Catching Up and Grandma's Stuff
Soon I hope to be blogging more often. I don’t really know why, but I only like blogging on my laptop. It’s a comfort thing I guess. My laptop is all homey and nice. But Jasmin’s had my laptop for like a month and a half now because her computer’s been busted. I have my desktop to use still, and mom’s laptop, but somehow they’re just not the same. They don’t give me the incentive to blog that my dear, sweet, laptop does.Anyway, I guess no one’s missing much because I haven’t been blogging. I’m still unemployed, basically, barring my driving Brittany to Columbus and back twice a week gig. I’m not broke yet, but I’m slowly getting there. I have no idea what I’m doing with myself, and I spend a lot of my time not doing anything in particular.
But not everything in life is bad. I have a hell of a lot of reasons not to complain. For instance, I’ve babysat for my little great-nephew, Ty, a couple of times. I got to keep him overnight last week. He’s such a good little baby. He’s a tank, though, only four months and already twenty pounds.
In about three weeks, my brother’s baby is due to be born. The baby shower was this past Saturday, and it was nice. Downright fun for a baby shower, actually. I tend not to be all that into baby showers, but this one wasn’t so bad. It seemed to be held by people who don’t like baby showers very much. So there were only a few silly games, and those weren’t as obnoxious as some I’ve had to sit through.
Jasmin helped me pick out baby gear for the new kid. We don’t know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl yet, so that made the job considerably more difficult than it could have been. But Jasmin’s bizarre baby fixation made the job easier. Sort of. I had to drag her out of the store. I think she was late for work because she had to ooo and ahh over baby Halloween costumes.
And there are other nice things too. I’ve had time to read and write and relax, and I had definitely not had any time for any of those things for the past year. It’s strange to have been so busy and suddenly so not. But one should never complain about relaxation.
I also got a box of old things from my grandma’s house yesterday. A lot of it isn’t all that interesting; I have boxes of old budgets, for instance. But some of it is really awesome. I have these crazy essays, for instance, that my great-uncle Ed used to write when he was probably my age or younger. I don’t know exactly when Ed was born, but my grandmother was born in 1912, and Ed must have been seven or eigenht years older than that. So his essays must have been from the late 19-teens, or early 20s. And that’s kind of neat to think about.
My absolute favorite find, though, is my great-aunt Lilly’s diary. It’s not a real diary. It’s only one entry, largely regarding the subject of how she decided to start a diary that day. She was only ten or so when she wrote it. And the day was interesting one. She woke up and played a little, and then ate breakfast. Then she decided to start her diary. Then she ate lunch. Then she played school for a while, which was followed by dinner and drying the dishes. Then she played for a while more and, ostensibly, wrote the entry, and signed her little name, “Lillian A. Britt,” at the bottom.
I can’t explain why that makes me so happy. It’s just so charming. I’m in love with my grandmother’s brothers and sisters, and mother and father. My grandmother was in her seventies when I was born, so most of her family had already passed before I had the chance to know them. The people I did know, like Lilly, were so old that it’s hard to imagine them as they are in the pictures I now have of them. Swimming, hanging from trees, starting their diaries and writing muckraking essays and one act screenplays.
posted by Sarie @
2:38 PM
>Comments: 0
