Eulogy

My grandmother passed away on July 28. This is the Eulogy that my Aunt wrote for her:

The music [Bach's "Arioso" played on the cello at the funeral, but really, 4 days of playing in the hospital while she died] was for Mom. One of the things she taught me was the value of education, particularly of the arts and sciences.

Here are a few other things. They might sound corny, but this is really how she lived her life.

1. Be loving, considerate, and generous to all, whether or not you agree with them

2. You can do anything - but not everything all at the same time.

3. When you get dealt a bad hand, go ahead and cry, then stop crying, look at what you might do to avoid it happening again - and go and get a doctor's degree.

4. Be proud of yourself, and never wear safety pins in your underwear.

5. Marry for love, and keep your relationship first.

6. Never go to bed angry, or without telling your family how much you love them.

7. Savor every minute of your life, focusing on what is glorious and minimizing what is not.

8. Realize that wherever you are is the best place to be.

9. Take time to laugh, even if you're in church.

10. Faith is all enduring, and God will always be with you in both difficult and glorious situations.

Now that was unexpected

Whew! I did it and I survived. More than survived. I just got back from my 10 year high school reunion, and it was really great! The worst part was definately being afraid of it for 2 months. It was for the most part fabulous and only a teeny tiny part horrifying:

The Reunion Part I (99.9%) Fabulous:
Everyone one I talked to was fun, interesting, interested, sincere, laid back, and silly. We talked about northern lights, making soap, local geology, rock climbing, military service, europe, sewage systems, agriculture, zoning, legislation, teaching, architecture, 6th grade Dare class memories (probably my most horrible memory of school...and it got dragged out as the funniest story some people had ever heard. Whew! can finally stop worrying about that one!), rodeos, brewing beer, building houses, and all the people who didn't come (good stuff, too!). We drank and talked and shared stories and really honestly didn't end up rubbing eachother very much the wrong way at all, it seemed. All of that weird awful mistrust and hurt and drama that held us together as kids and in high school like some strangely essential connective tissue was wiped clear and for a night anyway, we were all having a good time, ignoring the band, and talking until our voices ran out. Fabulous fabulous. So glad I got to be part of that.


The Reunion Part II (.1%) Horrifying:
Standing in front of they guy that she might still have a bit of a latent crush on, my "best" friend from high school says, in a lull in the conversation, "So, do you even have a job?" I looked at her feet and said, quickly, "Of course! I've got a great job!" And then, as I take an embarassed and flustered pull on my beer, I get really annoyed! Hey, man, that was totally mean! I change my tone of voice (loud and harsher now) and continue, "No, I just sit around on my ass all day and drink beer!" Before I've even finished that last syllable, she has her hands on my cheeks and is holding my mouth shut and my head tilted to the sky, like she would her 7 year old daughter (who is standing right there), and says something about my language. I don't even have time to process this, really. I laugh at her and say that I'd forgotten that was even a bad word, and look at they other guy and say, Wow, it could have been a lot worse! We laugh about it together. I cease eye contact with her, and as soon as I can I sit with other people who don't feel the need to manhandle me and belittle me in front of children. And that was it. It really was. I hated that she made me feel small in high school and I'm kind of stunned that she still needs to make me feel small now.

But there is a good part to this. It makes me so FUCKING grateful! I have managed to surround myself ALL AROUND myself surround myself with wonderful people that I love to talk to, who I feel good about life when I talk to them! And it's a good thing I won't have to deal with her again for a long long long time. Maybe ever, actually. Yeah. Ever would be best.

Although I do feel bad for her gorgeous, observant, wide-eyed daughter. I hope she can escape that influence unscathed. I would have loved to have talked to her, although I'm pretty sure I permanently scratched any chances of that with my "language."

Seriously, when did ass become such a bad word? I missed that part, I think

Two Shoes (and proud of it now!)

Experiments with Edamame

My new favorite meal to skip, or at least skimp on, is dinner. I've started eating my breakfast religiously, and then eating a lot less for dinner. This is helped by the fact that certain people with particularly fond attachments to "dinner" are living in Korea, and I can't figure out how this will work when he gets back. But we'll worry about that then.

For now, my favorite thing for dinner is just a plate of edamame. I like to sprinkle this Osaka Salt on it that I got in the market. The Osaka salt has some flakes of seaweed and sesame seeds in it too, so it's yummy.

And I experimented a little bit. Here's what I know:

-Do not boil the shit out of edamame because they disintegrate in weird ways instead of you being able to pull the beans out with your teeth. This is embarassing when company comes over.

-Already salted Edamame = Yuck! i have my own salt.

-Edamame that comes already shelled (just the bean) tastes strangely like grass. I can't reconcile why this is. Regular edamame in the husk doesn't taste like grass. Maybe it's because you can only put 2 or 3 beans in your mouth at one time so the grassiness doesn't build up to the point of being detectable. Anyway, it turns out that just plain edamame beans don't cut it.

-Following dtg's advice and only keeping the edamame in the water long enough to defrost them is just about right. Plus another 30 seconds or so.

Now I'm hungry.

Two Shoes.

I'm Stuck

He asked me when I would be coming home again. I realize that this means I'll have to come home on the weekend of the reunion. And I want to; I want to see him. The sick part is I don't want to go to the reunion very much, but it might be an easy weekend to find a ride over. My aunt could drive me back, maybe. I can't even face how screwy it all is.

I'm Stuck

Sometimes I see things out of the corner of my eyes and when I look they're not there anymore. A crow flew at my car the other day, but by the time I could look it was gone. The other night while I was idleing on the couch, a large black dog came running straight at me and was about to jump over my head when he disappeared.

This reminds me that at one particularly distressing point, I was holding her hand, and she looked at me and asked who was standing in the window. Since I was between her and the window at the time, it could have been me she was talking about. But maybe she saw something else

I'm Stuck

Coming home in the dusk, I saw a friend walking his dog ahead of me. I wasn't in the mood to talk just then, so to avoid overtaking him, I cut up the hill to get to my house the other way around the block. Just then he drove past me in his car. So it hadn't been him with the dog. But he didn't see me from his car and I kept walking. As I got to my place, I ran into the man with the dog who had walked full circle around the block. Still, he was not anyone I knew or had to talk to. But I felt like I was walking through a mirrorred house with the same projection everywhere.

I'm Stuck

There are so many things about the Weekend of the Crash. One of them is the story of some friends who were sitting on the deck at Shannons when the vehicle went by at 70 miles an hour out of town. And then they heard the crash. And then they were the first ones on the scene... and then, god, it's just too awful to tell after that.

And that is a peripheral side story that doesn't actually have a lot to do with me. But is has a lot to do with them for them. Fuck.

I'm Stuck

I carried pink and yellow flowers from her funeral in my pocket for days.

I'm Stuck

Sometimes I hate everyone on the bus. Today it was the dumb girl with the boring cell phone conversation. I hate you, dumb girl!

I'm Stuck

A man the other day said he was cleaning up his yard because they were going to take pictures that day for Google earth. It made me think about a city wide picture day where everyone gets all scrubbed up and brushes their teeth extra hard.

I'm Stuck

Today I finished Young Men and Fire. And there's a problem like a big empty yawn when you finish a really good book. So I ate 4 potstickers for dinner and went to the public library. There I got a library card (which makes me suspicious that I maybe already have one somewhere in the recesses). And I went looking for some books. Here is a list of all the books they didn't have today:

Feminine Mystique, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, God Laughs and Plays, Sweet Heart, Devil in the White City, Thirteenth Sense, and My Story Told by Water.

The did have Judgement of Paris by Gore Vidal, which I got. It has a hard blue cover with no title on the front and looks like a no nonsense kind of book.

But what the fuck kind of library IS this place, anyway?

I'm Stuck

The smell of the cigar went from fresh tobacco to old smoke to sour milk as I walked closer to the two men outside the pub with their backs to me. I must not have been making much noise, because as I approached and then stepped around him, the one with the cigar reached out in front of me and flicked ashes on my black shoes.

I'm Stuck

Today I called George at lunch time. He had a book playing loud in the background and he talked longer than he did before. He was glad to hear from me and he told me that this morning he woke up Mary same time as always. He did the same thing as always. That he talks to her all the time. The universe turned inside out and real for a minute. I told him that I do too. I told him that last night I held her hand for a long time. It was so warm, hard from all the knobby bones and knuckles, big fleshy veins, pockets in her palms. She loved to touch me with those hands, on my back, shoulders, or on my arm. So I imagine that she liked to have her hand held too. Her rings spin around, never the right way.

I'm Stuck

A man walked out of his apartment in skinny black pants and a belt with metal loops all the way around. He walked in front of me, his loops swinging to the music on my headphones. About a block down, he saw a girl who'd gotten off the bus. She had shiney black hair and a blue dress and blue eyeshadow to match. They stopped at eachother and he held out his hand to her. She picked something out of it. As I walked by it looked like a tiny silver key, or perhaps a fancy bobby pin. Then he turned around and walked back up the hill with her.