dish towels...I have been cooking SO MUCH lately). I'm hoping to go in there after this entry is done and extend the line to at least the 3/4 mark ;)

I think we might do our private family celebrating of Easter on Monday. Because I think I'm either going to be babysitting Brian all day long or in a car with my mom most of the day...I miss Grant. He got off for his half the week off, tonight. I'm glad he's so incredibly understanding and awesome.

The kids totally don't get it. They've never even previously heard of Grandpa (though I think Ananda was around him once or twice as a baby/toddler and my mom was still talkng to him or around him a lot when not with us throughout their lives...). It's so weird to ever try to tell them anything about, like...having relatives you don't really like or talk to. Or people being sort of horrible, to themselves and each other. It's kind of unreal, how different their lives are, vs how mine was as a kid.