kz_blogorambling

Boy you sure find some unexpected stuff in genealogy.

My BIL doesn't know much about his family, so I've been filling in the blanks. His grandmother was married four times and I'm not sure how close his Dad was to the half-siblings that came from those marriages, so I don't know if he knew this cousin, but: one of his cousins moved to CA to pursue an acting career. He was napping when an acquaintance doused his bed in gasoline and burned him "because he was gay and wanted to put him out of his misery." He didn't die right away, he ran onto his porch which is where he was found.

His family back in South Dakota didn't know he was gay until the story came out.

It remains hard to wrap my head around my son being 18. It seemed like that day would never come, when he was small, it just seemed so far off. And here he is, settled into it so well three months into "adulthood." He's not very adult yet, which is fine.

We started a Marley Spoon subscription. Two meals a week. We're two weeks in and I'm really pleased so far. Kirk is gung-ho to help, and I think he's building skills and confidence. I think it's helpful that we're approaching each recipe as novices together. We're referring to the same recipe, instead of me being some kind of kitchen oracle. We're eating more salad (I almost never make salad at home) which is good. Mark is appalled at the idea that we would have dinner ingredients FLOWN to us--the environmental impact horrifies him. Kirk pointed out we're keeping the recipe cards and maybe down the road we'll just acquire ingredients locally.

Kirk's Ireland trip looms. Mama is trying to focus on the many reasons we decided to do this for him so I do not freak out about him being across an ocean for three months.

Speaking of Ireland, Mark and I scrapped our tentative plans to see him while he's over there. In lieu of that we are, all three of us, taking a big trip later this month. Well, as big as we can manage given the number of things that require us to be in Ann Arbor. We are flying to Seattle, taking the Coast Starlight (Amtrak) down to LA, and then flying back home. Some parts of it may feel harried but 36 hours on the train ought to be very restful!

My son has always been social, but in the last year or so he's been doing most of his "social" stuff online. With school friends or his Canadian buddy who all like the play the same games. It's social all right, they skype and all. But it just feels very different from what I am used to.

Well, now I have spent the last two weekends waiting up for him to get home after 2 am because he's at Denny's with friends after something social. And last night he said "Busy weekend, Mom. I'm giving blood Saturday, then trying a noodle place with friends. Sunday I'm going skiing." This is in addition to the Super Bowl party I already knew was on his plate.

Also: He's talking about "backpacking through Europe" with a friend.

Well, I'm pleased as punch.

I whispered, "Maybe I AM going to survive this busy period at work. I think I can see a way through. An end in sight."

The cruel Universe has exceptional hearing, friends. One phone call later and I'm back to "Holy shit" territory

"Your email address has been marked as unvalidated because we have been receiving errors messages from your mail server for at least one week. This indicates the address may no longer be functional. You can re-validate this email address or switch to a new email address to begin receiving notifications again."

My email address is valid. Twice now I've asked it to send me a revalidation and it never arrived (I checked SPAM folders too). So I dunno what's up, LJ.

If I had the time, I would describe the pretty awesome college tour we had at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee here!

Today is our FIRST OFFICIAL COLLEGE VISIT OMG.  [The kid went to an info session at U-M last summer, but missed the tour.  And he did that alone.  This is the first family trip to do this].

 We're just zipping down to U of Toledo, not that I think will end up high on his college list, but he talked to them at a recent college fair and mentioned them as a place worth checking out.  I glommed onto it and made it the only entry on our "to do" list for his spring break.

They are renovating offices all around me as we reconfigure for more space.  Today someone showed up to take down a bunch of blinds, but had only a short time to work and said he's coming back tomorrow.  No sooner had he left than a second guy showed up and announced he was there to take down blinds.  So it sounds like they may have accidentally scheduled people from two different divisions to do the work, and there's all kinds of hubbub as they figure out whether this guy should be sent packing, or whether he should take down the blinds the other guy didn't get to.

But mostly I'm just sitting here DYING because I want to run out there and tell that convent story where the nuns are renovating and some guy announces himself as "BLIND MAN...."  I can hardly stand that I can't go out and tell this stupid joke.

I am so disgusted with my builder.  This is nothing at all new, it's just at the fore because I am sending him the final "HERE IS THE LAST OF THE MONEY YOU CLAIM WE OWE YOU, YOU SCUMBAG" check today and I hope he never darkens our door again.

To refresh my memory, and document what I am paying, I went back over old emails where I argued with him about invoices and stuff.

He was pretty great at the start.  And then he just wasn't.  I hope he drops his favorite cordless drill in a bucket of drywall mud.