luscious_purple | Entries tagged with family

First of all, I honor the anniversary of my mother's passing, 27 years ago tonight.

Now about the heading of this entry. At church on Sunday I stayed after the service to rehearse a hymn for next Sunday's MLK Jr. service. I kept my mask on while singing, but not everyone was masked. Late yesterday afternoon I received an email from our minister -- who tries not to work on Monday, her personal sabbath -- stating that if we stayed for the singing practice, we were probably exposed to covid. She sent it out BCC, so I'm pretty sure I know who the other recipients were but I don't know whose name was left off (and was thus the person who exposed the rest of us). So now I feel like a pariah. I skipped last night's dance practice out of an abundance of caution, and during tomorrow's errands I will certainly wear a mask. I need to find a non-expired covid test before Friday so that I can determine whether I can do anything this weekend (singing practice, Maugorn's birthday, church...).

Today my self-isolation was a no-brainer because a "winter" storm is blowing through. I put "winter" in quotes because the weather is not cold enough for water to freeze, so we're just having lots of rain and wind gusts. Fortunately, we still have power here in the little cottage, which is just outside the Pepco area in BGE's turf.

Current Music: rain drumming on roof

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! If Hanukkah is your holiday, I hope it was a totally happy one.

This month has been fairly busy, with the usual activities. Unevent, the Kingdom of Atlantia's annual business meeting, is permanently online, which means it's easier for people from all parts of the kingdom to attend (the kingdom stretches from Baltimore to Hilton Head Island). Dun Carraig had a baronial investiture at a lovely site on the north bank of the Potomac River; they'll use it again for the 2024 Spring Coronation. I managed to convince R. to attend the Washington Christmas Revels; the parent organization cut back from two weekends to one this year, ostensibly because renting Lisner Auditorium is more expensive than it used to be. I hope the Revels will be around for many years to come.

I also wrapped up the Year of Many Vehicles by purchasing a new-to-me 2011 Subaru Forester. My first Subaru. Remember how I explained that I bought a Hyundai Tucson, but it couldn't ever pass inspection? Yeah, I kept on driving it without renewing the temporary registration and hoped the cops wouldn't catch up to me. Then I brought the Tucson to the Sunoco near where I used to live. I had thought, gee, maybe the first inspection station I used was acting all tight-assed because I'd never patronized them before, and the Sunoco has a good reputation for fair dealing. But the Sunoco fellow told me the exact same thing -- sorry, way too rusted out to pass Maryland inspection, ever. And as this year winds down, having a "23" sticker on my rear license plate instead of "24" or "25" will be a giant clue to the local constabulary. So I went to a *real* dealer and bought a car that PASSED inspection. It's a joy to drive.

(I am calling this the Year of Many Vehicles because I started out with a 1999 Toyota Corolla; then I had a rental Grand Cherokee for one weekend after the Corolla was totaled and taken from me; then I drove the CR-V belonging to my temporary housemates; then I bought the 2008 Tucson; and now I have the Forester. That's five vehicles.)

Despite the new wheels, I've spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here in Maryland. I haven't heard from any of my Massachusetts cousins, so I guess they have gotten used to my not traveling up there, so they didn't invite me. *sigh*

So this is what 60 years feels like. November 22, 1963, is the first specific date that I can remember. As I recalled 10 years ago here on DW, the JFK assassination made a definite impression on me, even at the age of 4.

I didn't realize until I was an adult that my cousin Tim's birthday is November 22. He'd spent his 15th birthday at the dentist -- ugh. Today he's 75 years old.

Last week was rough: first my church's religious education director died, then a member of my Laydes Fayre singing group had a miscarriage, and then Devora's 1-week-old niece died of an infection. Horrible. At least the JFK anniversary is much more distant in time and thus less emotionally fraught.

On this date SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, my parents were married!!

They had to hold their nuptials at 7 a.m. -- yes, THAT early! -- because, back then, Roman Catholics got hitched only on Saturday morning, and the first Saturday of July was especially popular because the factories traditionally shut down for the first two weeks of the month and everybody went on vacation at the same time. It wasn't until I was a college graduate that I knew it was possible to take a vacation at a different time.

And today it makes FIFTY years since my mother made me mow the lawn while my father did his Saturday errands. I was 13 going on 14 and I *hated* doing yard work.

But then Dad came home and he was carrying a white vase filled with 25 large red roses, which he presented to Mom for their 25th anniversary.

Later that day we went to a camp on Lake Shirley. It belonged to the family of a woman whom my Uncle Pete was dating (they would marry the following year and she would become my Aunt Bev). Uncle Pete had brought fireworks up from the Carolinas and I played with the sparklers while my older male cousins shot off firecrackers and Roman candles. I think we were there until three in the morning.

Obviously, as a younger teen, I wasn't in a position to arrange a fancy party for my parents' 25th. I was just starting to think about planning a 35th anniversary party for them when Dad died.

It was seven years ago today that I danced in the Lithuanian folk dance festival in Baltimore. I had such a blast, even though I didn't have time to journal about it while it was all happening.

And, speaking of journaling ... TWENTY years ago today I made my first LiveJournal post. Who would have "thunk" it would have triggered many other events that shaped my life. And who would have "thunk" the site would end up in Russian hands? The world of today is indeed strange.

I wish I could post lots of photos, but I don't feel like doing all the linking. I am tired and I want to go to bed.

Last night I phoned my cousins up in Massachusetts to wish them a Merry Christmas. We had some cheery conversations. I miss them and their families. (OK, I haven't met the newest family member because she was born just 5 days ago -- yes, my cousin D.A. has a new baby granddaughter named Paulina!)

I'm not traveling to Massachusetts again this year for various reasons, mostly involving the weather. Earlier this week I had to talk R. out of driving to NJ for a funeral today because I was hearing predictions about lots of snow and ice. (R. has a friend in Freehold who lost his wife about a week ago -- although she had many chronic health issues, sudden cardiac arrest did her in.) I don't think we got too much sleet/freezing rain here along the East Coast, but we're certainly in a deep freeze.

At least the things I *need* to do are done, so I can do things that I *want* to do, like catch up on movies and TV, knit, read, and eat homemade sweets. The boy toy has been baking cookies and a chocolate tart. Tomorrow night, for Christmas Eve, he'll make clam chowder and biscuits from scratch. For Christmas, he follows his family's traditional menu: eggs Benedict for breakfast and a roast beef for dinner. In between we'll have a light lunch of broccoli soup, and for evening dessert we'll have a Christmas pudding, both from a "Christmas at Highclere" book his Anglophile mother gave him a few years back. We'll have a bit of Downton Abbey around here!

Not much else to say; I'm still plugging along with church and Toastmasters and SCA. I'm about at the halfway mark of my three-year term as a trustee of the congregation. Whew.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that today is the 40th anniversary of my Dad's death. It was most unexpected -- the day before (a Saturday), my parents and a couple of their friends and I had piled into Dad's prized Plymouth Fury and visited a then-new shopping mall in Holyoke, about an hour's drive from home. The following morning, he went into cardiac arrest before we were to go to church. He was two days short of his 65th birthday.

My Dad was the son of Lithuanian immigrants who died when he was a teenager. He volunteered for service shortly after Pearl Harbor and the Army Air Forces sent him to India to service cargo planes flying over "the Hump." After he married my Mom, he designed and built a home and trained as a welder. He always bragged about me to his friends. I'm glad he lived long enough to see me graduate from college -- the first time, anyway -- and I wish I'd had more time with him so that he could see how I have evolved through adulthood. AND how the world has changed in 40 years!

I love you, Dad. ❤

Also, I acknowledge that today is the 10th anniversary of the passing of my friend Andrea's father. Andrea's parents graciously hosted me for a few nights when I visited the UK in 1989. I could tell that they were very proud of their daughter. How strange of a coincidence is it that Andrea and I, two only children who love to look up at the stars, lost our fathers exactly 30 years apart to the day?

Current Mood: contemplative

This part of the month is "Pennsic Without Pennsic." The War is happening, but I'm not there. My feature article is finished, and all I am doing now is waiting for the check to hit my bank account, which will probably be on the 12th (i.e., just when Pennsic-goers start packing up to go home). The boy toy and I have painfully little money till then, so still no A/C.

Today I'm feeling a little blue because another member of the church Board of Trustees quit the Board before her term is up. She says she feels bad about comments she made at a special Board meeting on Thursday night and was "out of covenant" with our group. I try to stick to the covenant myself, obviously, but I didn't think her comments were *that* bad as long as she stopped making them when she realized what she said. I left her a phone message to that effect. Now we have to find *another* person to fill a vacant term on the Board (we just did that after someone else quit). I'm starting to feel as if our "bench" is really thin. What does a congregation do when there's no one left to lead?

Another thing that gives me a funny feeling: A late-night internet search led me to the discovery that my oldest first cousin, George, died earlier this year (May, I think). He was 83. (Yes, he was nearly 21 when I was born, but his father was one of my mother's older brothers.) I have not been in touch with him since 1997, the year Mom died. George tried to convince me to keep Uncle Rene's house in the family, but I just didn't have the money to fix it up to be inhabitable. I think George was secretly pissed off that HE didn't inherit the house. Sorry, George, that's not how Uncle Rene wrote his will.

Sometimes it feels weird, even skeevy, that when I was a child, "family" was mostly my mother's side of the family. But now I am completely out of touch with all of my mother's nieces and nephews and the family members that I do correspond with are on my father's side. It's not my fault that my mother's niece Janet never lists her phone number. And I looked up her cousin Donna on Facebook and, from the tenor of her posts, she's a true Trump lover. Sorry, if she thinks that people who believe as I do are the scum of the Earth, I'm not going to send her a friend request.

Anniversaries...

My parents were married 74 years ago today.
Tom Cruise turns 60 today.
It's been six years since I danced in Sokiu Svente 2016 -- the Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival. (Today was the next Sokiu Svente, delayed two years because of the pandemic.)

And today makes 19 years since joining LiveJournal (which eventually led me to switch over to Dreamwidth).

How times have changed.

Hey, it's about time. Five things make a post.

1. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of my dear mother's passing. I remember my parents' 25th wedding anniversary -- red roses, silver-colored gifts, firecrackers and Roman candles. There are no such general symbols for a death anniversary. I volunteered to light the chalice during yesterday's Sunday service (on Zoom). It seemed the best way to honor her.

2. Saturday I ventured out to the local town cinema -- first time to a movie theater in almost two years! -- to see the new West Side Story on the wide screen. It was every bit a visual feast as you would expect from the pairing of one of the all-time great director-cinematographer teams, plus the music was exquisite. I have loved this music since I danced to "I Feel Pretty" in my preschool ballet class. No matter what you might think of the plot or the general artificiality of a movie (or staged) musical, you have to admit that the music is some of the most sublime ever written. I'm so sorry this film is now considered a "box-office bomb."

3. I have been spending money like crazy. New eyeglasses (first since the summer of 2013), vet exam and blood/urine tests for Julia (who is now a senior kitty), new muffler and tailpipe for the noisy car. Whew. Hard come, easy go.

4. I am SO. INCREDIBLY. TIRED. of this covid-19 pandemic. None of the organizations to which I belong can meet in person this month because of the omicron surge. Atlantia is "shut down" until January 21; Storvik is taking the entire month of January off. Church is soldiering on with Zoom meetings. Same with Toastmasters. People are fed up with virtual this and online that. My local science writers' group had its second online holiday gala last month and attendance was barely two dozen instead of the usual 150 or so. No wonder people drive like entitled maniacs and treat strangers so poorly when they do manage to leave their hidey-holes. We are all losing social capital.

5. Just now, as I was writing the above, I heard a crash in the condo. The little wooden shelf in the dining room fell off the wall. It's the little wooden shelf I gave Mom for her 75th birthday. Is it a sign??

Over and out....

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1307654.html

Been a long time, been a long time...

In fact, it took me a long time to actually start getting emails from the Golden Dolphins. It didn't help that the current Order principal had a parent who had just undergone open heart surgery (and believe me, I know what it's like to be the adult child of such a patient). Finally I whitelisted the email address for the mailing list and, presto change-o, I received a huge pile of emails welcoming me to the Pod. So, all is well on that front.

My finances continued the same roller-coaster trajectory until I finished up my latest feature article at the start of December and received my payment for it a week later. Yay, I can finally catch up on some bills.

Except ... I ended up NOT going to Discon III, the World Science Fiction Convention or Worldcon. You'd think that, after hoping for Worldcon to show up in DC for three decades, I would have been first in line. However, I always seemed to be lacking in money for a Worldcon membership every time I went to another convention and saw a Discon III table or party. So I kept putting things off. And then the damned pandemic hit. R. kept dithering over whether or not he'd attend. Mike T. was abruptly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease earlier this year and abruptly moved to Pennsylvania over the summer (did I ever mention that?). Finally, the con was upon us, and even though I now have money in the bank, I honestly could not justify spending $325 on a five-day-long convention. Not when the last in-person Balticon, back in 2019, cost only $77 at the door for four days.

Fortunately, before Discon III started, I was able to spend a Saturday evening and a Monday with my friends Chris and Richard, visiting from Palo Alto. I had not seen them in person since their elder daughter graduated from Drexel University, and it was a total delight!! I received some of their camera and film shipments through the mail, so they didn't have to schlep it across the continent, and they saved some sales tax too (heh heh heh). I drove them out to the Udvar-Hazy museum, which is not on public transportation, and we had a couple of fabulous meals together at Asian-style restaurants. I was SO incredibly glad to see them again, possibly more so than any attendance at the Worldcon.

Let's see, what else is there for me to dish about?

The boy toy painted the "spare room" (the second bedroom), and I rearranged the bookshelves and released some books I'll never read again through Bookcrossing. Gaah, I still own so many books I have never actually read. I need to READ more.

I didn't go to Massachusetts for Christmas again this year. My cousin Tim's wife canceled Christmas Eve after Tim ended up in the hospital for non-covid pneumonia (he was in only for a couple of days, but still). With this new omicron variant of covid-19, I wasn't keen on a long road trip anyhow.

R. is having a prostate procedure tomorrow. Something about sticking microbeads in some of the arteries leading to the prostate to shrink it to a more normal size. It's supposed to be less invasive than regular surgery.

Over the Christmas holiday I have been taking care of a neighbor's three cats (at her house, not mine).

The boy toy and I seem to have avoided all variants of the coronavirus so far. We both have had our booster shots (Moderna, on top of Pfizer for the original two jabs).

I'm sure I'll think of something else once I finish this post. Ah, well.

Over and out.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1307622.html

What I think of when I awaken on August 29, especially when it falls on a Sunday, as it did today and in 1982.

Back then, Ingrid Bergman died on the same day as my father. This year, Ed Asner -- the "Lou Grant" of my youth -- passed away today. And of course it makes nine years since my astronomer friend Andrea's father died. She and I are two only children whose fathers passed away 30 years apart to the day. Figure that one out.

My Dad would be amazed how much the world has changed since 1982 -- how his parents' native Lithuania is now an independent country and NATO member, how people walk around with these tiny computers in their pockets (even though they call them "phones"), and how many championships the Patriots and the Red Sox have won.
Hugs, Dad, and love from your little Patoodle.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1306120.html

I can't think of any other year when *everyone* wanted to say "good riddance" to the outgoing year. In the past, maybe somebody who lost a job or a marriage or a family member would say "this year sucks," and their friends would nod sympathetically while secretly giving thanks for their promotions and pay raises and kids' college scholarships. But THIS year? When you see chalkboard messages saying "Let us never speak of 2020 again" embedded in the middle of IKEA displays, for crying out loud....

Anyhow, the boy toy and I had a nice Christmas, even though it was just the two of us (and the holiday roast beef came out a little dry, compared with the last time he cooked such a meal -- maybe Easter?). We each got ourselves a new Kindle Fire tablet. The Fire is a little more "locked down" than standard Android tablets, in that you can acquire only the apps that are in Amazon's own app store. However, it's still very easy to use, and I don't care about the app issue so much now that I have a smartphone (though that device is already more than two years old, I think). I was happy with my other presents, including a framed set of retro-style solar-system "tourism" posters and a Hamilton tote bag. On Christmas Eve I phoned my cousins in Massachusetts and then had a much longer phone chat with R.

Till next time....

Current Mood: mellow
Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1297209.html

I'm still here. I'm 61 now. Today my mother would have been 101.

When the boy toy and I went shopping at Lidl, I noticed that our cashier's name tag said "Jeannette." My mother grew up thinking her name was Jeanette, with one N, until she learned that her mother had wanted to call her Henrietta. So she went to the courthouse for the name-change paperwork, only to find out she was already legally Henrietta Jeanette.

One of the Democratic challengers to a Republican U.S. senator has been sending me fundraising emails addressed to Henrietta. Why???? I know I notified the city clerk's office after she died so that she could be taken off the voting rolls (she died in a hospital in a different city from where she lived). But she's been dead longer than I've had that email address ... which is an AOL account, so you know I didn't just sign up for it lately. And Henrietta was an uncommon name even 101 years ago -- that's why the "Caouette sisters" across the street declared that the infant girl born to my grandparents should be called by her middle name, and why it stuck.

Speaking of my mother, I forgot to mention that a few weeks ago, the boy toy and I took the bare metal frame of Mom's old mattress to a nearby scrap-metal yard. He put a moving quilt, which normally we use to cover the dining table for messy projects, on the roof of the Corolla, and then he strapped it down. The scrap place gave us one whole dollar for it.

On Wednesday afternoon, part of the condo went dark. The living room and the front half of the kitchen had electricity, but the rest of the place didn't. At least the Wi-Fi router is in the living room, so I was able to watch a scientific-conference session (virtual, of course) that I was covering as a freelancer. It took Pepco a while to figure out what the problem was, and to fix it, the workers had to turn off the rest of the power to the two buildings (it was just two of the buildings in the complex that had issues). So yesterday morning I had to rush to write up the story, and then I had to interview two other scientists (via Zoom) on a totally different subject. After all that, I felt rather mentally fried.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1292730.html

Today makes 38 years since my father died, and eight years since my friend Andrea's father died. (Andrea's parents hosted me for a few days when I visited England in 1989. They were kind to me.)

My friend Janina just marked the four-month anniversary of her husband's passing on the 27th, and yesterday would have been their 44th wedding anniversary.

On Thursday my friend Patches's mother died. She was a single parent to Patches and her brother for most of their lives. She was also one of the first U.S. graduate students, back in the 1960s, to obtain permission to use a computer programming language (FORTRAN) toward her foreign-language requirement for her Ph.D. I will attend her funeral via Zoom on Monday in order to save the in-person seats for her family and her friends who knew her (I met her only once). Monday would also have been Dad's 103rd birthday.

And then of course last night Chadwick Boseman's death was announced. 43, so young, and from colon cancer. (Two of my uncles died of colon cancer, but they were in their 70s. Our congregation's music director was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer a dozen or so years ago, but he is ... still our congregation's music director, with great zest for life.)

So, yeah, the end of August is always tough. But this one, really.

Over and out.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1292023.html

Because everything is random these days.

Right now I am juggling four comparatively short writing assignments. Not sure if that's better for my brain than one long one. I don't really feel like doing any of them, but....

I feel these incredible urges to do something with my hands besides typing. I keep working on the trim for my German dress (SCA).

Tonight the boy toy cooked the second half of the roast beef we bought for Christmas. It was a sufficiently big cut that we ate only half for Yule and froze the other half. He used the last little bit of beef rub that he bought at the H*E*B supermarket in San Antonio.

He was SUPPOSED to head off to San Antonio to see his parents on Tuesday, but that's not happening for COVID-19 reasons. Instead, we're going to make Tuesday our little "Texas Day." He'll wear a Texas T-shirt, I'll wear the Texas socks and earrings he's given me in the past, and we'll have chimichangas and Tex-Mex sides for dinner.

Tuesday would have been my grandmother's 130th birthday. And today is the 59th anniversary of the first human spaceflight and the 39th anniversary of the first U.S. space shuttle flight.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1289470.html

Nice weather today, and apparently the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin are going to hit peak bloom by the end of the week. How are the authorities going to keep people away from the flowering trees? Should they do so?

Of course, the real question is how long this pandemic is going to last. Today Maryland postponed its primary election from April 28 to June 2. Great, so now I won't get my election-judge stipend for three full months. Not that it's a huge stipend -- $200 plus $50 for the training session -- but every bit of money is good. (And, seriously, will anyone bother going to the polls in Maryland in June? Already the outcome is pretty darned obvious.)

There are still some good things in the world. Today my cousin Dick's wife, Margaret, turned 70 years old. My Laurel friend in the Kingdom of Lochac sent me a PDF of a hard-to-find book. And tonight I watched a live, online Dropkick Murphys concert -- streamed from somewhere in Massachusetts -- with the boy toy in person and a bunch of SCA friends via a Facebook "watch party." So that was fun.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1287183.html

One: I finally finished writing my "letter from Pennsic."

Two: Today was the 101th anniversary of the birth (and 36th anniversary of the funeral) of my father. Here is a photo of me and my parents when I was in college. The quality of the photo isn't that great, but it's a nice memory.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1266183.html

It's July 3, a big anniversary in my book, and not *just* because I started my LiveJournal 15 years ago today.

Seventy years ago today, this happened:

I think my parents looked nice on their wedding day, don't you?

Also, it makes two years today since I danced in the big Šokių Šventė in Baltimore. Here's a photo of our "seniors/veterans" group, taken the morning of the festival:

Right now a subset of my Malunas friends are in Lithuania for the Centenary Song Celebration (which also includes dancing and instrumental music and displays of tangible folk arts). I really wish I could be there, but I lack both money (duh!) and a steady male partner (I kept getting shifted around during rehearsals for the 2016 festival, and mostly I got put with a bowlegged guy who kept dropping hints that he'd like me to become his fourth wife). I hope I can get back into Lithuanian folk dancing in time for the 2020 Šokių Šventė in Philadelphia.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1264835.html

On Monday, Labor Day, I posted the following tribute on Facebook. I *meant* to copy it here too, but I got tired later in the day.

One hundred years ago TODAY, my Uncle Rene was born. Yes, my father and one of my uncles were born just four days apart in the same year. Uncle Rene was my *maternal* uncle, just so you're not totally confused.

Most people pronounce "Rene" as "reh-NAY," same as "Renee," but my family of French Canadian Americans always pronounced my uncle's name as "RAY-nee." At any rate, my Uncle Rene was the third of six children born to a couple of residents of a heavily French Canadian neighborhood in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

Rene grew up to be the tallest of his siblings and was always a big high-strung. His hair stood up straight on top of his head, and he wore thick glasses. He left school after the eighth grade because by then it was the Depression. At some point he lost the tip of his right middle finger to some sort of tool or machine. He had only the tiniest stump of nail on that finger.

As you can see from the [Facebook] photo, Uncle Rene joined the service during World War II, but I don't think he stayed on the front lines long. My mother always said he had "shellshock." I think he was shipped home to recuperate. I have a little satin pillow that is printed with the words "For Mom from Fort Belvoir."

Rene never married or had kids, but lived with his mother (my grandmother) and took care of her as she aged. She signed the house over to him before she died, so he would always have a place to live. He worked as a janitor at Fitchburg State College (as Diane N*** [a former member of my church who attended Fitchburg State] can attest) until he retired.

My Dad and Uncle Rene were good friends and were in a bowling league together. One Sunday afternoon they scared my Mom -- they went down to the local airport and convinced someone to take them up on his small plane for a cruise around southern New Hampshire. Better to seek forgiveness afterward than to try to get permission beforehand....

By 1987 Uncle Rene and my mother were the last of their siblings left alive. They were the third and fourth kids in the family, and I think my mother was closer to him than to her other siblings. He died at age 79, and my Mom died four weeks later.

Happy 100th Birthday, Uncle Rene.

* * * * *

On Monday I had gotten up early to march in the Labor Day parade as a member (really, president) of the local Toastmasters Club. I should really start a DW/LJ tag for Toastmasters, as that's probably going to be a bigger part of my life for the rest of the "club year" (i.e., until next June 30). The town where I live was built as a New Deal project 80 years ago, so yeah, we love our Labor Day festivities. It's traditional for marchers to toss candy to the children on the sidelines, and some of them bring bags, almost like Halloween trick-or-treating.

This is the third year I marched in the parade with the Toastmasters. It's really quite fun, and it's not a lengthy parade at all. This year's event had a TON of entries for local politicians. The area is so heavily Democratic that next year's primary (I think it will be in June) is tantamount to election. So, yeah, everybody wanted to "press the flesh."

At the elementary school book sale at the Labor Day festival, I scored three books, including The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas -- list price $60 when it came out. I think I paid $8 for the three books and the reusable tote bag to carry them in. Deal!

At the parade I scored coupons for a free Mission BBQ sandwich and a free slice of Three Brothers pizza. So I think I came out even, more or less.

* * * * *

I was supposed to have a small surgical procedure today (to remove a small BENIGN lump), but the hospital arbitrarily rescheduled it to next Tuesday, without bothering to TELL me until I made inquiries late yesterday afternoon. *grumble*

I had explicitly made no commitments to anything for the coming weekend, because I figured I was going to spend the weekend loafing around and sleeping off the painkillers. Now, however, what to do? In addition, money is a bit tight again, since I paid off some crucial bills.

Although I've been invited to attend no less than three different SCA events in three different states, I think I'll stick closer to home this weekend. Maybe I'll catch up on some projects here. I really hadn't planned on going to an event until Battle on the Bay, which is the weekend of Sept. 22-24.

* * * * *

I haven't been in touch with Tall Dancer a lot lately, but he called twice this afternoon. Apparently he is on a long drive from Georgia to Tennessee for a small relax-a-con with friends. And he just got back from Florida to celebrate his grandmother's 95th birthday. I do hope his relatives are safe during Hurricane Irma.

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1254140.html

One hundred years ago TODAY, a couple of Lithuanian immigrants in Gardner, Massachusetts, welcomed their first child: a boy of fair skin and hair who resembled his mother. They named him Anthony, later nicknamed "Tony." He grew up active and strong and took technical courses in high school, but his parents died when he was a teenager, so he went to work in the factories.

Tony volunteered for the service right after Pearl Harbor, so the Army Air Corps sent him to Scott Field in Illinois for training in radio operation, navigation, and airplane mechanics. He was sent to India on "the Hump" route of the China-Burma-India Theater of WWII. After the war, he met a woman at a dance, and they married and built a small house together. After many years of trying, they had a daughter of whom he was always proud. He once told her that the day she graduated from college would be the happiest day of his life.

Sadly, Tony -- my father -- died the year after I graduated from college (the first time around). But at least he got to see that. It's true that I've spent more years of my life without him than with him. But at least I spent my important growing-up years with both parents in my life.

And his spirit is with me whenever I'm doing something he would have enjoyed, whether it's dancing, marveling over the latest technology, or looking up at a plane in the sky.

Happy 100th Birthday, Dad. Laba naktis....

Crossposts: https://luscious-purple.livejournal.com/1253752.html

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Lady Patricia of Trakai

May 2025

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Page generated May. 18th, 2025 07:06 am

Dwarf Planet in Purple

Dancing in the shadow of light

Entries tagged with family

Patty the Pariah

Merry Christmas from the Blue and Green Cottage

So this is what 60 years feels like.

Many anniversaries

Getting closer to the holidays

Another August 29

A hot August

Third of July

First post of the new year

Breaking my silence

Another Sunday, August 29

Finally, the end of the year approaches...

Still here, etc.

August 29 again

Random stuff

A question or two

Two main subjects tonight...

It's July 3 again

Another centennial, plus other stuff

The Century Mark