Smile of the Day #9

Farewell 2005

As if the gods have conspired to end my year (and that of my family) with the ultimate ending, I have yet another funeral to go to.

I have briefly explained my extended family, but let me elaborate now as they have been a large part of my life lately.

When we moved to Texas 14 years ago, I was just 12. My father worked for a craft chain, and one of his employees was a man named Gerry. Gerry’s wife Ronnie was (and is) a real estate agent. My father moved here six months before my mother and I, and spent that time looking for houses with Ronnie and working with Gerry. My first meeting with Ronnie was the same week my grandfather passed away. We had flown down to Dallas over Spring break, and were staying at my father’s little one bedroom apartment, with its gray supplied furniture, white walls, and painted white brick fireplace. I remember being in the bedroom as my parents listened to a heartwrenching message from my grandmother, that my grandfather had died in the night. I remember thinking how awful it would be to wake up and your husband was lying next to you, dead. The message was a screeching, sobbing, hysterical mess, as my grandmother must have called us very soon after she had found him. The sound of her voice ripped through the tiny apartment with so much force I can still hear it today. She hadn’t met him until she was in her forties, but in that moment, I knew for a fact that he was the love of her life. That was my first funeral.

But I digress…When I met Ronnie a few days before my grandfather passed away, we hopped in her leather clad white Mercedes and started touring Dallas Fort Worth. And I mean touring. We must have covered an area that was seriously 40 miles east and west and 30 miles north and south, trying to find the perfect city to live in. One day, her car phone rang…because back then, you were the coolest of cool with a car phone. It was this snazzy job that I still wish I had today, she pressed a button on the console, and she just started talking. It was the first hands free set. Except it was wired into her car! There was a tiny microphone above the driver’s side door frame, and she just talked and the caller’s voice would boom back at us through a speaker. This time, it was her then 15 year old daughter. “Mooom…Can I go to the Maaalll?? I’ll use my own money, Mom!” That was my first introduction to Dana. She was allowed to go to the mall, and I thought she was cooler than cool forever after.

Dana also had a sister, Jen but I didn’t meet her until much later as Jen was several years older than me, and must have been starting college around that time.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I guess the combination of my father’s friendship with Gerry, and our house buying with Ronnie, our families became friends, and suddenly we were invited to Christmas dinner. Our family, like theirs, was spread all over the country, so spending the holidays with them was difficult. So they had started new traditions a few years before we met them, and had Christmas dinner each year with two other families. Both families lived near them and I believe Ronnie sold them their houses as well. One family was parented by Bill and Terry, and the other by Bob and Cathy.

About two years after we started having Christmas dinner at Ronnie and Gerry’s, we were invited to Thanksgiving by Bill and Terry. Suddenly, we had a family in Texas. The next thing we knew, we were invited to weddings, and Easter dinner, and virtually any family function. And unlike traditional families, we never fought. There was nothing to fight about. We had all chosen each other. We had chosen to spend the holidays together instead of being pressed into it by blood. As my friends would come back from the holidays complaining of family fights and boredom, I would come back saying I couldn’t wait to see everyone again at Easter.

And the strange thing is, for the most part, we rarely saw this group outside of the holidays. They were just like family. We only saw them three or four times a year, but have become closer to them than the time together would suggest.

Suddenly, last year, I realized, I had literally know Ronnie, Gerry, Dana and Jen for half my life. They were family. There was no escaping it! They would be at all of my major life events, just as I would be at theirs. They would spout out memories of me at 16 just as I would recall stories of them from Christmas 1993, or Easter 1995.

And then this year happened. In July, Gerry had a heart attack. It was a mild one, but scary and life-altering nonetheless. That is when we found out we have a calling tree, and it runs through the kids. Jen is now a real estate agent like her mother, and she sold me my house, so we have, in the past year or so, become much better friends than in years past, and she had saved my number in her phone. So to contact my family, Jen called me. I told my parents and then called Jenny, my best friend who is an extended member of our “family”. Jenny told her parents. Jen called Bill and Terry’s daughters and told them, etc., etc. Suddenly, at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, we all were headed to the hospital. The entire family was there. Supporting Ronnie and worrying about Gerry. This is how it works. This is family.

Then two weeks ago, Bill died. The tree was reinacted and suddenly, within minutes, we all knew what had happened and jumped into action to help Terry and the girls. And we did. Everyone did something. Ronnie and Gerry even found a cemetary for Bill. Because, we really are family. The kids suddenly feel like cousins. The adults suddenly feel like aunts and uncles, and the babies are nephews and nieces.

And then, strangely, Wednesday, I got a third call this year. From Jen again. Her uncle, Ronnie’s brother, a man I had not known well, but had spent several Christmases with, was in the hospital, having suffered a massive heart attack. He was in the Critical Care Unit, and it did not look good. Again, we rushed to the hospital to support Ronnie.

The night before last, Paul passed away, leaving two sons who are both about my age. Paul was a very nice man, and loved his family very much. It is truly just unbelievable that this has happened.

So yet again, my family, all of them, will be at a funeral together. It is being held Saturday at 10am. The last day of 2005, I will be at a funeral. There is something morbid yet, appropriate about that. I will be ending quite possibly the worst year of my life with an actual funeral.

So to Paul, Bill and 2005, I bid ado.

Smile of the Day #8

Today my mother’s wine club present came! I had to have it shipped to the office because it has to be signed for between 9 and 5 and by someone over 21. So the office it was…She got a Syrah and a Reisling today, but the smile part was that it came with a wine tasting page. Very cool! It tells you all about each one, one page for each bottle, and gives you room for notes on the back and a place to stick the label. So as you get your booze, you can learn about it! It’s a nice way to start a wine tasting book. I thought that was a very nice touch to the whole thing and it made me happy that the present seemed to come out so well. Very nicely done, Wine.com!

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

(Note: This is one of the posts I was working on…finally…)

So seriously, do you? My father and I both believe that my grandfather visits us. When I am at my grandmother’s apartment, I can feel him there, and my dad talks to him now and then. Not in a creepy way, in a sweet, “I miss my Pops” way.

Wednesday was the funeral for my uncle. It was awful. I went through an entire little plastic package of tissues during the service. I almost got up and left the church two or three times. I just couldn’t stop crying. The worst trigger was one of my cousins, his daughter heaving and weezing with tears. I couldn’t see her from where I was sitting, but I could hear her, and it broke my heart. She is 30 years old but both she and her sister are very close to their parents.

During the service though, I felt my Papaw there. He was sitting next to me for support. If you have never felt that feeling, it is wonderful and creepy at the same time. My rational mind telling me he’s not there, but yet the rest of me can still feel him. The service was a Catholic service, and when communion was given I felt my grandfather leave. He was Jewish and when he left it felt like he was uncomfortable, and that’s why he left. I told him to come back, over and over in my head, I told him to get back here. I didn’t care that it wasn’t his religion. I didn’t feel him for a few minutes, but when communion was over, he was there again.

I asked my father later if he thought Papaw was there. He said when he went into the viewing, he talked to Bill. Specifically, he told him to “get the hell out of there, and get up.” But that when he was talking to him, he felt like it was his Pops, not Bill that was in front of him. He was sure he was talking to my grandfather.

Bill’s death was just such a tragedy. I will always remember him standing in his kitchen, apron on, a huge glittery grin on his face, a glass of red wine in his hand. We shared a love for cooking and I always felt a bond between us there. He could think of very little in life that brought him more pleasure than cooking for friends and family, and I feel the same way. Given most any opportunity, I love feeding my crew.

So in Bill’s tradition of “no big deal” 6-10 person dinners, I invited my friends over to make cookies that night, to end a rotten day with something pleasant. We ordered pizza because I didn’t think there would be time to cook and bake, but we still dirtied the kitchen something fierce. Before we started baking, I pulled out a bottle of good wine that Bill and his wife had given me for my housewarming a year ago. We toasted Bill and my friend Jenny swirled her glass round and round, pretentiously sniffing the wine. She drank some and swirled again. This time, the red wine splashed out and landed squarely on her shirt. Jenny and her sister, who was also there, and I were all close to Bill and his family. We all looked at each other, slightly shocked. Jenny’s sister looked at us, eyes wide, and said, “That was Bill! Bill did that!” We all laughed and Jenny said, “Yeah he’s up there saying, ‘didn’t you learn ANYthing at my house!’” We spent the rest of the night roaring with laughter, making cookies and having fun with icing.

When everyone had left for the night, I sat down on my couch. Now, before my friends came over, I had vaccuumed my living room. Including right by the couch, but when I glanced down at the floor by my feet, I noticed a fortune cookie paper. I had not had Chinese food in months, and after this incident, I called everyone who had been at my home that evening to see if they had recently had Chinese. None had. I picked it up to read it. It told me,

“You have a lively family.”

Rationally, that is just a wonderful coincidence, but emotionally, it made me wonder whether Bill or Papaw had left it there for me. What a wonderful thing to say about my adopted family. And so true. I hope you have been blessed with a family as lively as the one I have been given. Their energy can help you survive anything.

Two posts…Not Done. One Christmas, Done.

I have been working on two serious posts lately, neither of which are done. One I think I will leave out, but the other you will probably see soon…Sorry about the disappearance. The week leading up to Christmas SUCKED big time.

Christmas however, was AWEsome. I got an 11-cup food processor (stainless steel), y’all!!!! SO cool! One of my cousins told me I just need to get married already so I stop wasting wedding presenty things on Christmas presents! lol…oh well…Guess it was my mom’s way of saying she knew it won’t be happening any time soon, and I need to get to cooking ELEVEN cups of somethin’ quick! Hmm…11 cups of salsa? 11 cups of pesto? 11 cups of…umm…pizza dough? What the hell am I going to make 11 cups of?? Sounds like another party though!

I also got these AMAZING boots (laugh Rob…go ahead…laugh it up! ), and this Aerobed, and a great sleeping bag for camping (and when I drag them both to friends’ houses to crash upon after long boughts of drinking…the aerobed and sleeping bag, not the boots…I will have been wearing those…) And most awesomely, this flash for my D70…My parents are the coolest parents ever!

Note…While looking for a picture of the Aerobed, I found this…Dude! I might have to return the one I have…this rocks! TWO power sources!! Sweet!…You know it doesn’t seem to have the nifty inflate/deflate adjuster thingy though…hmmm…maybe i’ll just buy a power adaptor for the car…

And by the way! Happy Hanukkah everyone!! :~)

Lookin’ Good for 2006

This year has been quite a rollercoaster. There have been some seriously bad days, and some amazing discoveries. To recap…and note…there are some new things in here that have happened since my last post, so just because you think you know what’s coming…you’d better read anyway!

The Bad (let’s get the nastiness out of the way, shall we)…in order of occurance…

• I had all sorts of health problems last spring that led me to believe I was carrying the disease to end all diseases as no one could tell me what it was…turns out it was possibly the world’s worst…guys stop reading here…yeast infection–that lasted for ohhh…three months…before we could get rid of it…
• They also thought I might have breast cancer…I don’t…
• And a broken wrist…it was really bad tendenitis from crazy volleyball playing…
• Oh, and food poisoning…supermarket sushi…bad idea…
• My grandmother had to have open-heart surgery at age 82, and almost didn’t make it.
• Her 2nd cousin, a 29 year old (submit explative here) made taking care of my grandmother near impossible.
• My father was in and out of the doctor’s office having skin cancers removed…he is fine…
• I was in two car wrecks in less than a week.
• Both of my cats have gotten sick with kitty colds…which means they sneeze all over me and I am out $250 only to have the doc tell me she doesn’t know what’s wrong and here are some antibiotics…
• And most recently, and most tragically, my “uncle”, a dear family friend, passed away last Friday. He was in Fargo for his own father’s funeral, and was shoveling snow off the walk, slipped on the ice and hit his head. He had survived a heart attack several years ago, and a slip and fall is what took him away from us. Please keep his family in your thoughts or prayers. He was a truly wonderful man.

But with all the bad, this year has also been a banner year in some ways…

• I redid my guest bathroom by myself…it looks awesome!
• I found out the lump was not breast cancer…
• I began playing volleyball more seriously…certainly not very well, but definitely with more voracity…and LOVED it…
• I discovered my talent for photography was something worth developing.
• I had the opportunity to get to know my Yankee cousin Rob (who comments here on occasion).
• I had the luck to have a cousin like Rob who helped me (and my family) get through my grandmother’s illness. His friendship and kindness was invaluable this year. I hope you all have some one like him in your lives.
• My grandmother made it out of the Nursing Home/Rehab center and is home and back to her old spit and vinegar self.
• My volleyball team beat our arch nemesis in the playoffs.
• I wrote an entire book! Kismet will be on a shelf near you in…hmmm….ok, that’s a good one to work on in 2006…
• I got a raise…finally!
• I bought my first car on my own!
• I have had my first photograph accepted for sale on the stock photography website iStockphoto.com !

So this year has been quite a ride. My gut tells me 2006 will a very important one for me. I can’t wait to see what transpires…

Sneezy-Sneezy Party-Party

The party Saturday was awesome! About 25 people came, and 16 of us exchanged gifts. There was some great stuff. I wound up with a bondage starter kit…plastic handcuffs, mask, and whip. As I was fairly drunk by the gift exchange, I put on the cuffs and well, they stayed on pretty much the rest of the night, just dangling from one wrist. I am pretty sure I may have whipped a few people in the butt too…The best gift of all was something so raunchy, I can’t even type it out to the internets…but just know that it even shocked the normally completely unshockable receipient!

Several people told me that “next year” they would bringing something raunchier, or “next year” we needed to make people trade and steal more gifts…So apparently, this is now an annual party! What a party to be known for…”Yes, I am the one who throws the party honoring Jesus’ birth with sex toys…” Sweet! But in all fairness, it was called Santa’s Naughty Secret, so really it’s all about a ficticious old man who is apparently a lot dirtier up at his North Pole Workshop than we had been led to believe…not about the Son of God…and that’s the story I’m sticking too…

On to the Sneezy-Sneezy part of this story…

Thursday night, in the middle of the night, Brody, my half tabby, half Siamese kitty started sneezing. Over and over. He sneezes on occasion when he smell something strong or gets dust up his nose, but this was more than usual. And he was curled up next to me all night. Something he rarely does. In the morning he seemed groggy and sick and one eyes was running and he was blowing snot bubbles through his nose. I called the vet and made an appointment for Friday afternoon. They checked him out, took some blood and said he probably had an upper respiratory infection, and gave me some pills and immunity booster. $106…

Over the weekend he got worse. He was sniffly all weekend. Did you know cats can be sniffly? I didn’t. He walked around the house, “sniff, sniff, AAACHOO, AACHOO, AAACHOO, sniff, SNIIFF, meow!” Poor guy.

He is normal a scaredy cat who hides under the bed so I was certain that was were he would be during the party, and I was right, but now he was a very sick scaredy cat. I felt so bad for him. The music was loud and there were lots of people and here he was sick. But he survived the night.

Oh and did I mention he drools when you give him is medicine? Not a little drool…No, no…St. Bernard drool. Tons of the stuff. My hands are soaked and sticky after every dose and his face is wet with long strings of drool hanging from his mouth…sometimes with large bubbles in the strings. Very pleasant. I had to take him back to the vet on Monday because he wasn’t getting better and they did chest x-rays…my cat has had chest x-rays…His lungs are clear. $144. No cancer, no pneumonia. His blood work came back fine, but she has no idea what is wrong. $250 later and I still have no idea what is making him sick.

And the doc decided to put him on antihistimines too. More pills. I pleaded with her to give me some other form of medicine. Her solution was to grind up both pills, put them in a squirty syringe with water, and let them dissolve. Then squirt…This almost works better…only because I know he has at least gotten some of the medicine, unlike with the pills where he would spit them out long after I thought he had swallowed them and then completely miss a dose. This way, I figure he is getting at least half of the dose. The other half seems to get all over me or come out in the long strings of drool. But he so abhorrs this medicine, which I am sure tastes like utter crap, that he now bites down on my hand when I pry open his mouth. This is SO much fun.

Last night he seemed a smidge better though. I think he and Luka were playing although every time I tried to look, they were standing still. I will keep you posted on his progress. I am beginning to think he A) just has a really bad cold, or B) physically has something lodged in his nose…I’ll let ya know!

It’s Wednesday Damn It!

I thought today was Wednesday. I seriously did. This morning I woke thinking, “I need to take the trash out, it’s Wednesday. No wait, I took it out yesterday. Why did the trash man come on a Tuesday? Is there a holiday this week that the trash is a day early? Everyone else put their trash out yesterday. The blind are leading the blind. But the trash was definitely collected, I remember dragging in the can with ice all over it. Why did we take out the trash on a Tuesday? Maybe it’s always on Tuesday and I am confused.”

Then I got to work, still convinced it was Wednesday. I turned on my computer. I opened my e-mail. The timestamp said, “Thursday, December 8, 2005.” “Why is the timestamp on my e-mail wrong? That’s so weird! Must be the cold freezing the wires to the computer making it jump foward an entire day because it just couldn’t believe how cold it was. Let me check the computer clock.” It said Thursday too. Definitely the wires. “What is going on??” Finally, I went online and looked at the Yahoo! TV guide on my homepage. It said “Joey” and “The Apprentice” would be on tonight. They are always on Thursdays. “Must be Thursday. Where did Wednesday go?”

Only then did I realize what had happened. Somehow I had skipped a day in my head, because I need more time to get ready for my party, and on top of that, my usual Wednesday night marker, “Lost” was a repeat and I didn’t watch it. So I was thinking it would be on tonight. Which of course means it’s Wednesday.

You know you are in trouble when your internal calendar is set by the TV schedule. They are really going to screw me up when they move Earl to Thursday and Joey to Monday–Joey Tribiani has been on Thursday nights since I was 13.

In the BAR-io…

Lst weekend I went to Austin…in the new Xterra…for my friend’s birthday. The weekend was really nice. We all hung out Friday night, just chillin’ watching Sex and The City DVDs and relaxing, gearing up for Saturday night. Saturday during the day, we watched (part of) the Big 12 Championship…which we stopped watching in the 3rd quarter because we were up 63-3…Final score, 70-3…in a CHAMPIONSHIP game…geez… GO HORNS!

Saturday night though, we went to Ztejas…great restaurant. It’s very Austin-y. It’s a sophisticated restaurant but the entrees all feel slighty earthy, and healthy–Although with everything on the menu listing creamy as an adjective, it was no where near healthy…After dinner, our “chauffer,” Jon, one of the birthday girl’s best friends (who for some reason was kind enough to be DD…the real kind where you actually don’t drink anything at all–I think his willingness might have had something to do with being seen with 8 hot women…), drove us all downtown to hit up the bars. I went to school in Austin. I know the bar scene. Or at least I used to…Or at least I knew the college bar scene. Holy Toledo! There are a million new bars and they are as sophisticated as they get. Some serious money is being poured into that city.

Our first stop was the bar Six which is on 4th street…It’s a nice bar, well designed but nothing super special other than Lance Armstrong had a hand in it. The roof is nice (if it had been less crowded) since it is in the middle of downtown and the view is enjoyable. The drinks are stiff, but that’s about where it ends. I wouldn’t be opposed to going there again, but I wasn’t in awe of it.

After Six, we walked across the street and a parking lot and went to Light Bar. Light Bar is at the edge of an alley and you feel as though you are going into a Speakeasy. Inside is a classy but general bar, and then a long hallway with a faux roof made of peaked fabric and walls of brown slate. On the other side of the hallway is a long narrow bar, bathed (that night) in blue light. One wall is made of water. It is literally a 20 foot water wall, and it is lit with colored light. Apparently, it can also be bathed in red or purple, but this night, the entire bar was glowing blue. Beneath the counter of the bar was more blue light. It was a surreal, crisp look. Very sexy.

Our next stop was at Foundation on 5th and Lavaca. From the outside, Foundation is a wall of windows. Once inside, there is a long hallway, that is flanked on either side by what one reviewer calls, banquettes. they are smaller sitting areas accented with large concrete columns. Very dark, very sexy. The wide hallway opens directly into the very large circular bar. Above the bar and dozens of bartenders is a hanging circle that houses the bar’s lighting, and adds to the feeling that you are in round room. The walls in the main bar are curved to mimic the shape of the bar, and they are painted with wide vertical stripes of color. Above the main bar, is a large balcony lounge with a smaller bar. The chandeliers in the balconey are large modern plastic spiked balls that reminded me of Ikea. The entire bar looks like somewhere that would be featured on CSI: Miami or CSI: Las Vegas. But on those shows, the balconey would have given way and well, we would have all died…This was by far my favorite bar of the night. It was too crowded for my taste and the 10th time I was bumped into, I was ready to go, but I loved the look of it. It is very chic and very hip. And very unlike what we had when I was in school in Austin. This was the type of bar you felt you needed a mixed drink in. Preferably a Martini, or at least a Cosmopolitian.

Our last stop was the Red Fez. This bar is tiny. Another long narrow bar. It is know for the good dance music, and that was why we went. To dance. The bar is decorated in, suprise suprise, a morracan theme, and until 10:30pm is a Hookah bar. Morracan lamps hung over booths, arched cutouts reminiscent of the Taj Mahal were everywhere, and one wall looked like a honeycomb with red votive holders and candles inside many of the cells. The wall behind the bar was also a honeycomb but backlit in gold light and sporting a complete range of liquors. The music was good, but the dance space was, umm…NOT. After Foundation, I was tired of being bumped and brushed, and this bar was no where near large enough to minimize that. Trying to dance was like bumper cars–on acid. It was so close in there that I actually started feeling clausterphobic which doesn’t happen very often to me. Luckily, the bar closed and we had to go home, but had we stayed much longer, I probably would have been a very unhappy camper.

But overall, I was pleasantly suprised with the direction Austin bars are headed. They are sophisticated enough to rival those in large cities, and the new wave of sleek design is quite pleasing. It’s a nice change from the college bars on 6th Street. I think think the crowds that night might have been partially due to elation over winning the Big 12 Championship. Football has always seemed to directly correlate with the crowds downtown. So given a more subdued night, I would love to try most of those bars again. Give the Warehouse District a shot the next time you are in Austin…

Unintentional White Lie

I made a mistake. Did you hear that? I just admitted I made a mistake! Everyone, quick! Do a screen shot and save those words!!

Here is the mistake. I bought a 2005 Nissan Xterra SE. Not a 2006. Doh!

I really thought I was buying a 2006! It wasn’t until I called the insurance company yesterday to give them the VIN number that I realized it was a 2005. It’s still a brand new car, and before they drove it to Dallas for me, it had about 30 or 40 miles on it. But I (and my mother) was utterly convinced I was buying a 2006. Now in my defense, the saleman NEVER said 2005 when we were talking. It wasn’t quite bait and switch, but he really should have said 2005 at least once in the conversations we had. He just kept saying “New Xterra SE” He misled me. I just don’t know if it was intentional (in order to sell the car…it was the end of the month and all) or just a miscommunication. And honestly, I got a really good deal, and had I know it was a 2005 to begin with, I would have bought it anyway. But yesterday, oh my word…my entire family was in a tizzy over this…Another time when working with family is good–your parents can sympathize with you in person and understand when you need to call the dealership to bitch them out during work…So in any case, I am now the proud owner of a 2005 Nissan Xterra SE…