(no subject)
I just got back from my great uncle's funeral. It was a primitive**(?) Baptist affair, which lasted like SEVEN hours in total-- three hours for the service/meet and greet, two hours for the graveside service, and another two hours for the family funeral buffet line. The actual service was strange, due to the hardxcore southern Baptist influence. The entire family stood next to the open casket and greeted everyone for an hour or so. I'm inherently creeped out by dead bodies. When I die, I just want to be cremated and shipped off to some exotic location, where my fragments can live in perpetuity. None of these chemicals and tubes and post-mortem makeovers.
The service was filled with lots of singing and praise be-ing. The hymns were so freaking complex, though, like they expected you to sing different harmonies and know all the verse cues, etc. (Did you know that there are multiple verses to "Amazing Grace?") My fourth-grade choral knowledge didn't cut it. The entire service was religious, life and death rhetoric, with hardly any mention of my uncle.
The cemetery was really bizarre. I'm used to bare graves with dead or fake flowers on them, but people actually dressed up the plots, à la Trading Spaces-graveside edition. One had a Hawaiian luau theme with fake palm trees and leis. Another had a huge carousel house inside a mini gazebo. I have welts all over from the fire ants who managed to be all covert in attacking me, when I was doing my walk around.
I realized that I have lots and lots of cousins. (There are probably some that I don't know about as well, but I digress.)
1) One cousin just married a 20-year-old Russian woman that a) he knew for one week b) has only been in this country for a couple of months and c) does not speak English. While this seems like a quirky romantic comedy in the making, it's more skeevy than dreamy in real life.
2) One of my ultra conservative cousins just named her fresh ex-utero baby, "Rush." Yes, as in Rush Limbaugh, the "O.G.-con."
3) My very rad cousin, Erin, has the quirkiest baby ever. She's like the Martha Stewart of babies, or she has really early symptoms of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder, for the non-DSM IV acquainted) She literally just runs around and cleans all day. She has her special cleaning rag, and she wipes everything down or picks up any stray stuff. When she eats, she wipes her face after every bite. It's really odd yet endearing.
The service was filled with lots of singing and praise be-ing. The hymns were so freaking complex, though, like they expected you to sing different harmonies and know all the verse cues, etc. (Did you know that there are multiple verses to "Amazing Grace?") My fourth-grade choral knowledge didn't cut it. The entire service was religious, life and death rhetoric, with hardly any mention of my uncle.
The cemetery was really bizarre. I'm used to bare graves with dead or fake flowers on them, but people actually dressed up the plots, à la Trading Spaces-graveside edition. One had a Hawaiian luau theme with fake palm trees and leis. Another had a huge carousel house inside a mini gazebo. I have welts all over from the fire ants who managed to be all covert in attacking me, when I was doing my walk around.
I realized that I have lots and lots of cousins. (There are probably some that I don't know about as well, but I digress.)
1) One cousin just married a 20-year-old Russian woman that a) he knew for one week b) has only been in this country for a couple of months and c) does not speak English. While this seems like a quirky romantic comedy in the making, it's more skeevy than dreamy in real life.
2) One of my ultra conservative cousins just named her fresh ex-utero baby, "Rush." Yes, as in Rush Limbaugh, the "O.G.-con."
3) My very rad cousin, Erin, has the quirkiest baby ever. She's like the Martha Stewart of babies, or she has really early symptoms of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder, for the non-DSM IV acquainted) She literally just runs around and cleans all day. She has her special cleaning rag, and she wipes everything down or picks up any stray stuff. When she eats, she wipes her face after every bite. It's really odd yet endearing.