OhMyDamn. As you probably remember, I am a student. That means I get financial aid. That means I pay my bills about every 6 months. This may *seem* like a wonderful thing, but trust me, it is actually a week-long headache as I scramble to get everything caught up in between the time my disbursement hits (usually the day before classes begin) and the day the money I gave everybody last time runs out and they start sending nasty-grams. Guess what? Classes start tomorrow, and I have a headache, no clear idea of how much money I have left in the bank and several more bills to pay. I think I better call it quits for today and let the account settle. Luckily, I get an e-statement every morning, so I will be able to tell what cleared overnight. I’ll finish paying stuff on Thursday.

Are you guys tired of knitting books yet? I hope not, because we have 5 more to go. Not feeling it today? Ok, me either. What I am feeling today is an urge to scrap. Getting “paid” every 6 months also means new craft stuff every 6 months, and I spent money on scrapping supplies this time.

When I moved my desk to its new area, I was forced to confront 2 bins of photos. Plus the trunk in the living room that I use as a coffee table. Plus the one I use as an end table. Yeah, it’s time to get that dealt with. So far, I have purchased 4 scrapbooks (all at steals–A.C. Moore was having a 2 for $10 sale), and 380 sheets of 12×12 paper (for a grand total of $30). I am ready! I still have a lot of 8.5 x 11 paper, but I haven’t been able to find a scrapbook in that size for quite awhile. Of course, I haven’t really scrapped in 10 years, so…..yeah. The good news is that I made three pages the other day, and I fell in love with it all over again.

I’ve given myself permission to do things a bit differently this time. When I scrapped before, I had far fewer children. Those kids have very complete books up to the time I stopped scrapping, because every time I got prints made, I scrapped a set for each kid AND a set for myself. Holy crap, right? I’ve doubled my kid count, and that’s….the mind boggles: EIGHT sets of prints, plus papers and books and adhesives and cutouts, and NO.

From now on, with rare exceptions, I am doing one scrapbook. Ok, two. One family and one personal. (Yes, I have to do a personal one because I still can’t remember stuff. If I don’t record it, then it didn’t happen. Yes, that’s still very frustrating. Yes, I am learning to adapt.) When the kids get older, they can copy whatever pages they want. Otherwise, I am not going to scrap at all, and that means the stories I know die with me and that is not acceptable.

Don’t think I am morbid, I am just realistic. When Grandmother died, and we cleaned out her house, there were a lot of pictures. Mama knows who is in some of them, but not all of them. Grandmother kept them in boxes, and some have names written on the back, but not all of them. The ones that have names and/or people we recognize have no dates and no stories to go with the images. So that’s the motive behind my scrapbooks. They will tell my stories to my children when I am no longer able to do so. And not just the stories behind the pictures wedding photographers raleigh nc took. The everyday, nothing-special-is-happening pictures that I make myself, mostly because something DID just happen, so I took a picture to remind myself to write that story down for my kids.

Look what I found today! It’s a dvd about Ricky Steamboat. You wanna watch it? Oh. Well, a dvd is …well, it’s like a tv show or a movie and you put it in this little machine that you hook to your tv and you can watch it whenever you want to. Yeah, it’s pretty neat. I bet you’d be amazed by radar detectors, too.

I spent a lot of time thinking about you today after I saw this. I was remembering how we used to play Johnny Weaver and Ric Flair, wrestling on the floor in the living room. We watched a lot of wrestling, didn’t we? And Bonanza. And the news. I hated the news. That darn David Brinkley, he used to make me so mad. When he was on, you made me be quiet so you could hear what he had to say. I hope you aren’t disappointed to find out that I still don’t watch the news. I mean, I used to, but then I had the children, and news, it isn’t black and white still photographs anymore. They show video, action pictures, and they are in color and you can actually see the blood on people and hear them screaming, and I quit watching the news when The Clone’s dad was deployed during the Gulf War, the first one, you know, because I didn’t want her to see that and ask questions, even though he was only in Germany and not in the desert. I never started back after that.

Hey, do you remember that match we went to see at the high school? I can’t remember the name, Bladen County, I think? It took for-ev-er to get there, and I was so excited. MMH had told me wrestling wasn’t real, and he’d never stop there when he was flipping the channels, and I almost believed him, until that match. When I saw the welts come up on that one man’s back after he got slung into the ropes, then I believed. Here’s what you wouldn’t believe: Wrestling is crazy now! They all wear fancy costumes and have “personalities” and they spend more time talking and threatening than they do in the ring. I’m pretty sure that now it’s mostly all fake. It’s certainly a lot of hype and big money.

And then after I remembered all that, I remembered how you used to sit with your feet up in the recliner. Always with you shoes and socks off, placed neatly under the end table beside you. And I would tickle your feet while you slept, and you would jerk them up and sleep on. I was a mean little kid, sometimes, huh? And then I remembered how when I slept in the middle of you and Grandmother, first hot and then cold, how you taught me to keep one foot in the covers and one out, and it would be just right, and it was, and I still do that today.

And I remembered how I used to put my fingers near your mouth and you would close it tight and then all of a sudden you would say “snookums” and pretend to bite my fingers. Your whiskers were so white and scratchy. I never saw you with more than a day’s beard, and you always used British Sterling, the bottles of it lined up on the bathroom shelf.

And your clothes. Grey pants, grey shirt, black belt, baseball cap. I wonder now if that’s why I find looking at that other man in a cap so comforting. Maybe he reminds me of you. I never saw you in anything else unless it was Sunday. Well, except that one time when GirlCousin and I were still laughing and giggling at 2am and you stomped through the house to the bathroom, after you’d been telling us to hush for a couple of hours. That time you were wearing a tank tee and a pair of boxers. Needless to say, we giggled for quite awhile after that, muffling the noise in the covers and pillows. Preteen girls are so easily amused. But it was the only time I ever heard you speak to me in a raised voice.

And I remembered how you sneezed so loud. Her-Ush-OOOOOO! I swear, I think GirlCousin could probably hear you at her house, a tenth of a mile away. In fact, they mighta heard you at Hill’s. Remember Hill’s? You used to wait on the bench at the front of the store while Grandmother and I did the shopping.

I remembered riding to Clarkton, week after week, with my head in Grandmother’s lap and my feet in yours. And you letting me drive the truck, sitting on your lap on the dirt road on the way home from Whiteville, when I couldn’t have been more than 8.

And I remembered the last visual image I have of you, lying on the bed, so riddled with cancer, with my three week old baby in your arms. And during that visit, while I was sitting with you, Grandmother calling to me from the kitchen, and me answering her, and you telling me not to yell at my Grandmother in that soft gentle voice of yours and me crying because you thought I had done such a thing, and it worried you and I didn’t want you to worry. And then you died a few weeks later on my first Mother’s Day. I dreaded Mother’s Day for 20 years. Last year, Mama taught me to think of your death as the date, and the not the day. And this year, That One and I took all the kids camping. It was fun, Mother’s Day was fun for the first time.

I am so glad I saw that movie thing today, the dvd. It was like spending the day with you again. I miss you so.

The other night, we had a flash boom banger of a storm. Now, you might think I am getting ready to tell you how scared I was, but this is not the case. I actually love a storm. I feel safe and warm during them, as long as I am inside. I think it goes back to childhood and the sound of rain on the metal roof of our mobile home.

Back in the day, mobiles were called “trailers” and they pretty much were boxes covered in thin metal. Metal walls, metal roof. And when it rained, the sound was tremendous. Not tremendous as in loud, but…….magnificent. From the shupshupshup of a gentle fall to the bangbangbang of a torrent, you could hear exactly how it was precipitating. Today, in my “mobile home”, it’s very different. I have a shingle roof, and I don’t hear the rain at all unless it’s coming down pretty hard, and then it is more like white noise, and not individual pings.

If I ever have to do a roof restoration, and That One assures me that I will before too many more years go by, I am going to look for something that will more closely mimic the sound the rain made back then. Because feeling safe and warm is a good thing, and I like to crawl into my bed and have the rain sing me to sleep. I’m thinking ceramic tile, in a nice cozy red.

So, I spent the weekend with my family. And it was good as it always is. I love to roll down that road. See Papa’s airmail box way up high. And the gate, always left open when I’m coming. Entering the “Crawford Compound” and feeling instantly like I’m living inside a hug, before I even see anybody. Not being hugged, mind you. No. Living in a hug. I love it there. As I posted on Facebook, just rolling up the drive feels like the theme song from Cheers. Everybody knows my name, and they’re always glad I came.

This weekend, The DJ and I let our technogeek shine. He has the cellphone I’ve been looking at, and I had him show it to me, and he let me play with it. It certainly lives up to the name That One and I have given it. The DJ also showed me some things my crackberry would do that I didn’t know about, so that was cool too. I had been using snaptu to look at feeds and facebook, but that little internet icon on my phone is actual true internet, not just a lame static website reader. Sweet! OTOH, I will soon be shopping for a new holder and pimpouts and they won’t be iphone accessories, but stuff for the Samsung Moment. I’ll be getting it as soon as we can find the Evo in stock for That One.

I also started my collection of hand photos. Umm, ya’ll, it’s hard to get a good hand shot! I hadn’t counted on the fact that hands hang at exactly crotch level when standing, and generally rest in the lap when sitting. So………it’s going to be interesting collecting these pictures without looking like a total perv. I got four shots, I think, and I explained a lot more times that that what I was trying to do and why. Thankfully, some of the folks read my blog as it comes across facebook, so it didn’t shock them too badly, LOL!

And! We planned a trip for us cousins later this summer. We are going to Carowinds together in August and all of us are very excited!

And! Bay-bay! We have another new one, just 9 weeks old. Still soft and squishy. I really enjoyed holding and loving on him. I particularly enjoyed passing him back the moment he got the least little bit fretful. Muhahahahaha! I also giggled on the inside when his parents had to eat in shifts. Not that I let them know it, but I’ve btdt for 22 years now, so I think I’ve served enough time at it to giggle at them, don’t you?

On a more intense personal note, The DJ and I sat up talking until 3:30 am Sunday morning. We were talking about now and then and memory and how it functions. As he would talk about stuff he remembered, it would jog things for me that I didn’t think I had in there. I know now why a grilled cheese sandwich makes me feel loved—it started with cheese toast from Grandma’s toaster oven. I know I probably won’t ever remember a whole lot, and I can live with that. But I plan to dig until I have as many happy memories in my repertoire as bad ones. It won’t take long, LOL, since I have about 10 now altogether, but once I have more happy ones, I can choose which ones to play. Less Drama and trauma, more laughing and loving.

Ok, I think that’s a wrap. It was a jammed 22.5 hours.

Dear Patrick Swayze,

I know you are dead and all, but here is the fan letter I would have written if I thought you actually read them yourself. You are so amazing. I loved every one of your movies. Yes, I’ve seen them all. From the way you held Baby in Dirty Dancing to the way you exacted justice in Next of Kin to the very obvious love you had for your wife in Last Dance, you are the bomb.

Also, unbearably HAWT. Just sayin’ From my teens to my late thirties, you rocked my socks. You taught me that nobody puts Baby in a corner and that pain don’t hurt. Also how to rob banks and do a disappearing wipe-out.

I still sigh every time I see your picture, and I still smile every time I watch you move with that cat-like grace. If I had the money, I’d put multiple big screens on assorted tv stands and watch you in stereo.

Love,
Cass

So here I am again, finally. Not yet ready really to talk, but having reached the point where I probably need to. It has been so long since I took some of these pictures that I will probably have a hard time remembering the significance of a lot of them. Whatever the case, it is time for stories to be told.

April 11 The End There is no picture for April 11. I slept in a bit on this Sunday morning, and then I called Mama and told her I was ready to head to the hospital, did she need me to look after her dog on the way. And this time, she told me not to come. Quite a difference from the previous Sunday, when she had called me to hurry. The family had gathered around and they were about to take the breathing mask off of Granny. I think it ended up that I was one of maybe 5 family members not there. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. I guess I am upset that maybe some think I didn’t care enough to be there. But then it also seems pretty ghoulish to think that some 20-30 people were there to watch someone die. I mean, where is the peace to that? HOW DO YOU EVEN DIE LIKE THAT? Thinking about it turns my stomach.

Granny was my last living grandparent, and it was on this day that I started crying. Daily. For quite awhile. Which we will get to eventually.

April 12 Lunch This is a hamburger, and I think it came from Chili’s, but I am not sure. I know it had fried onions on it and it was very good. And on this day, I worked and I cried and I picked clothes for the wake with my mother’s help.

April 13 Visitation Excuse me. I have to go smoke before we talk about this. And also get more coffee.

This is a picture of a plant that was at the funeral home. Behind the plant, you can see the “beautiful people” who compose my family. I worked this day from 9-5:30 and then I headed to the funeral home for the visitation that started at 6. The night before, as I mentioned, I had picked out my clothes, which had to adapt from work to wake because of the time issue. And….as I was trying to figure out something suitable, Mama asked me if I was planning to stand with the family. Because, you know, it might not look right, them all standing there, having had time to make themselves socially presentable, and I had to pretty much wear what I wore to work, with the exception of changing my shirt and shoes.

I think I have probably mentioned before that I have always felt isolated by this step-family of mine, tolerated, but never enjoyed and loved. Not part of them, not accepted, the short, dark ugly duckling in a group of tall, blonde swans. But until this night, I had never felt like my appearance embarrassed my mother as well. I had never felt excluded by her. And so, I spent this evening sitting on a couch there in the visitation room, lying to everyone about how I wasn’t up there with my family because my feet hurt because I had been standing up all day and feeling so unloved and unwanted and unworthy. And then I went to back to Granny’s for a bit and then I went home and cried some more.

And I knew again that my decision to love and accept my kids no matter what weird clothes they choose or what crazy thing they do to their hair was the right one for me.

April 14 The funeral
This is the dress and sweater I wore to Granny’s funeral. I had That One help me pick my clothes via pic text. Golly gee, I do love technology. And I wept through the entire service. And yeah, the person who “lost it” during the springtime song, that was me.

April 15 Azaleas
These are from my own yard, blooming on bushes Grandmother gave to me when I moved in here.

So, I did some more things.

April 1 Looks like I went to Taco Bell for lunch on the 1st. Well, actually, my coworker went, and we ate in the breakroom, but whatever.

April 2 On the second, I went to the hospital right after work to see Granny, and realized I hadn’t eaten all day. A tasteless chicken sandwich and tasteless strawberry shortcake was dinner. I usually like the shortcake from here, but…….yeah, no. Sigh. Not this night.

April 3 I went to ACMoore on my lunch to look for yarn for That One’s mom and sister. They want hats. HA! I didn’t find what they wanted, but I scored several balls of each of these for myself at just $1.99 each. Yay me! And I still get to go to another yarn store looking for their stuff. Yay me again.

April 4 No picture. Early morning “you need to come to the hospital” call instead. So I did.

April 5 Picture I took in the bathroom of work to replace the one I had taken outside that That One declared “too frowny”. You can tell by the white shirt that I was in the pharmacy instead of using my box cutter to open garden shop freight.

On this Monday, I did leaf rubbings with my scouts. It was a quick and fun activity, but it got me to thinking about art. I have always been so very envious of people who can manipulate sticks to make pictures on paper. It’s just not something I am good at. Looking at this picture reminds me of the one passable piece I have ever done. It was in middle school, and I drew a plant on poster sized paper in chalks. The art teacher sealed it with hair spray, and it is still rolled up in my old closet at Mama’s. I can see it now in my mind’s eye.