So tonight we got to see Buttercup perform as a beatnik troll in his school's production of "On the Verge." He did really well. I was just floored to be sitting in the audience watching him on stage. Like "OH MY GOD. That is my KID. ::boggle ( Read more... )

Apparently on that chart that shows the progress of grief, somewhere between "disbelief/numbness" and "utter despair/inability to function", there was supposed to be the "bursting into brief-but-unstoppable tears unexpectedly at completely random moments" stage.

That wasn't on there. They need to add that one.

I just had another one of those awful moments of wanting to tell my mother something cool and interesting, and realizing I can't.

I hate this.

My mom died at 10 p.m. last night.

I was holding her when she died, lying beside her with my arms wrapped around her. My grandmother was there in the room. I think it was exactly the way she wanted to leave this world. And I was very glad that I was able to be with her to the very end, as far as I could go.

(whew)... this being an extraordinarily lean year, I'm not doing a whole lot of shopping, but I am almost done with the little I am doing. Thankfully the kids aren't back for two weeks, so I have a little bit of time before I have to get their stuff (and by then my Jan. child support will be here---woohoo ( Read more... )

Holy God. So we're back from our little "this will be easy" trip to Montreal to drop Buttercup at the airport.

Easy it was so not.

Did you know:

•Vermont has a new no/low salt policy?
•And that northern Vermont just got some kind of unexpected blizzard? (Really. I *did* check weather.com before I left ( Read more... )

"Attitudes toward noserings....[your uncle] told [his daughter] that if she got a piercing such as that she would not be welcome in the house... You see ( Read more... )

So it's just in her neck, in the lymph nodes. It's treatable. (Though no one has said curable.)

I still haven't talked to her.

Patches of russet peek between green boughs along my way to work in the morning. The ground is already speckled with golden leaves. Someone at work wrote on the blank flipchart that has been left standing in our cafeteria for weeks: "Fall has fallen upon us ( Read more... )

After getting my mother's response to my email, I called my cousin. My voice was shaking, with outrage and with trepidation. My mother's ace is always to tell me that "my whole family" (usually naming names as well) thinks such and such about me. Which is what she did this time.

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