Vacation plans

Tonight starts eight days and nine nights of sweet, sweet vacation, and boy! do I need it. I can barely track what people are saying anymore -- I hear the words, but I can't put them into context. Plus, yesterday I took the wrong route to a place I go almost every day... and even on the way back. And this was after I said out loud, with somone in the car, that I would take a better route. Whoops.

Anyway, here are my (open) plans for wonderful Searsport this coming week:

• Saturday: Arrive. Breathe Maine air in, deeply. Make pitcher of sangria. Lobster for dinner with Vitamin N, the giant, and Ye Olde College Friende, plus drinks. Reading and relaxing, computer games (Civ 4 Complete, which I bought this year for $10 as an online download; and Spore (which I picked up TWO years ago for $20 and never opened), or maybe some new board games (guess I should remember to pack those). Working on my fake farm. SLEEP!
• Sunday: Fake farm. A dip in the Penobscot if the weather is right. Sunshine and a book or laptop. Laugh a lot. More drinks. Fried native shrimp with fried dill pickles for lunch or dinner. Buy cookies at Bell the Cat.
• Monday: Fake farm. Get a pedicure. Read a book. More swimming and lounging about in the sun. Maybe take some pictures around town. A sundae for dinner.
• Tuesday: Fruit picking, unless there are only blueberries available, which I don't care for much. (Although they are good in pancakes.) Fall asleep in a deck chair. More fake farming. (I don't know why I like the fake farm so much. It's really quite stupid.) More lobster at some point (supermarket-bought, I think. I'm not about to go broke eating it.) Drinks.
• Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: Continue along the same vein as the rest of the week. Maybe some shopping, "lite" activities, crafting, writing, reading, lounging, dunking, strolling, perhaps a movie at the adorable theater in Belfast. I may or may not blog. I just haven't decided...

What a busy schedule! I don't know if I'll be able to keep up! Heh.

Aaaand by the way, I'm bringing Butch and Twinkie this time! What a change. I don't think I'd be happy without them for either days, and since they can come along, why not? I'll try it...

Open-faced sandals

New sandals! Just $10.50 on clearance at Target.

I also got a silver pair with three flashy rhinestones on the thong, but the pictures were even worse than this one.

Hot tickets

And I learned some fun and surprising things about my family in the 50’s, also. Yippee, escándalos!

• My great-aunt posed as a pin-up
• My great-uncle won $150 playing cards… and someone’s Colt 45
• Another great-uncle had a fling with twins

Turns out there were quite a few colorful people on that side of the fam. Ho ho!

A chuckle or two

But lest you think that the funeral day had no laughs, here are a few things that made us chuckle together as a family.

• Baby blue hearse and limousines
• Hearse (and us!) almost one hour late to the funeral
• It was so windy that the driver’s yarmulke flew off several times during the military service
• Sandstorms at the grave site
• Gap between top and bottom of casket. If Grampa had seen that he would have adjusted it!
• We were stuck in traffic so long that the limo driver had to stop to get gas
• At shivah, someone dared to interrupt my father and press her agenda upon his grieving moment

As you can see, life goes on. But I still miss Grampa…

Grampa, I love you

My favorite grampa died a week ago.

This was the grampa who could design and build and improve anything: rockets, sailboats, furniture, houses, a pinball machine, front offices, display cases, department stores.

The grampa who drove over from Cambria Heights to Flushing at 10:00 at night to pick me up after I received bothersome phone calls from an ex-boyfriend.

The muscle-bound tough guy who never smiled for photographs until after he started dating my gramma. He would have done anything for his wife and son and grandkids. It turns out he was a romantic, too.

There are so many stories. The only thing better than hearing the stories at all would have been hearing them from him.

Obviously, it's still pretty raw. As I sit here licking my wounds, I'm reminded of these stories (we went through a lot of them this weekend. I learned a lot more about him than I had ever known) and it is clear, even clearer now than before, that the main thing, the absolute most important thing in the world is love.

So here is some advice. You may not be able to pick your family, but when you're lucky enough to be born with a man like my grampa in yours... well... please, please cherish it all.