My Grandma.

Grandmas. I was remembering my paternal grandmother. She had 5 children. My grandmother was a fascinating old lady. She lived a hard life but then she wasn't all that much different from so many others.

Grandma was born at the turn of the last century. Her own mother had quite the life, too. In fact much of it is veiled and hidden. No one knows why my Mama was sent to Ohio but the rumour suggests an out of wedlock child. Mama married a man who was rather difficult to get along with much of the time. He had been married once before and his wife died. I don't know why. All I know is once Tom, Mama's husband, died Mama took her 2 girls to Church and had them baptized Catholic. Mama never got remarried.

My grandma went to school. In the 8th grade she played basketball. I mean she was on her school's basketball team. I remember seeing a picture of these young women dressed in short skirts (short being at the knee) most had their hair bobbed. It wasn't quite the roaring twenties yet but a short hair cut was in fashion. I can't remember if my grandmother finished high school or not. I do know that she spent most of her life working.

At some point she met my grandfather and married him. My grandfather was a hard working man but he was also a hard playing man. I don't think my grandfather spent a whole lot of time with his family. He was a safety man for the steel mills. In the end that would lead him to his death. Buck was also a volunteer fire fighter. I imagine he was one of those men-- Strong, diligent, a bit of a dare devil perhaps a warrior without a war to fight. Except he did find that too.

What I mean is he was one of the many brave men who stood up to big business and demanded rights. My grandfather was a Union man. He took that seriously. Once my father wanted to join the National Guard and my grandfather won't let him. When my father asked why, my grandfather replied, "When the strike hits I don't want to be looking down the barrel and seeing my son. I don't want to have to kill you; or be killed by you." In the town my family grew up in strikes were very serious; in the late eighties I was visiting, and I went to a grocery store. I couldn't find what I was looking for so I asked the girl in the store about the item. She told me that this other store had it but advised me strongly to forget about it since the store was being striked. I kidded you not the girl told me to cross that line would be risking my own life. "It's a Union town here.", she said with pride.

So you see my grandfather was a busy man. And when he wasn't busy with business. He was busy drinking. There was a bar on Brownsville Road where he spent his time with the other volunteer fire fighters. It was near the fire station. It was still there when my grandmother showed it to me in the 80s. And men that were use to doing hard labor were still visiting it. It was like some sort of brotherhood.

What ended my grandfather's working life was a fall on to a vat. The weird thing about this accident was the vat had just had the lid put on it. If my grandfather had slipped a few seconds earlier he would have died out right. Shortly after that my grandfather started to act weird. Oh there wasn't anything seriously wrong at first. He would wander off. No one would know where. Then he stopped bringing home his checks. I'm not sure what was exactly the last straw but my grandfather ended up in the state hospital. He was committed and that meant my grandmother had to find work. She had been working all along but now she need serious money. My own father went to work at the young age of 7. He worked in a Jewish deli. But that's another story.

What this all boils down to is in the end my grandmother went back to school in her mid-40s to become a LPN. I remember the graduating class picture. There are all these fresh young faces in ovals. Then you see this picture of a mature woman with snowy white hair. I think she was so courageous.

One thing I've been told is that I have her walk. My mother says that my grandmother had a very clipped determined walk. She wasn't a tall woman but she got places very quickly. She just kept on walking. Determined. Yes, she was a determined woman. She wanted things her way but she wasn't ugly about it. At least I never saw it. There are those who would say that she could be very ugly but I can't help wonder if there is some sour grapes to those memories. Yes she was a fascinating old lady. She learned to drive a car at 50 years old. Courageous and fascinating.

Future business intern

Yes, Little Blonde bitch, you may have an internship up your sleeve. You may be hot stuff in someone's point of view but to me you are nothing but a rude little shit. I have many fond wishes in your future business experiences. Most of all I hope someone comes down on you with hob-nailed shoes, and knocks you down a peg or two.

All I was trying to do was help you. Your communication skills suck. Next time you come in to the library (without the title) don't expect the librarian to be able to read your mind. Walking in and saying you have an internship and you need to watch the videos for it doesn't help much. You assume too much. First of all I don't know what kind of freaking intern you are going to be. Is it medical? What? And definitely when the nice lady at the reference desk starts to ask questions don't cop an attitude and get all huffy with her. It doesn't make her feel inclined to help you. (She does because it's her job but she's really itching to tell you to fuck off.)

In fact the nice lady behind the desk continues to help you even though you've gone off. When you come back to her it's not very good to continue the attitude especially when you want more help! I'm not asking for grovelling behavior but a more approachable attitude would be nice.

All I want for Valentine's Day

Well most women want some sort of metal for Valentine's. Okay, precious metal with a stone attached. This year I wanted the metal in my scalp out of my head. It was also the day that our drive way got fixed. You know we don't want any unwanted drive ways lying around. :-0

Seriously, our house was suffering from drive way thrust. Our house is down hill from our drive way. The cheap builder only put in a tar joint at the apron of the drive. Well the physics in play here it anytime someone approached the house and applied the brakes on their vehicle caused the drive to smash into the house. Eventually over time the house would have been knocked off the stem walls and foundation. This is much worse than foundation sagging. Luckily we caught it in time so we don't have that kind of damage. We now are proud owners of a drive way wiht 2 expansion joints-- one on the approach on the other at the apron. There are approximately 4 strips of rubber in the cut they made in the concrete. They went all the way down to the sand bed of drive.

This project took longer for them to complete than they expected because our drive was thicker than normal. They could only go so far with the nifty concrete saw. The rest of the way they had to hand chisel it out.

So this messed up my plans. I wanted to go in the early afternoon to get my staples out. Instead I got to the urgent care place around 5:30. I got them out. It didn't hurt as bad as I was expecting. The good thing was PF and I got to eat at the Indian restaurant that we like. So we did have a Valentines date after all. We weren't planning on one. So it was a nice surprise.

The story of the wannabe unicorn; or how I confused myself with a rhinoceroes

Last week I worked a lot of hours. I had over 30 hours in last week. This week I was suppose to have over 30 hours of work in, too. Well ST got the flu over the weekend. So that shot my 10 hour day.

See Monday I was going to work for 6 hours during the day and return at night and work another 4 hours. In the break I was going to pick up the girls from school and cart them to their various after school activities. Then I was going to high tail it to work.

Well, it didn't happened. In fact I ended up spending money on Monday. I had to take ST to the doctor because she looked horrible. So the 6 hours was gone. I dropped her off with my mother who was waiting to pick-up MI. I went and picked up DQ. Took her to ballet. We were late. I had stopped and got DQ an Icy from 7-11. My mistake.

Needless to say it was my mistake, too when I bent down carelessly to put her Icy in the cubby DQ had chosen. On my descent down I felt an excursiating pain on my head. I quietly muttered a damn it. And then I heard the teenage girl who assists the teacher remark, "That looked like it hurt." At this point I removed my hand from my head and realized that I was bleeding. Suddenly blood was coursing down my face. It was getting in my eyes, down my nose. I couldn't believe it. I've hit my head before but I've never had a cut on my head. I knew that head wounds bleed a lot. I knew I needed to get paper towels to stop the flow but the bathroom was locked. I went to the owner and asked if she had some paper towels. To say that she blanched when she looked at me would be an understatement. Her eyes widened to the point where I thought they were going to pop out of her head. Oh have I mentioned that I was crying? I couldn't believe it. I'm not one to cry when I get hurt but I was crying. I felt so ashamed of myself because I was crying which then only made me cry more. Go figure.

Anyway, Summer, one of the teachers, comes in and looks at my head. She told me I needed to go to the ER for some stitches. I told her that head wounds bleed profusely and I doubt that I need any medical attention. Summer really looked perplexed. She told me that it was a very large gash on my head. Summer got the phone and wanted to call PF. Faced with that phone I realized I couldn't remember his work number or his cell number. It took me a couple of attempts to get it right. Summer informs PF that I was okay and that I didn't lose consciousness. I'm standing there thinking OH MY GOD that is not the way to start this conversation. I get the phone and told PF that I'm taking myself to the urgent care facility about a mile and one half up the road. He said he would meet me there.

Now I realize that I will need to call work. I call and tell my co-worker that I was in need of medical attention. Okay. Got that covered. Now I must get into my mother's car and drive myself to the urgent care place.

When I get there I find out that I have never gone to the urgent care place for myself. I've taken my children and my husband but never myself. So I have to fill out their paper work. Now I'm crying and bleeding everywhere and I have to fill out this stupid form. I'm thinking I need to try not to touch too many things so they don't have to clean up too much stuff. You know bloodborne pathogens and all. I try to fill this form out. I didn't do a good job. In fact I couldn't answer many of the questions. I mean do you have your significant others SSN memorized? I don't. I got called to the window again. They asked about PF's SSN and birthdate. I told her that I didn't know the SSN and couldn't find my cheat sheet in my purse. I told her that PF's birthday was 9/30/68 which is my birthdate. She said cool how we share a birthday. I look at her completely confused. I told her that PF and I don't share a birthdate. That's when she looks at me. And she says, "Oh my your nose is bleeding! Do you need some assistance?" DUH! I told her that I didn't have a bloody nose but that my blood was coursing over my face from a head wound.

Finally I get called in for my vitals. The nurse asked me to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Ten being the most painful. I thought for a second to be a hero but changed my mind. I told her that it was most definitely a 10+. I was taken immediately back. I sat in a room where they used it as a store room and an examining room for minor surgeries. I guess I was going to have minor surgery. They asked me all kinds of health questions. It's only now that I realized I forgot to tell them that I am an asmatic. While I'm waiting PF finally makes his way in to the room. I heard who ever was guiding him. She was a little confused about where they had put me. Hmmmmmmm. Comforting huh?

Well the doctor came in shortly afterwards and starts giving me a thorough examination. He gets to the part where they look up your nasal passages. Guess where the numskull put his hand?!-- on top of my head! I started crying and whimpering again. He's all like, "What did I do?" I point to the top of my head. And he's like "OHHHHH! That's why your here. That's a nasty gash. How you do that?" So he gets to work on me. I have 7 staples in my head.

For the last 3 days I've been a little loopy. I've done some irrational things that scared me. I've gotten things mixed up. So I'm guessing that I was a bit concussed on top of the gash on my head. The first day I was nauseous. I haven't had much of an appetite. But I think I'm on the mend. I can say things now and make sense. This morning I washed my hair for the first time in about a week. I went into this needing a shampoo. I didn't do the best of jobs on it for there is still the ointment that they put on the gash there but I look decent once again.

Oh wait! I've forgotten to explain the title. My boss called me up yesterday telling me I needed to come up with a good story. So this morning I realized what it was going to be. ST had an unicorn theme birthday party. My story: I tried grafting a horn onto my head and it didn't take. But I'll have a scar to show for my trouble. PF said that I took on my role a rhinoceros too seriously.