A Funeral and Rediscovered Family

Friday night was my father's funeral. There were features to the service that were not typical of most funeral services. Thirty minutes before the service (which was to be graveside) a thunderstorm blew up that was quite a show in and of it's self. This thunderstorm was about as bad as it can be without actually being tornado, including hail and a few inches of rain being dumped in just a few minutes. We left the hotel as the storm was subsiding and got to the cemetery and waited in the car as the last sprinkles fell. At the appointed time we all exited the cars and literally waded through the running water in the cemetery to the grave site. The preacher my aunts had arranged for said a few words, read a bible verse or two and asked for someone to share a good story or memory. Dead Silence. Again he pleaded. Again dead silence. Finally my cousin in sympathy to the preacher who was really trying to perform a somewhat normal service for a very abnormal situation spoke up and told a story about my father when they were young children. As we left the cemetery the sky was filled with a big rainbow. The irony was not unnoticed.



An unexpected benefit of the funeral was re-connecting with my father's side of the family that I haven't really seen in years, many of my cousins not since my grandmother died in '91. Honestly it was fun and I had forgotten that I have "normal" relatives. Hubby even made the remark "It's too bad your dad was such schmuck, because I really like this side of your family" and I do too. Perhaps that was his biggest injury to me was to deprive me of relationships with aunts, and cousins and my uncle and grandmother in the last years of their lives.



While in town we visited my aunt's farm as she was excited about her new calf and the kids actually got to be farm kids for a couple of hours. Sonny Boy was particularly excited to find a large tick on one of the dogs and get a good look at it before I smooshed it.



The remainder of the weekend we traveled on down to visit my mother for a couple of days. It was the first trip to her house since Igor has been home so several family friends had to come by and visit and check him out of course. He handled it with grace and was real trooper the whole trip though we were all glad to be home and in our own beds.

Igor will make his first trip to the specialist in St. Louis next week. I noticed he seems to walk on the inside of his foot and his feet and ankles don't seem to line up correctly. I took him to the local pediatrician and definitely thought something was up and thought we needed to see an ortho, so armed with a recommendation from our favorite med student that studies there, we have an appointment for next week. Hopefully they'll tell me I'm an over paranoid parent.

Sonny Boy is still liking school and seems to be making friends as he's yelling "bye" to several kids as we leave the parking lot in the afternoon. The usual conversation in the afternoon is who got in trouble for the day and what was for lunch. Luckily he likes the school lunch which is a relief for me as the idea of packing lunches daily did not appeal to me.

To be honest there is so much going on I can't begin to write it all. I'm busy but terribly bored if that makes any sense. Living conditions are slowly improving. The house no longer smells bad (or at least has normal house smells) Hubby went and found a new to me dryer tonight, we've been without a dryer since moving as our old one was gas and there were no hook-ups here, and I've been using a clothesline. The clothesline hasn't really been a hardship, however the towels feel horrible and it's sort of like drying off with sandpaper. At least all the dead skin is gone! We've gone rounds with the local post office about the placement of our mailbox which really has my dander up because it's such a stupid issue. We've lowered the price on the house in WI again. There are 22 houses priced within 5K either way. This is the last cut we can make, if it doesn't generate an offer we will start looking for a renter and hope we get a decent one.

The grind of daily life continues...