It was nice to get off work at noon yesterday. Come home, have lunch, chill. I'd gotten everything done by Sunday, so it was a matter of remembering to bring my gifts downstairs, which I did after 9 PM. And promptly got yelled at. I'd turned on the dining room light so I could see what I was doing, only dad was perhaps still wrapping gifts, or ( Read more... )

The grandma saga came to a positive conclusion, thankfully, but the trip to getting there was certainly bumpy ( Read more... )

My parents went to a party today and I got the house to myself. I had all sorts of plans and wrote up a list of things I wanted to do. Then, about 3:30 PM, the phone rings and it's my older uncle, the one we hardly talk to. I let it go to voicemail and he's saying he tried to call grandma but her phone wasn't working. Great. I then tried to call ( Read more... )

What do you get the mom who has everything? You don't. You buy her a card and flowers and you make her food. Pretty easy ( Read more... )

I've been looking to get together with Laura and her family for a few weeks now. Once October rolled around and I was up for actually doing things on the weekend, it seemed time. She was game for yesterday after getting some stuff out of the way; we were texting about it Friday night. However, reading is hard, especially if you're a slow texter ( Read more... )

On the phone call with grandma yesterday, after giving her my big vaccination news, she went into her latest harrumph: My uncle's roommate told her she's going senile. Now, they don't talk often, in part because the roommate tends to raise grandma's blood pressure, but they saw each other a couple weeks ago because of my uncle's birthday. It just ( Read more... )

Today would be my grandfather's 91st birthday. I used to greet him with "Hey old man," which both amused and annoyed him. Not to be outdone, his big brother would've turned 100 on Thursday. Gosh, that's amazing. Then again, so was my great uncle--abandoned by his birth father, raised in humble beginnings, caught up in Pearl Harbor, yet ( Read more... )

Round two of cleaning started a little later today. Mom had bought a tube of cinnamon rolls. I wanted to be sure I was downstairs by 7:30 to make them; she was surprised I was up that early. (Also a surprise: When I heard mom coming downstairs and I said, "Good morning!" And the first voice answering was my dad's from the couch. He'd been ( Read more... )

Normally, dad and I would go shopping on Saturday morning. There was no way I was going shopping yesterday. And, since my wheezy cough has kicked in, there's no way I'm leaving the house this week.

(I found the CDC's website with its symptom checker a few days ago. At that time, I was in "stay home and rest" mode. I re-checked today and am now ( Read more... )

Mom didn't get home until about 10 last night, and then she proceeded to talk about some of what happened. After about 20 minutes, dad started getting cranky--what, like you have to get up and go to work tomorrow? Sheesh. He was wide awake and watching TV, not like he was sleeping or anything. Mom and I went upstairs and continued talking for a ( Read more... )