(no subject)

SnotFest '08 has made it to our household. I've been feeling kinda blah for weeks, which I attributed to sinus issues stemming from the freeze-thaw-repeat cycle that the weather kindly gave us. However, the temperatures have largely stabilized, and I still feel crappy. Yesterday, the mucus that has become a constant companion started turning green, so I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon to get antibiotics. In many ways, I'm glad for the green despite the pain it brings with it, because green is treatable. I'd rather feel worse with something that can be treated than have two weeks of unspecific symptoms that only respond partially to the drugs I take to treat them.

Mom is still hanging in there. She's gone unconscious from low blood sugar twice in the last month. It's her way of ensuring that John and I treasure any quiet moments we get, instead of taking them for granted.

Over the summer my former laptop got into a tiff with the electric company and refused to acknowledge that it had power. From what little I've bothered to research, this seems to be a common thing with Compaq laptops. Also common is a tendency to turn back on about six months later as though nothing happened, and my laptop is no exception. This makes me happy, because I had a saved game on it that I really mourned the loss of, and still missed even after six months. I've transferred the game to my new laptop, and I've been spending my sick time happily playing my old game again.

My sister-in-law called to see how I was doing, and during the conversation, she complained that I'd left the alpaca picture up as the first thing in this journal for far too long. She said it would be different if it had been a picture of a hot guy on a beach or something, but the alpaca just Had To Go. Well, alright then. This is for her:



Happy birthday to Shane2 and to John's Dad.

(no subject)

SnotFest '08 has made it to our household. I've been feeling kinda blah for weeks, which I attributed to sinus issues stemming from the freeze-thaw-repeat cycle that the weather kindly gave us. However, the temperatures have largely stabilized, and I still feel crappy. Yesterday, the mucus that has become a constant companion started turning green, so I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon to get antibiotics. In many ways, I'm glad for the green despite the pain it brings with it, because green is treatable. I'd rather feel worse with something that can be treated than have two weeks of unspecific symptoms that only respond partially to the drugs I take to treat them.

Mom is still hanging in there. She's gone unconscious from low blood sugar twice in the last month. It's her way of ensuring that John and I treasure any quiet moments we get, instead of taking them for granted.

Over the summer my former laptop got into a tiff with the electric company and refused to acknowledge that it had power. From what little I've bothered to research, this seems to be a common thing with Compaq laptops. Also common is a tendency to turn back on about six months later as though nothing happened, and my laptop is no exception. This makes me happy, because I had a saved game on it that I really mourned the loss of, and still missed even after six months. I've transferred the game to my new laptop, and I've been spending my sick time happily playing my old game again.

My sister-in-law called to see how I was doing, and during the conversation, she complained that I'd left the alpaca picture up as the first thing in this journal for far too long. She said it would be different if it had been a picture of a hot guy on a beach or something, but the alpaca just Had To Go. Well, alright then. This is for her:



Happy birthday to Shane2 and to John's Dad.

The balloon animal story

Whenever a friend suffers a loss, I often tell them that I made a friend of mine get me balloon animals when my grandfather died, and someday I might tell him why. I say it to point out that I understand that grief brings with it memories that need an outlet but that are often too painful to explain at the moment (though the fact that it never fails to lighten the mood a little doesn't hurt).

I've said it many times in the last year; too many. But it occurs to me that it might be time to explain to Michael what the balloon animal thing was about, and if it happens to bring a smile to one of the people I've offered help to, so much the better.

When I was a child, my grandparents had an RV that they left permanently parked at a campground outside of Jackson. It wasn't unusual for me to spend entire summers there, with my mother and grandfather coming up on Friday nights after work and leaving again on Sunday. (Mom eventually gave up fighting over weekends with me and got her own RV, which she parked on a lot in the same campground, just across the street.) During the late spring, when school was still in session but the weather was beautiful, either Grandma would wait until Friday after school to go to the campground, or she'd have Grandpa pick me up from school and bring me out. Oftentimes, my best friend Motoko would spend weekends at the campground with us.

One Friday, Grandma was already at the campground and Grandpa picked me up from school. He decided to bring Motoko up as well, and arranged it with her mother (or possibly her mother asked him to; she worked a lot of weekends and having Motoko spend the weekend with us worked out well for her).

The trip from school to the campground was an hour and a half. Being small children (I think I was six or seven at the time), we immediately begged for McDonald's, and filled our stomachs with pop and chicken nuggets. And being small children, it wasn't long before it was our bladders that were full instead of our stomachs. Grandma was used to the routine and had her standard stops along the way; Grandpa was the newbie when it came to hauling children out to the campground and had to wing it. He stopped at the only place around, which just happened to be a bar.

This was the late 70's (possibly 1980, but not later), so no one batted an eye at the idea of a man popping into a bar with two children and ordering himself a beer while they used the restroom. It was also still pretty early in the day, so there weren't a lot of people around. It's also within the realm of possibility that Grandpa's nerves were a bit unsettled from having two squirming, giggling, wriggling, tickle-fighting, "she's on my side!" children in the car for over an hour. He bought each of us a Coke and himself a second beer, and the three of us nursed our drinks. The guy at the other end of the bar watched us for a bit, and then came over and asked Motoko and I if we wanted balloon animals. We were six-year-old girls, of course we wanted balloon animals! My memory of the animals themselves is fuzzy, though I do recall that we had a small tiff over which one of us got the pink one.

What I recall most, though, was that for the entire rest of the trip, Grandpa kept telling us not to tell Grandma where we got the balloon animals. It had finally occurred to him that she might not look favorably upon his choice of restroom locations, and she'd certainly not be happy about him keeping us there while he finished his beer. So for a half hour, he kept repeating "Remember, you got the animals from McDonald's, which is where we stopped to go to the bathroom. Don't tell Grandma about the bar." We agreed, and we really did mean it-- we knew he'd be in trouble with Grandma, and we didn't think it was anything worth getting in trouble over.

But we were six, and good intentions fly out the window when you're six. So when we got to the campground and hopped out of the car, we flew at Grandma to hug her and said "See what we got? The guy at the bar gave them to us!" Grandma didn't speak to Grandpa at all that night, and Motoko and I felt bad about it. But our shiny balloon animals consoled us, especially the pink one.