Rest in Peace Mamaw Jerri, the sole family member left aside from me and sis on dad’s side

So overnight my grandmother (my dad’s mom) died. For a little backstory, check these prior posts out:

Post 1

Post 2

So, my dad’s side of the family at this point has been pretty much destroyed by death. My dad died when I was 10, his dad died when I was 11, his grandmas died when I was 10-11, great aunt and uncle died when I was around 18. My dad was an only child, and my grandma had only one sister (the aforementioned great aunt.) So aside from a couple of folks who are like, second cousins second removed, my sister, her daughter, and I are the only blood family left on this branch. I’m the only [insert true last name here] male left in the family, and that will die out with me (odds are.)

Mamaw has been pretty rough off. She has alzhiemers (which runs in the family – her sister died from it) and an encyclopedia of medical conditions. She’s been in sort of a half way house for a while now. I got a call last night from a Great Uncle (dad’s dad’s brother, Mamaw’s brother in law) who told me she hadn’t been taking her medication, the alzhiemers made her forget, and without the blood pressure there was a big fluid build up, and “she developed a condition where she might make it through the night, or might make it through a few ones. No one knows.” Well, a few hours after that he called back saying she, in fact, did not make it through the night. I know she’s at peace now, unlike her tumultuous life

Her caretaker Caroline was waiting to hear back when me and my sister could make it up to Indiana for the funeral before making the arrangements. We told her to make them and we would get there somehow. See, this next week I was supposed to travel to dallas and houston for work, something that I can’t do now. I have to be there – I’m the last blood family left. So work is figuring out what to do. I’ve got that voucher I got from my boss being f’ed up, and enough points for a ticker, but I have to wait till monday to book the flight for tuesday (hello stressful monday.)

My sister is crushed. She’s always been close to this side of the family whereas I’ve been close to mom’s side. She’s had such a terrible time the past two weeks, including but not limited to separating from fiance, having pretty much emergency surgery to remove a gigantic ovarian cyst (which caused a miscarriage, something I just found out this morning) and turned 30. It’s not like Mamaw’s death was surprising, just surprising that it happened last night. So I’m worried about my sister.

My mom’s all a flutter without having much of any idea what to do. This one is squarely in my lap, once again. Deaths always seem to go to me to deal with in the end. Mom keeps brining up why I was never close to that side of the family in the first place, and about the antiques in mamaw’s house (if I hear the word Victorla again I might scream at her.) As she said last night, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

I don’t have a lot of memories of Mamaw growing up other than seeing her occasionally for lunch when I would visit Indiana and coffee hour back at my maternal grandma’s house (when I refer to grandma, its my maternal one who I am *extremely* close to and call about 3 times a week and talk for half an hour. When she goes, I will be more crushed than ever before.) She was such a strong woman – she lost her only child, her husband, and her mother in less than a year. And she hung around much longer than any one would have thought.

So, this Wednesday, airtran willing, I’ll be up in Indiana at the family funeral home (oh Kercheval, I know thee well, I wonder if the bottle coke machine is still there) in Sheridan, Indiana. To bury the last part of my dad’s family, aside from my sister and I.

I’ll be sure to take a sunflower.

My family’s Christmas Tradition

It might be a little odd, quelle surprise with my family, but we have a family Christmas tradition: being completely unable to hold in the surprise.  My mom, for example and for no apparnet reason, felt the need to tell me a few hours ago one of the gifts I was getting was a new pair of flanel lounge pants.  Nothing in particular brought this up, she just felt the need to share it.  It happens every year, and its ususally all of us share the surprise of our gifts before Christmas morning.  I told my mom some of the gifts I had gotten others, because she was dying to know, but have been steadfast in my avoidance of what her gift will be.

Thanksgiving in Indy, part 1

Its a weird feeling in my Grandmothers neighborhood up here in Indianapolis. You get the feeling that Indianapolis is a dying community in some areas, especially in her neighborhood of Irvington.  I got the distinct feeling a few years ago that this was just a dying community.  It’s heyday was in the 1950s, and the neighborhood hasn’t really evolved since then.

But on this trip I for the feeling that it might not be on its last breath.  The shops on Washington are doing pretty well.  They actually opened a Starbucks – and I’m shocked.  I walked over there earlier in the cold (by Georgia standards) weather to get some coffee for me and Mom…and picked up some for Grandma and hot chocolate for Ava (my niece.)  Walking back, I passed what appears to be a pretty good pizza place reminiscent of Felini’s in Atlanta, and a few new specialty shops.  The Irving theater is getting acts again, and when we drove in Wednesday night the restaurants were pretty packed.

The houses here are old and nice.  If I knew something about architecture, I could talk a little more about it.  My grandma owns a duplex and lives in half of it.  She used to rent out the other half, the last tenant being my older cousin.  She’s probably going to have to sell it next year  She can’t really afford to do the upkeep necessary for it, and its a pretty big house for just her.  Its too bad because this house has been in the family for ages.  This is the house my mom grew up in 50 years ago.  Back in the day my great grandmother lived in the other half of he duplex I believe.  If I could, I would seriously think about moving up here into the other half of the duplex, restoring it to its historical prime.  But my job, my life, is down in Atlanta.

Some things about this house have never changed in my 25 years visiting.  The kitchen floor is still the same red outlined in black pattern.  I’ve never seen the pattern elsewhere.  There are the same three american revolutionary plates hanging above the TV.  The table, the thanksgiving table is the same as its always been.  The inset bookshelf with family photos has always been there.  There are some things new – the cat, Chester, for example.  Chester didn’t have a name for a long time, but when Grandma had to take him to the vet to get neutered, they had to have a name (they wouldn’t take “Cat.”)  Grandma had seen a cheetos commercial earlier in the morning, and dubbed the orange tabby “Chester.” Said cat is currently playing havoc with my respiratory system.

Three bedrooms, one bathroom.  With no shower.    Thats the biggest downside to visiting up here.  The lack of a shower.  And I don’t exactly fit in a bathtub.  The only one bathroom does get rather inconvenient when we have a household full.  Lines down the stairs are commonplace during thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving this year was different.  Last year we had all the extended family here at Thanksgiving.  This year my middle cousin, the one who rented the other side of the duplex for a couple of years, wanted to have his own thanksgiving, for his wife’s side of the family.  My grandma was not invited.  My aunt and uncle went down to Jacksonville to see my little cousin and his internet girlfriend turned wife’s trailer for thanksgiving.  My Grandma was going to go to her sister’s house, but when me, mom, and Ava announced our intentions to come up she gladly changed her plans.  We had an early thanksgiving dinner, around 1.  My oldest cousin came over with his wife and two children, stopping by on the way to my middle cousin’s house (and ended up staying for a little dinner.  His wife, I think, felt pretty darn guilty about the thanksgiving invitation drama this year.)  We ate a quick dinner, with the kids playing with each other most of the time.  I remember ages ago Thanksgiving was the family holiday, where my moms side of the family would completely conglomerate at my grandma’s house and eat a huge family diner.  Conversation topics would range from medical issues, to memories, to the attractiveness of the royal family.  Football would be on the TV, but we would be around the card able not paying attention.  Euchre cards would be out in full force, the team of me and grandma using playing our bouers towards victory.

Those days have past, just like the neighborhood.

#3734

Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Thirty Four,

Dead in the Iraq War,

It’s not just a number anymore.

I called my mom earlier to discuss my impending Labor Day visit, and when she answered the phone she mentioned it was a rough morning. Considering emotions aren’t really allowed to be talked about in my family, I was pretty shocked. I naturally asked why.

But first, background. My mom works for a private school teaching Math. It’s an alternative school, where kids go if they failed a class or dropped out of school for various reasons and go back to get a high school diploma. She’s been working there since I was in Middle School….quite a long time. Tutoring and Teaching is something of our family profession (I’m the 3rd generation in education now.)

She told me that the front page of the paper brought grim news – one of her old students was killed in Iraq. She talked of how he would visit every so often after he graduated, so proud he was going to be a marine. He brought pictures in his dress uniform, he stopped by and brought pictures of his wife, and was just a good kid.

My mom sounded shell shocked on the phone – I hadn’t heard her like that in a while. I tried to cheer her up with news of good weight watcherness, but it was hallow. I can’t imagine if one of my students was killed, whether in war or in a car accident.

Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Thirty Four,

Dead in the Iraq War,

It’s not just a number anymore.

Short Takes

I’ve had so many posts floating around in my head for the past two weeks, but never had the chance to really think about this until now…these are just some of the scattered thoughts in my mind right now.

It’s been a loooong week – working 10-12 hour days, the apartment flood (and now the stifling heat of the dehumidifiers) and I’ve been mentally bogged down.  The church is uber-excited because it’s candidating week – I got to meet Rev. David tonight – seems like a nice guy, although I was hoping for a couple of different answers to the questions, I also realize that if he had the perfect answer for everything then I know something’s up.

I went through another round of the “we don’t get enough respect” thing a couple of days ago.  I know it’s just an email list, but we’ve got now 225 on our 20s/30s email list.  The closest email list, according to yahoo groups were most of our email lists are hosted, is still under 200 and that’s the Forum, the discussion list, and the Networking email list.  A very established group that everyone in the church knows about and is very respected has only 50 members.  I know an email list does not correlate to importance, but it’s a factor.  I think that’s pretty impressive, and I think others in the church should find it equally impressive…when they don’t always.

Apparently there’s a mood at our church of shiftlessness – people seem lost, not sure how to get involved, and not motivated like they were.  I was told, and the ministerial candidate was told that today, and he nodded like he had already heard it.  They apparently blame this on the interim period.  I find this to be a lousy excuse for laziness frankly.  They could have thrived is they so chose to.  Our group has never been bigger or stronger.  We don’t have a dedicated staff person for our group (which someone suggested should be changed today, and the candidate agreed, somewhat surprising me.)  We didn’t wait for someone to tell us what to do or for someone to make it easy for us to get involved.  We had to force ourselves on the scene in some regards, and we managed to explode in the interim period.  That makes me wonder if the only energy in our church is coming from our group and the unitots group…and if that IS the case then why the hell aren’t we given more respect.  Now, this is changing.  One of our own is on the board slate, one’s on the nominating committee as well.  I’m going to be on the Stewardship Committee again and going to drag some other 20s/30s folks.  We have an official event with the candidate on Friday – it should be interesting to hear his take on everything.

I’m annoyed at my mom, who during the flood yesterday had these helpful words of advice- “In a couple of months you need to get renters insurance so these things don’t happen again.” [because renters insurance stops neighbor's water heaters from exploding?] and later in the conversation, while water was still coming int omy apartment from above and the apartment maintenance guy still hadn’t shown up, “this is why you need a clean apartment.  And you have been sticking to weight watchers, haven’t you? <disgusted sigh.>”  She also told me today that since my step-sister’s husband got into UGA law school I have to stop hating UGA.  Uh.  Why?  There’s a reason why I don’t talk about my family life much, is because I dealt with stuff like this all the time growing up and still to this day.  Compassion doesn’t exist in her repertoire.  I’m also annoyed at myself because I still let it get to me when at this point I really shouldn’t be expecting better.  It’s like in Ordinary People – why should I blame her for not being able to love me enough?  I can’t change it.  I should just focus on the things I can change.  But I’m still annoyed.

I’m listening to music from 2000 – when I graduated high school and survived on boyband slash fiction (it was more important than food.)  It’s weird…but I might just be reminiscing.

How ironic.

“I want to bring Springer into Unitarian Universalism.”  How ironic it is that I’ve had a little Springer in my own life this week.  I probably shouldn’t go into details, since it’s in the judicial process, but it involves my old college roommate, her husband and her stabbing him.   I just have the feeling that this is in a past life.  I think of their friendship in terms of past tense – it’s an odd feeling.

Don’t expect many posts this week.  Work is going to swallow me whole this week.   I will post an Idol recap after tonight though – yay!  It’s Tuesday!  I’m looking forward to tonight.  Knock American Idol if you will, but if gives you something to look forward to during a long work week.

A Quick Happy Easter

to those who celebrate it.  I celebrate bunny ears and all the ladies with big hats at our church.  Although they maybe wearing a different kind of hat tomorrow – we’re supposed to set a record low.  I think in the past two weeks we’ve had record highs, record high pollen counts, and now record lows.

So I wanted to learn a little more about easter, so on my Friday movie binge sabbath I got The Passion of the Christ – a movie I had never seen before.  I came away knowing less about that whole Crucifixion thing than I did before – I’m quite positive some of my brain cells were killed from the gore.  Yuck.

And I think some people might wonder why this blog is ususally dead on Fridays – Sundays.  Friday is my self-imposd Sabbath so I can keep my sanity (and it’s wonderful!) and I work Saturdays…and on days like today when I was training new teachers and teaching kids all at the same time…it gets a little tiring.

And happy 75th birthday to my grandma!  I love ya!  Too bad you’re afraid of computers and will never ever see this!  And sorry my cousin’s car got stolen from your house on your birthday (but the moron should know better than to leave his doors unlocked and his car running so it can warm up.  He never was the smart one.)

14 years ago this week

14 Years ago this week (Feb. 93) a 10 year old boy suddenly became an adult.  He became the man of the family, and with that died his naive childhood.

14 years ago this week a boy’s childhood ambitions to be a computer programmer died.

14 years ago this week a boy learned how his family was not perfect, and how he would need to be the glue that held it together.

14 years ago this week a father ate his last fatty roast beef sandwich.

14 years ago this week another death from a heart attack was added to a statistic.

14 years ago this week, a flood of food descended on a house in Columbus, Georgia, and the family (minus one member) didn’t know what to do with it all.

14 years ago this week my father, a database programmer, died from a heart attack at the age of 39, leaving two kids and his wife behind.

Argh I feel like a damn failure!

Argh!  I feel like a failure.

I’ve had an annoying past 24 hours, and its making me feel like a failure.  And it pisses me off that I let myself feel like this when it’s not really anything that serious.

Yesterday at work I just sucked.  I’m a tutor, and I felt completely stupid and worthless with a couple of kids.  I was constantly behind, playing catch up the whole day.  I’m a tutor – stupid tutors aren’t good, and when this tutor tutor feels completely stupid then its like I’m not good at my job.  My first block had a calculus student doing integration (no problem there actually), a cute-as-a-button-4th grader I like working with because he tells me how life should be, and a senior I’ve worked with forever and likes working with me.  This is the senior that started the feelings of complete and total failure-rific inadequacy I feel.

The first question she asked, and the first question of my day, involved centripetal acceleration, going around a curve of r radius, weighing m kilograms.  The road is slippery and the coefficient of kinetic friction is only .5.  The road is banked at a 6 degree angle.  Will it skid?

Here those crickets?  Thats the sound that was in my head during this too.  I barley remember covering this in my AP Physics class 7 years ago, and all I remember is that I didn’t get it then.  The physics book I had was completely worthless, and I couldn’t escape to google how to do it due to the 4th grader there.  Ugh.

The rest of the day was like that.  I had mostly schoolwork kids, three calculus students, and I felt kinda overwhelmed at one point.  During the last session I had a kid who is either just stupid or is faking it or some combination of both; i hate working with this kid…he annoys me.  One teacher sent over a kid to my table for help with schoolwork math, when it was something i had taught him how to do like, 6 months ago.  I got kinda ticked – It aggravates me when I spent a month teaching how to do one specific kind of word problem then a couple of months later its completely forgotten.  Makes me feel worthless.

THEN TODAY at Weight Watchers I utterly failed life.

Ok.  Not that serious.  But still!  I needed to lose .8 pounds last week to make it to -25 since Dec. 1st.  I knew it was going to happen.  WELL IT DIDN’T.  I only lost .4 pounds.  What the hell is up with that.  Now I know a lot of people have told me that “oh, you did so great in the past, one off week isok and perfectly normal” or “better than gaining that much, eh?”  Well screw all of you who think that and want to tell me that.  That is just not the right thing to say to me when I’m pissed off at myself for eating too much pizza on Wednesday, drinking too much last weekend, not working out, etc. etc.  But if someone tells me that I need to shape up, or I dropped the ball last week (thank you mother) then I get pissed off too.  I’m just pissed off.  I don’t expect anyone to make it better unless they want to buy melipo.  Nothing can really be said to console someone who is irrationally angry.

To my old lady posse who sits in the WW meetings with me – next time when I lose .4 f’n pounds, please don’t console me with my past victories.  That makes me feel any worse.  Is there any reason why the only thing I said at the meeting after that was a biting sarcastic remark about not needing to worry about putting my makeup back on after I finish working out?

So now I feel like a stupid fat failure.  Just wonderful.

I’m going into work on my day off, to be nice.  For free.  I’m not getting paid for this.  I do a day before the big scary standardized test review session, and its today.  Those kids better be nice to me or risk a big stupid fat guy going postal on them.

End rant.

This weekend rocked.

And now for something completely not deep =

This weekend freakin’ rocked.

Friday morning I lost 4 pounds at my weigh in, and couldn’t believe it.  I spent the rest of the afternoon watching gay themed movies from Blockbuster Online.  Mambo Italiano and Latter Days are a necessity for any movie watcher who doesn’t mind homosexuality on the screen!

Friday night a friend from church celebrated her 30th birthday party.  After I went up and mentioned how OLD she is (30…geesh….) I got down to business and murdered the club owner for stealing profits from my Chicago operation.  See, it was a murder mystery party and I had a pretty big role as head of the New York mob in to Chicago to try and get his daughter to marry me so I could get half of his business.  He ended up being the one originally murdered, but we soon drew slips of paper that either had an action, a weapon, or nothing on them.  If you wanted to kill someone you had to have a weapon.  We had money to play poker with, buy drinks, and buy people (I did a lot of that.)  Well, I was a mobster!  When it was my turn to deal poker, I stole quite a bit of money and stacked the deck so my loyal associate would win. When I was walking around I saw an unclaimed piece of red paper and I stole it without the owner being any wiser – and it was a weapon!  Since I had finally figured out who was lifting my profits, I killed him, with the only witness being someone who I had recruited into my mafia earlier in the evening.  I later ordered one of my guys to kill the Congressman so I could get the Mayor of Chicago, who I liked and would owe me a favor, into power.  I was wheeling and dealing the whole night and by the end had like, half the room bought off or part of my mafia.  And I lived!  Surprisingly enough.  Afterwards I went to a friends house, relaxed and smoked a cigar and chatted for an hour.

Saturday was a long day of work, as ususal.  It started off *horribly* in the beginning, but got pretty good by the end of the day.  Had fun with the kids, taught them stuff at teh saem time.  Finally drilled stoichemetry into one of my favorite student’s head after four hours.  Felt good.

Then the work party, which was a lot better than I expected.  My CD won for Best New Director, and she won a sales competition.  Then I won for best teacher – and am still completely flabbergasted!  Won the Starbucks card for winning the scavenger hunt with my team, and had a good time (which stunned me!  I was expecting disaster.)

This morning we took the 6th/7th grade RE class to the big Greek Orthodox Temple here in the Atlanta area.  And I swear, if it weren’t for the whole Jesus thing and the Nicean Creed, the gay thing and the communion thing, I would consider converting to Greek Orthodoxy.  The temple is breathtaking, the ritual is beautiful.  This time I was able to follow along with the service in the little book, and it was simply beautiful.  During communion we sneaked out and went to the 10th grade Sunday School class where I even learned a lot about the early history of the Christan church…which made me want to learn more (and I checked out a book from the UUCA library on it – my first time checking out a book there!)

Afterwards time to watch Latter Days with my old roomie, had a good cry over the movie, then went to the same cigar-loving friend to watch my dear Colts play.  (For those who forgot, I was born in Indianapolis, lived there for 10 years, then moved to Georgia in the summer of 93, and all of my extended family is in Indiana but me.)

That was a freaking AMAZING game.  Unbelievable.  When we (yes we, I now consider myself part of the Colts team) were down 21-3 I thought it was over, but Peyton woke up and pulled it out!  It was AMAZING and the Colts are in the SUPERBOWL!  WAHOO!  We’re going to have a 20s/30s Superbowl party, and I plan on making a complete fool out of myself there, completely decked out in blue, face-paint everything that walks through the door, and decorate my friends house like mad.  I suggested tonight he repaint his room Colt blue, but he wasn’t quite up for the idea.

Now I’m back home, watching Mambo Itliano one last time before I get some new movies, seeing how a post of mine is sparking a new discussion on overt-hyper-intellectualism within UU [I'm working on a new post to talk more about it.] and I’m just having the best weekend ever.
So, Vh1, come and film it and put it on next weekend.