I have not posted for a long time. It’s because I was bummed. First, there were two news-helicopter situation within blocks of my house in one day. Some folks decided to rob the bank I always use the ATM at. They shot the two folks tring to put money in that self-same ATM and one of them died. And then, in just a few blocks the other direction, a disgruntled ex-employee of some company took hostages and killed himself. These were bad things, but what bummed me out is that nobody called me to see if I was ok. It’s not like I require such a call, since I am ok, and when I used to receive them, I found them midly annoying. But now I am mom-less and receive no such calls. That was the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Of course, the holidays are a major bummer too. I’ve had Thanksgiving with Christi’s family for the last few years, but my god-mother invited my nuclear family over and I was going to accept. My dad told my brother and I both not to accept and he went for some undisclosed third option also. I think he may have sat home alone. This also is a large change, because usually my mom would be trying to convince me to have thanksgiving with her instead of far away, which would be mildly annoying. Now I get told to scram.
But all is not doom and gloom. I saw my last living female relative during this just passed weekend. She was my grandmother’s first cousin and is a nun. She’s elderly and sent some confused communications during my mom’s illness, so I was worried that she wouldn’t be well, but she was doing much better than I expected. We went to see the movie Adaptation with her. those of you who have seen it may be thinking, “that’s not a very nun-friendly movie!” You’re right, it’s not. There was some confusion because it stars Nicholas Cage and she thought it featured John Cage. So it was not at all what she was expecting and since she’s mostly blind, she couldn’t see it very well, which is a good thing for her in this case, I think. The convent nurses told me not to take her to see anything that wasn’t G or PG rated, but they were kidding. I think.
And we saw Christi’s grandpa. Normally, he holds himself ot a very strict schedule, but we threw it all in disarray. Normally he eats a particular TV dinner for each night of the week, but he went out to dinner with us two days in a row, which is unheard of for him. We went to see Christi’s cousin in a school play. The cousin played a head in a box on a table. The play was terrible. The kids did the best they could with what they had, but they really did not have much. It was a valliant effort. christi’s cousin was the best actor in the play. All of the charecters were highly bizarre, yet somehow the cousin managed to be beleivable as a head on a table, no small feat. I’ve heard that their school is in dire economic straits and so has to use plays with very very low royalties. someone needs to write low-royalty plays for highschools.
the auditorium has a WPA mural painted in the foyer. It’s a very nifty mural and it shows workers and other nifty themes. It’s too bad the WPA is over, it was the only time during US history that the government actually supported the arts. This may never happen again.
Christi is reading all of Ned Rorem’s diaries. They’re amusing because of his terribly pretentious bon-mots. I told Christi that I was going to keep a terribly pretentious journal for when I rise to star-dom as a composer. she encouraged me. Then I could publish my journal under the title Self-portrait of the Composer as a Young Woman or something else equally awful. She suggested maybe I just keep a blog. I may need to start another blog, since this one does not adequaltely come off as a celebration of my genius. Ahem. Nevermind.

Christi’s grandpa is allergic to vicadin. Really allergic. So what happened to him a couple of days ago is that he went iinto allergic shock. So he’s going to be ok, provided he avoids vicadin in the future. He’s going to have to get one of those bracelets that says he’s allergic to it, so he doesn’t die if gets in a car crash and they give him painkillers or whatever. Anyway, he’s ok, but Christi is visitting him as I type.

Christi is gone and I am all alone until Sunday night. If I was smarter, this could have been better planned. We could have gone to see my mom in the morning today and then again sunday evening (after leaving a bit early) and I would have just taken my regular day off and instead I will be all by lonesome. Christi’s grandpa has suffered some sort of major medical event. One moment he was talking to matthew, the next he was on the ground, sweaty and cold with no discernable breathing or pulse. Matthew called 911 and attempted to fake CPR. (hey people: go take a CPR class. Your work may offer them for free. And if you’re not working, well then you have time. It doesn’t take that long to learn and it’s clearly a valuable skill.) Anyway, due to Matt’s fast acting, Grandpa was transported to the hospital and revived. Last I heard he was complaining that he was in the hospital. One second he’s talking to Matthew, next thing you know he’s in the hospital. Why did they do that? He whines a lot about disruptions to his schedule. So he sounds ok, but I don’t know. Christi was on the way to Riverside to visit Tiffany, but now she’s going on to San Bernadino to see her grandpa too. Hopefully she will call with updates as to his health. I’m all out of my own grandparents (lately not doing so well with parents either), so I made an agreement to borrow Christi’s. I’m not in favor of this death thing. I’d like to speak to the manager. Somebody better tell me what’s going on with Grandpa. Christi’s cousins all beleive him to be immortal as he seems so old and yet also seems to be as healthy as a mule. We’ll see. Last time I saw him, he seemed to be as stubborn as a mule. He had a hernia operation only a couple days ago, which this seems like it’s related to (at least to me) and I think that operation wouldn’t have been done unless he was pretty healthy going into it or the hernia was really really bad. Anyway, I should head south. Last couple times I saw my mom, she was doing terribly, but my brother came wich is a minor miracle, I guess. Today I am wasting massive amounts of water on my little container garden. some of plants have started looking yellowish, maybe because they’re at the end of their lifecycle, but they are suppossed to flower more before they go. I have a brown thumb. Not good with plants, animals or people.