Non Sequitur

My great-aunt Iva passed away two weeks ago after a long illness.  She would have been 91 next month.  She was born into a large, farming family in 1917.  She not only graduated from highschool, which was very unusual for girls kids from poor Maine farm families in those days, but she even went on to became a nurse.  She moved far from home and married but never lost touch with the family she left behind.  She returned to “the old farm” every chance she had and I, for the longest time, didn’t even realize that she had another house in another state!  She was a constant presence in all of our lives.  She lived a blessed life and we miss her very much. 

After the service there was a gathering at her son’s home.  The pastor said it was to be a “small” gathering but since she was one of 12 kids, with 7 kids of her own and lots and lots of grandbabies, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. “small” is a relative term.  Her son’s home was full of people I see all together only a few times each year. 

We decided to take Monkey with us to just see how he’d do and he did very well.  I received so many compliments on his behavior.  He wandered amongst the relatives and let them admire his curls (they drive the old ladies wild with envy ;-)), he was quiet and content to move among them.  I sat beside him and named everyone in the room that I could point at and he played along, though there’s no way to know if any of the names stuck.  I wish there was more I could do to teach him about the lives these amazing people have lived. 

More than that though, I wish I could give him the sort of family I grew up in.  I had 3 siblings of my own and dozens of cousins.  I won’t even attempt to guess at how many 2nd cousins there were as well.  My family was a social group all to itself.  Today’s standard of small families seems so lonely to me right now as I watch that older generation dwindle in size.  Monkey has 7 cousins and I’m grateful for that, of course, but I do wish he’d know what it was like to never have to worry about friends that first day of school because there were likely to be 2 or 3 cousins waiting for you at the door.

I’m feeling a very strong urge right now to move back home.  I love the city and what it offers to us educationally and FX-wise but I really want to sit on my back deck and look at woods I played in as a child, woods that my family has owned and hunted on for generations.   I want to yell across the street to my aunt and uncle.  I want my cousin to pop over to babysit.  I want my grandfather to come for a visit and know that the dream he had of his grandchildren building on the land he’d purchased had come true.  I don’t know how much longer I have to make that dream come true for him or for me.  No one does, I suppose, I’m just more aware of it now than I’ve ever been.

I’m full of thoughts that go nowhere right now.  There are things going on, that I am only very tangentally connected to, that are bringing up a lot of fear and stress.  One of Duhdee’s friends passed away very suddenly last week leaving behind two kids and a wife.   My heart aches for them and my mind is full of “what ifs.” 

Life is feeling very precious and precarious right now.

*Tell me someone else remembers this random song from the 80’s?

I was tagged days ago and I’m going to try to play along.  It’s taken a while to come up with 7 (semi-interesting) things, lol.  I’m not going to tag anyone…I think it’s made the rounds now!

1.  I have a strange fascination with and strong fear of….VAMPIRES.  I know they’re probably not real but I still can not sleep unless I have the covers pulled up over my neck even in the middle of the summer…as if that will help!  I also cannot resist a good vampire book which probably means I’m a masochist. 

2.  I do not know left from right.  If I take the time to look at my hands, I can figure it out but generally I just blurt out one or the other and I’m often wrong.  And I’m the navigator in our family! Hubby just needs to remember to go the way I’m pointing and ignore the words coming out of my mouth.

3.  To confuse the issue, I have a really good sense of direction.  I know it sounds weird given the above but I remember places and I can just sort of picture in my mind where those places are in relation to one another.  They’re usually tied up with some story in my head so I have to give directions by trying to remind Duhdee of the story I’m remembering and he’s not really very good at following directions like that.  He’s all “HOW far?”  “Left or Right?”  And I’m trying to remind him of the cafe where we got that sandwhich 3 years ago…two intersections away from there.  We somehow manage without killing each other. 

4.  I make up a “dance” for just about every activity but I’m getting better about only doing it at home.  Sometimes I don’t even realize I’m doing it.  My “Popcorn” dance never fails to amuse my husband.

5.  I don’t like jewelry.  I wear a wedding band but that is it and even that bugs me. I wanted to get rings tattooed on but Duhdee wouldn’t agree. 

6.  I love Elvis.  I wanted to elope to Vegas and have an Elvis impersonator marry us but Duhdee wouldn’t agree to it.  In fact, he was so convinced that I’d TRICK him into doing this that he refused to even consider visiting Vegas before we were safely wed in a traditional ceremony.  I still have my fingers crossed for our 10 year anniversary. 

7.  Even though I live in the city and love the city…I’m a farmer deep down in my bones.  I want nothing more than to buy a 100 acre farm somewhere to raise cows, chickens and pigs, grow my own vegetables, make my own soap, etc. and live off the grid.  I really should have been a pioneer woman 😉

Nice, eh? I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed but there’s still garden dirt there, lol.

This weekend was jam packed with all sorts of fun things.  On Saturday we drove to NH to visit with Duhdee’s parents, brother and niece.  Monkey had a really good time, he played with his cousin very nicely.  After we left Grammy and Grampy’s we stopped to pick up the 1/4 cow we ordered a few weeks ago from a local farm.  Mmmm, beef.  Grass fed beef even, I’m so excited.

On Sunday we had to disassemble our garden.  The temperature is going to drop into the 30’s tonight 🙁 We spent hours outside picking all the tomatoes we could find and chopping down the jungle the plants had created.  We finished draining our rain barrel, swept sidewalks and chopped down the remains of our day lilies.  Duhdee reorganized the shed so the snowblower is now more accessible than our garden tools *sigh*  Are you getting the picture that I’m not a fan of the winter? 

We now have about 60 lbs of green tomatoes on our kitchen table.  We’re hoping most ripen so we can freeze more for sauce but we can always have piccalilli if they don’t 🙂

Oh, and…IEP, done.  We did the final review and we’re sending it out today.  Phew.

Last night Duhdee and I took my mom, dad and sister to a Red Sox game.  It was so much fun!  It was raining but we were under the roof.  The game was delayed but we had plenty of time for people watching.  Tim Wakefield was pitching but last night was one of the times when he was “on”.   It was a fantastic time.

Monkey stayed home with a friend of ours and did just fine.  The only thing I would change if I could was the 5:50 AM wake up…*yawn*

First, we need to get out and run.  We took a few too many days off while I was on vacation so now we have to stick to the every other day plan to stay on track.

Then, we are having a cookout with a few neighbors.  There are about 15 of us total.  I made cookies yesterday.  Duhdee needs to prepare shrimp skewers and veggie skewers.  Everyone is bringing something so we should have plenty of food.  Around noon we’ll start setting up tables, grills and the TV so we should be well under way by the time the Patriots game kicks off at 1.  Yay!  Go Pats!  Monkey LOVES football so that should be a big hit.

Sometimes we have trouble convincing him to go into the neighbors yard for these sorts of things but I think the Patriots will be a strong enough lure.  I doubt anyone is going to be able to hear the announcers over his screams of “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Balllllll!” though.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a serious storm here but that should change today.

An outer band of Hanna was expected to reach the Massachusetts coast this morning, dumping up to 3 inches of rain. That band will move, allowing for a clear day before the body of Hanna reaches the area in the evening, dumping another 3 to 4 inches overnight. The storm is about 310 miles long.

The area will see a sustained wind of 30 to 40 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 60 miles per hour along the coast, said Nicole Belk, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton.

We’re under a Tropical Storm warning now.  Joy.