Even though I have a bunch of entries in here, they are mostly imported from MySpace and Facebook blog entries. And, I intend to import a bunch of my old stuff from a few years ago, and, if I’m REALLY ambitious, some of my old stuff from when I was a kid and in high school. So, I wanted this new journal to be a more well-rounded representation of my life, moods and experiences. But, I have a tendency to use journaling as a venting place and to only write about whiny and negative stuff, so I want to be sure to balance that out with some of the good stuff. How bad would it suck to look back on all the stuff I’ve written only to find that I have nothing but bitching and complaining accounted for? So, on to some good stuff before my latest lament!
Saturday was spent sleeping late at Tracey’s place and then coming home to find a somewhat (yet still unacceptable) messy apartment. I’ve gotten into a pretty consistent routine of tidying up the house on the weekends, which keeps me from being stressed out by a messy house while I’m trying to work. I need order around me when I’m trying to concentrate on being productive. Otherwise, I get distracted by all the chores that need to be done to create that order and end up doing that instead of working. Then, when I’m done, I’m too tired to work. Tracey works most weekends, so it’s a good passage of some of the time by myself, too. Most of the time, I don’t mind doing the housework. It gives me a sense of satisfaction when I’m done. And, I am also admittedly a bit of a control freak type about certain things – I like to do things in a certain way, though I’m not so bad about it that I won’t let anyone else help!
Sunday was a good day, all in all. I called Manon to invite her to come out Geocaching with me and then go meet Laina at Granville Island. I didn’t really have anything particular in mind for going to Granville Island except I wanted to go to the paper shop to get Deidre one of those really beautiful letterpressed birthday cards I had wanted to send her. I picked Manon up and we got something to eat at the McDonald’s near her house. There were these cool light fixtures in there that were silver metal (anodized aluminum? I don’t know what you call it…) round looking things. Very industrial and modern. They were so cool looking up at them from below. The weird part is that the silver actually looked green in the photos – must be the white balance and the fluorescent bulb or something. Nonetheless, a cool effect! There were also bright red ones that looked dark brown or maroon in the shots. Another cool effect!
Then, we headed to Queen Elizabeth Park to pick up the two other caches we didn’t have time (or battery) to get the last time we were out caching in the area. The first one we got was The Queen’s Pipeline, followed by one called Entomophobia which Manon found in a crevice at the base of a tree’s trunk in the park. It was a cool cache because it was a large plastic toy bug which had the head cut so that a plastic film container could be stuck inside the hollow body. Pretty cool camo!
Then, we headed down near Vancouver General Hospital to look for another cache before meeting Laina at Granville Island at 4:00pm. This one was called Tall Twin and Manon took a really cool picture of the “tall twins” looking up at them from below. The sheet metal surrounding them on the ground looked really unstable and I wasn’t about to step on it, but Manon braved the danger and got a cool shot!
Then, we headed to Granville Island and met up with Laina. We went in a few of the shops – the longest stop being at Paper-Ya – I love that store! I bought Deidre a nice letterpressed birthday card that cost me $7.50! It’s so pretty, though, designed to sort of look like a cupcake in brown and yellow on a nice white paper. We had some gross Chinese food and I dropped Manon off at home and headed back home myself. Tracey got off work and we watched some TV.
Today has been a pretty good day so far as well. We woke up and went to look at the house on Maywood in PoCo that we saw a couple of weeks ago and then went for DimSum with Carol at Pink Pearl. Then, we went to Tracey’s and walked over to the tennis courts at the park on Woodland a couple of blocks past Grandview Highway. I’m quite proud of the improvement in both our games without having practiced in ages. I think if we learned to play properly, we could probably be pretty good!
We got back here and I talked to Deidre a bit and she told me that Mawmaw was in the hospital and had pulled out a feeding tube they had put in and that the situation didn’t look good. Naturally, I was upset that my dad hadn’t called to let me know anything was going on, so I called him and talked to him about things for a while. I decided that with the likely impending death of his mother, my nagging him was not a necessary thing to add to his plate. Is that the definition of maturity? – knowing when to keep your mouth shut, even when you have a valid point….I told him that he has been a good son and that I’m sure he’ll make the right decision. He said that he, Mike and Janet have to meet with the doctor to see what the options are.
Mawmaw is 80 years old and not exactly in a coherent state at this point and I told him that the important thing to remember is that the decision they make should be in Mawmaw’s best interest, not what anyone else wants. It’s really not fair to keep someone merely alive for the benefit of the living. I feel like she should be allowed to finish her life with whatever dignity she still has left. It’s weird because I have a mixture of feelings about the whole thing. Obviously, it’s sad to contemplate the death of my last living grandparent and I’m also very upset on behalf of my dad who I know will be devastated. He’s the biggest mamma’s boy ever and he’s been a really good son and hasn’t left her there at the nursing home forgotten like a lot of people do with their aging parents or grandparents. He goes to see her every single day. At the same time I feel the sadness of all that, I also feel sort of detached. Truth be told, my grandmother has not been the warmest, most loving person around. It seems like she was more loving and sweet when we were kids, but since I’ve been an adult, the most memorable things I can remember about her was her asking me how much I weigh every time I saw her. She always had some sort of hangup about people being overweight – not that I think it’s a good thing to be heavy, but I don’t think people learn to take better care of themselves by being insulted or brought down about their issues.
The last time I saw her was when I went down to Louisiana for Christmas last year and I went to visit my dad. I was startled at how pitiful she looked and she was wearing a diaper and couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom and was makingthese weird noises and shaking her legs because she didn’t want to go in her pants. So awful and undignified. I was trying to make conversation as much as I could given her condition and I said to her “I remember someone that used to like to give me kisses on the back of my neck…” which she used to do when I was a kid. She said “Well, now you’ve got a big fat neck.” I couldn’t believe that, even in that state, she could find a way to insult me. I told my dad and he just sort of laughed in disbelief and said to her that I have an adult neck now. lol My god.
So, I guess it makes sense why I have mixed emotions about the idea of her passing.
Well, I guess this post is long enough – a 3-day update in one fell swoop!