Monday Rambles

It's a winter wonderland, it is!  And school is cancelled.  I am fighting the urge to crawl back into bed right now.  I really need to get out in this mess and go to that hot mess of a booth and try to whip it into shape.  With all of the other...well, let's call them distractions right now, I have not gotten my Christmas out. Gasp!  It kills me to think how many sales I have missed. I spent most of yesterday there just cleaning it up, and now I'm ready to restock.  I have so many empty spaces on the shelves.

Fortunately, I have plenty waiting to fill  them up.  My brother and his wife came up this weekend, so a family junking expedition was in order.  He has just started serious selling on eBay right now, plus he has a new side junking venture he shares with two other people.  Basically they have a warehouse full of estate sale leftovers that they open on weekends for folks to dig around in.  Sounds like a dream to me.  I have to visit there when all these damn treatments are over.

I took them to a couple of thrifts, plus a dude in our neighborhood who rents out a storefront to sell foreclosure clear out stuff.  We also hit one of the wildest sales I have ever been to.  More on that later in the week.  I have some stories to tell that need the pics of finds to go with them.

Da Bros Mitchell are on da loose!

There was a small family get-together on Saturday night to belatedly celebrate my birthday.  I decided earlier that I wanted a reason to see my cousins in a setting that wasn't in a funeral home.  We had a great time eating yummy Mexican food and laughing and talking.  We need to do that more often.

Me and Danny with our Uncle Mike and his daughter Maria

  

Plus their spouses (spice?)

Plus my soon-to-be spouse!

Safe to say a good time was had by all.

This is the first week in what seems like forever that I do not have some sort of cancer-related procedure or treatment scheduled, which is a relief.  Over the weekend, Keith took on the massive task of cleaning out our junk room, and I have some bits and pieces of tidying to do to finish that off. 

I'm starting to get a little bit of a rash on my belly from the shots, but it's not enough right now to crack out the steroids.  I'm going to try some Eucerin or similar lotion first.  I've also go to really get the holiday mojo going at my booth empire.  Sales have been okay this month, but the recent cold weather has not helped.  Today will be dead.  The store might even close early.

To give you an idea of how much work I have to do today:  I took my brother and his wife to see my booths, even though I was completely embarrassed about the shape they were in.  My sister-in-law started cleaning them!  I told the manager that I wasn't sure which was more pathetic, that my booth was so bad my sister-in-law was cleaning it or that I was letting her do it.  hey!  You gotta take the help where you can get it.  If they'll bring the kids next time, they can probably knock the whole thing out in short order!  (Seriously, thanks for the help, Mary Pat!)

Family Photo Parade

I avoided the temptation to call this "Phamily Photo Parade."  I have a thing for alliteration, you know.  Too many comic books as a kid.

My great aunt passed away the other day.  She was the last surviving member of my grandparents' generation.  The family has been going through some of the photos, etc that she left behind, and one of my cousins sent me some pictures of my mother, among others. 

I was really touched by this gesture, since there were a couple in the lot that I didn't have and one I had never seen before.  A few years before he died, my grandfather divided up the family photos between my mom and uncles, but he did so in a really random order.  Instead of keeping family units together, he just sort of made piles for each of them with no importance given to the subjects of the photos.  As a result, there are some pictures of my mother as a child that I always wanted and do not have.  Included in this lot were a couple of shots of her as a young child, which really touched me.

They were such a great and unexpected treasure, that I thought I would share a few here.

School picture of my mother

Another one

Guessing at her age here, but I think this was taken in 1943-1944.

My brother and me on my ninth birthday.  STYLIN'!

I had never seen this pic of my grandfather (center) with his parents and my mom and uncle.

Uncle Larry's school pics.

Since we're rapidly approaching my 50th year, and I keep getting more and more nostalgic, I may dig some of the photos I have out and scan a few sometime.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Think of this one as "Road Trip" part 2.  Or as Post 1,001.  Either one will work.

Since the main purpose for the trip was to decorate Mom's stone, I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention that and show a few pics.

I forgot to take a before pic, but I snatched two really ratty hanging pots of flowers and pitched them.  Keith saw me do that and thought I was taking flowers off random graves!  Silly man!  I bought the blue saddle arrangement at the big flea market and the Mom thing at a thrift.

Mom's and Dad's stones.  Keep in mind that they weren't married when he died in 2006 (and hadn't been for over two decades), but here they are, side by side.  I have an odd family.

We used the veteran's plaque from the VA for Dad's headstone.  I know most folks usually use them as footstones.  See the odd family remark above.  It also just really fit for my dad.  Being in the Army was a huge part of his life.  he never really got very far away from it after he retired.  We (or at least I) plan to get "Mother" and "Father" footstones for them, at some point.  Various family members pass through and keep American flags flapping on all the veterans' graves.  They'll have to add my grandfather to the list.

Speaking of my grandfather, I always have to visit the generations whenever I go to the cemetery.  I was fortunate to have my great-grandparents into my young adulthood, so I have memories of all three generations before me that are buried in that cemetery.  I must bore Keith with my stories when we go.

My grandparents--Mom's parents.  His side is still fresh from the funeral.  I can't help but wonder how his widow felt watching him get buried beside my grandmother.  I always do a doubletake whenever I see the dates on her side of the stone.  It surely can't be almost twenty years since she died.  That's like a lifetime ago!  I still miss her so much.  We lost her so suddenly.  I'm the oldest grandchild on that side of my family.  She and I really bonded.

My grandfather's parents.  I never really knew them all that well, even though she lived in a backroom at my grandparents' house for years.  I used to sit back there and watch TV with her sometimes.

My grandmother's parents.  They were the most awesome people.  I was in seminary when they died, and actually officiated at her funeral.  That was the highlight of my brief career as a ministerial student and one of the highlights of my life.  It kind of shocks me to think how long ago that was.  I was just a kid! I was almost exactly half as old then as I am now.  In the half of my life lived since then, all of the prior generations of my family have joined them in that cemetery.  Keith thinks it's kind of strange that they got married on Christmas Day.  It was always just a part of family lore when I was growing up.

We timed everything just right, because it started raining right as we finished and were leaving the cemetery!  Graveside spruced up and mission accomplished!

Those Who Have Gone Before

Today would have been my mother's 72nd birthday.  This is a picture of her, my grandfather, and my Uncle Larry.  I'm not sure when it was taken.  I found it in a bunch of her stuff I was going through.

None of them are with us any more.  Larry passed away about six months before Mom did.  It was kind of sudden.  Mom passed in 2010.  We just buried my grandfather on Tuesday.  My family is getting smaller.  I know it's supposed to happen, but it's still disconcerting.  I am now the oldest member of this particular branch of the family tree.  There's nothing that prepares you to have that thought.

I know that's what my Uncle Mike is feeling right now, too.

When my great-grandparents died in the late eighties, I remember thinking that, because they died in their late 90's, I'd have a long time to spend with my family.  After all, my mother had over 40 years with her grandparents, and my grandmother had her parents in her life for over seven decades.  It was comforting to come from a long-lived line.

It was not even ten years later when my grandmother died, blowing that idea out of the water.  I am the oldest grandchild, and she and I were quite close.  At the time, I thought it wasn't fair that I didn't get nearly as much time with my grandmother as my mother had with hers.  I was barely in my thirties!  It was only later that I realized my mother had much less time with her mother as well.  She died rather suddenly, and it was a loss that still affects me in some ways.

My father died at 75, but my mother was in her late sixties.  Again, I got a lot less time with them than prior generations in my family had with their predecessors.  In fact, it was actually kind of disturbing:  from late 90's (my great-grandparents) to 80's (my grandmother) down to late 60's (my mother).  It seems like each generation was getting less and less time!

My grandfather passed away at home, which is what he wanted.  I'm glad he was able to do that.  He made it into his 90's, so he kind of restored the longevity of our family.  He also still had all that hair when he died.  That kind of gives me hope.

I was privileged to be at the bedside of both my parents as they passed.  I got to have a private, final moment with both of them.  As much as I wish that those passings had not happened, I am thankful that I got to be there.  I got to say good-bye.

Shortly after my mother died, I was standing in the graveyard with my Uncle  Mike.  We had gone down to take care of the settling of the estate and stopped by the cemetery.  As we were walking from grave to grave, he turned to me and said:  "There are an awful lot of people in here that I used to sit around the Thanksgiving dinner table with."

And now there's one more.  Some parts of getting older stink.  This is the stinkiest of them all.

I'll be celebrating her birthday this year by going to the big flea market at the fairgrounds.  It's one of the things we used to do around this time of the year.  We'd either go at Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.  It was kind of our Mother's Day/Mom's Birthday get-together all rolled into one.

We'd start the day with the breakfast bar at Shoney's.  Guess what else isn't there any more?