January 31, 2000

My work schedule is heating up again, so for the next month or so updates may come fairly late in the day. I'm just warning you.

My dad called me from Cheyenne, Wyoming yesterday. Apparently he has a load of pottery that he's delivering to a town in Washington state about 30 miles from Seattle. He wanted to know if I wanted to go have dinner or something, if he has some extra time to kill on Wednesday night after he unloads the pottery.

He also said that he's not sure he'll actually be able to make it, and that it all depends on the weather in the mountains, and how long it takes to unload the pottery, and how long it takes him to find another load to transport back to Ohio. I said, well, I'll be home Wednesday night so give me a call if you're around.

I am not terribly optimistic. The last time my dad told me that he was kind of busy with his job and that he wasn't sure he'd actually be able to make it to something, it was my college graduation, which he did not show up for.

I suppose I should be terribly hurt by that or something, but I'm not, really. I wasn't surprised, and I hadn't really expected him to be there. Mom was the one who supported me, emotionally and financially, through most of college (sure, my dad helped out, but he wasn't providing the vast amounts of support that Mom was), and if SHE hadn't made it, I would have been upset. Of course, I know that my graduation is much more meaningful to her, exactly because she helped me get through it. It was really a team effort. I remember her working for hours on my financial aid requests, and calling me to make sure I'd turned my necessary paperwork in, and sending me unexpected money when she could tell I was at the end of my rope. Her presence really meant something to me. My dad's wouldn't have, particularly.

Anyway, he reported news from home that confirmed what my cousin Jill emailed me about a week ago, which is that my grandfather was recently in the hospital with a low blood count. Apparently my grandfather has bone cancer, along with the prostate cancer that he's been dealing with for as long as I can remember. I didn't know about the bone cancer. My dad said that he goes in for radiation treatments every so often, which help with the problem, but that really there's no curing it at this point. He said that he saw an X-ray of my grandfather's bones, and it looked like swiss cheese, because of all the little black marks where the cancer was eating through.

My grandfather used to be a tremendous man, towering well over me, at least 6'3". He was a farmer and a cement mason. Now he's shrunken, about my height, and -- have you ever seen old Slavic people? you know how the skin in their face pulls back into their cheekbones when they get old? -- well, that's happening to him, and it's more pronounced than ever.

My grandma on my Mom's side isn't doing so well either. She just went into the hospital for a hip replacement. Mom reports that the surgery went fine, but now Grandma is incredibly disoriented and can't remember where she is. She was having slight memory problems before the operation, but nothing like this. Mom said that Grandma told her that she knew that everybody was just trying to kill her, and that she disowned her, and that she didn't know why everybody was in her room. Apparently she thinks she's at home. The doctors say that it's a side effect of the anesthesia, and that it will wear off. I hope it wears off soon, because I can tell that Mom is having a hard time handling it. She told me that if she's ever old and in the hospital, I shouldn't listen to her if she tells me she disowns me.

In non-family related news. So, last night I watched the X-Files, and as usual it creeped me out. I refuse to watch X-Files anymore if Keith isn't home, because it freaks me out being in the house all by myself. For example, last night after the show -- and this has nothing to do with the actual show content, it just proves what a flake I am sometimes -- it occurred to me that maybe my entire life is just a big sociology experiment. Like, maybe someone is observing my reactions to stuff, and maybe they want to see how I react if they make my life be completely normal up to a certain point, and then they release the man-eating tigers in my neighborhood just to see how I react. Or, the flesh-eating zombies. You never know. Because we all know that flesh-eating zombies don't exist, but if I'm just a subject in somebody's sociology experiment, all bets are off. Do you follow?

Anyway, this morning when I woke up I realized how stupid that sounded. Which is probably all part of their master plan.

THE FORUM: What crazy-ass stuff do you convince yourself of?

MORE FORUM: Some people are pretty exercised about the pickle thing.

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