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Grandma Games

I’m not sure what some of you will think about this, but I have to share it because it was fun and sweet and silly and made a sad event so much more pleasant …

We buried my husband’s grandmother yesterday.  She would have been 94 this December 19 if she’d lived a few weeks longer.  The Lord knows best, though, and she is home with Him now.  The funeral service was quite lovely (as lovely as these sad events can be) and I think that she would be pleased by what was said.  She would especially have loved the flowers, as she was quite the gardener and her favorite color was pink.  The casket spray was a beautiful blanket of pink roses and greenery.  And to the side was a small nosegay … two white roses for her children, five yellow roses for her grandchildren, and 9 red roses for her great grandchildren.  Very sweet, indeed.

After the trip to the cemetery, we went back to Grandma’s house to eat, visit, and reminisce.  Back in 1995, Grandma started keeping a journal faithfully.  She wrote in it each and every day, documenting newsworthy items of world, national, and personal natures    .  I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but a good old fashioned Irish wake evolved thusly:

Mark (our cousin) made slips of paper to go in three cups.  In the first cup were slips of paper for the years 1995 through 2008.  In the second were slips of paper January through December.  And in the third cup were numbered slips for the days of a month.  We took turns drawing a year, a month and a date and then the appropriate book would be drawn from the shelf, opened to the month and date and then read aloud to our family.

If, in the course of reading the entry, your name was mentioned, you had to take a drink of your beer, tea or lemonade (this way non-drinkers and kids were able to participate, too)!  Because Grandma was very diligent about recording the events, phone calls and letters sent to her by her children and grandchildren, it’s a good thing we had a limited amount of adult beverages on hand … or else things might have gotten much sillier than they needed to! 

We are not big drinkers (not really drinkers at all), but it was such a lovely and fun way to spend the evening remembering our dear Grandma.  I think she would be quite pleased by the laughter that outweighed the tears, though there were plenty of those to go around, too.

Blessings on you all, and hug your loved ones a little tighter, because this thing called “life” passes by so very, very fast.


AJ and Grandma (Christmas, 2005)

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And a heavy sigh was heard across the land ….

There may be shouts of joy in some quarters tonight, but true conservatives are sighing with heaviness of heart following this evening’s terrible loss to Obama.  

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Past Due Notice

I posted this in a comment on another blog, but I liked it so much, I decided to post it here, too:

Interesting (and true) thoughts from Jefferson:

“If once the
people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and
Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.
It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual
exceptions.”

and

“Every generation needs a new revolution.”

It seems that with the wolves at the door, we are past due for our revolution ….

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How Could It Have Happened?

This Emmy-winning program ran in 1981/82 …. it takes a little while (about 45 minutes) to watch both of them, but I think you will find some eerie correlations between this based on real life program and what is happened in our country right now. 

ALSO — go to 15:10 in the video and see if you notice a similarity between the logo chosen by the history teacher and anything that you’ve seen in recent days.

The Wave (Part 1)

The Wave (Part 2)

It’s amazing the similarities between this story and what’s happening right now … the mindless devotion to The Wave, threats against anyone who speak against the The Wave … some might find this to be “cheesy” in an afterschool special kind of way, but the truth can’t be denied and this is what’s happening in a large portion of our nation’s population RIGHT NOW.

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Obama Ridicules McCain’s Charge that He’s a Socialist

“I don’t know what’s next,” Obama, the presidential candidate, said at an outdoor rally in North Carolina.
“By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret
communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut
butter and jelly sandwich.”

This guy is such a JERK!  (I wanted to use a seven letter word that starts with “b” and ends with “d,” but I’m trying to keep it clean, folks.)

That’s just what I want in a Commander in Chief, a sarcastic, childish little b*****d.  (And the label might fit, since we haven’t seen that birth certificate just yet ….)

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I Can’t Wait for November 5th

Some political links for your reading “pleasure” ….

Notorious Obamedia Moments of 2008

Does The United States of America Still Exist?  (exceptionally good commentary, I think …)

Will The Return of Values Voters Bring Another Election Day Surprise?

A Duty Not to Vote (read this one, for sure!)

Joe Biden’s History Lesson

I’m off to do school with my girl … have a good day.

Posted on by Laura Jinkins · 11 Comments

A Little Update

AJ’s grandma is still hanging on … her breathing is even more shallow, but she is a strong woman even now.  This process called dying is different for each and every person, isn’t it?  We didn’t think she would be around more than a day or two when we were there last week … I really don’t know when she will finally go, but we said our goodbyes and do not plan on going back to Fort Worth.  His mom and sister would like us to do so, but there’s really no point and we are in quite a financial pinch after the expense of September’s evacuation, two trips to Fort Worth, and now the $600 repair bill for my truck.  The power steering went out a couple of days ago. 

On to more cheerful news — my cousin got married this past weekend, and my dad came in from New Orleans for the wedding.  It was very nice and yesterday afternoon we were able to spend some time with Dad and his girlfriend.  They have invited us to come spend Thanksgiving with them and I believe we are going to do it.  It will go over like a lead balloon with the rest of our family (especially Mom), but Dad is 73 years old.  We see him on average once every 12 – 18 months, and who knows how much longer any of us will be around …. (I sound so morbid, but it’s true).  So we are going to tempt the furies (literally, because hell hath no fury like my momma) and go see Dad.

While we were visiting he showed me some of the genealogy research that he’s been doing on Ancestry.com — there is a feature on the program called “One World Tree” that is linked in somehow with the research the Mormon church does (and is supposed to be very accurate) … there is a 0 – 5 star rating on how reliable the information is.  I am quite tickled to discover (keeping in mind that someone could have made a mistake, but the accuracy rating is still 4 stars out of 5) ….

Geoffrey Chaucer was my 19th great grandfather!  

How do you make an English major’s day?  Tell them they come by their love of words QUITE NATURALLY. 

(William Faulkner is also a distant cousin, but I would just as soon ignore that one, since I do not care for his writing AT ALL.  )

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Grandma

Just touching base … we returned home late this evening from our run to Fort Worth.  Grandma is not long for this world, I am sure.  She slipped into a coma Monday evening and has not awakened since then.  We got there late Tuesday night and went to the hospice facility to spend a little time with her.  Then we returned this morning before heading home.  Her breathing is labored, and the nurses are giving her small doses of morphine to make her more comfortable when they need to move her.  Her right arm is in a cast from when they did surgery on her wrist last week and I’m sure she must be achy all over from lying in a hospital bed for going on three weeks.  So the morphine is probably a blessing to her comfort.  The sweetest nurse attended her while we were there this morning.  She came in and brushed her hair, checked her temperature …. a little later she checked her extremities (feet, hands) for mottling.  I was amazed at the gentle way she performed her duties.  When we were getting ready to leave, I thanked her — I wanted her to know that I had noticed the wonderful care she is giving to our dear grandma.  She has been a hospice nurse since 1980, and when I told her it was a real ministry, she said, “That’s exactly what I want it to be.” 

I know that we won’t see Grandma alive again.  It was very difficult to say goodbye, but she is tired and we need to let her go.  I wasn’t sure how Jami would react to all of this, as she’s never been around anyone who was about to die.  I was so happy to see her go over to Grandma’s side, take her hand and kiss it before leaving.  I’m glad that she was not afraid to do that.  I’m not sure that I would have done that when I was her age.  When I left, I kissed Grandma on the forehead and told her that if she needs someone to put shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets of her mansion in heaven, I’ll be happy to do it when I get there.  I’d like to think she heard me and that she was smiling in her heart, if not on her face.

(Years ago, she asked if I and my sister-in-law would come put new shelf paper in her kitchen cabinets … we had a wonderful day … cleaning out the cabinets, replacing the shelf paper and visiting.  I bet you a visit didn’t pass for at least 3 or 4 years that she didn’t make some comment about how nice her clean shelf papered cabinets were.  )

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Please Pray

I can’t remember if I posted about this week before last, but we spent 3 days in Fort Worth when my husband’s 93 year old grandmother fell and broke her hip.  Things weren’t looking good, but she came through surgery well and we had high hopes for a good recovery.

My mom-in-law just called and said that the doctors are saying that if we want to see her alive, we need to come now.  It’s about a five hour trip to Fort Worth.  I’m waiting to hear what my husband decides.  Please pray for the family and for safe travels for us if he decides we can make it before she passes.

Thanks.

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Warning from Pakistan

This morning from a cave somewhere in Pakistan, Taliban Minister of Migration, Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that if military action against Iraq continues, Taliban authorities will cut off America’s supply of convenience store managers and possibly candidates for President of the United States … and if this action does not yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed by Dell and AOL customer service reps, and then Motel 6 managers.

It’s gonna’ get ugly.

(from one of my homeschooling buddies with a sense of humor, even in the darkest of times …)