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Sunday, May 29, 2005
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Random photoBlog, May 2005
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It has been a while since we updated here. Everyone has been very busy with work, school, new arrivals in the hosehold and much other stuff. So I thiught I would post a small photoblog of some random happenings from this remote hamlet of Dracut, MA. At one point J.Jean was spotted with J.Dean! We attended a concert of the Nashoba Youth Orchestra last Monday night. Despite repeated inquiries I could not get anyone to tell me why they had 3 undertakers there. Anyhow, the concert was great, executed with great skill and precision. Such a musical feat only happens through effort, intense concentration, and great hair. I managed to catch a quick shot of this cute chick with her "Freedom Horn", taking a rest between rehearsals. Mrs. A has been extremely busy, not only with the day to day tasks of keeping a large household running smoothly, but with other challanges like fixing furniture and getting beaten by Ray-Ray at chess. And it came to pass that a great end-of-classes palooza sprung up at our house. The supplies where gathered. Cassie helped Drew primp for the event. All agreed that he looked dashing! Once the crowd arrived, SJ was honored with the first scoop, while everyone else looked on, waiting in anticipation. Drew made his sundae with an artistic swirl of chocholate sauce. Everybody enjoyed the snacks, in spite of finding the occasional hair in thier sundae. Ray could not have the ice cream, so he enjoyed a pop instead, while Ted was deeply contemplating his ice cream. The scene eventually degenerated into a rukus, with everyone daring Sven to eat some of the chocholate sauce, launching into a sort of Fear Factor thing. Sven rose to the challenge, cheered on by Teds. Word on the street has it that there even videos of the event. If they surface, we will make them available. Watch this space for more details! All in all, it was a Palooza! in the truest sense of the word, running late into the night. All of the excitement around here caused Boo-Bah to fall ill, but he is recovering with treatment by Teddy. Oh yes, the new arrival!! We are all most excited to announce the arrival for Baby Sheldon! He is still a bit shy. Comming originally from Chicago, he lived many years in New Jersey and spent many years in seclusion in New Ipswitch, NH. We all hope you will welcome him as just another member of the family! |
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| thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 11:18 AM | |
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Friday, May 13, 2005
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Hey! Star Wars fans, check this out. http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html |
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| thus voiced Mrs A @ 8:02 PM | |
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
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Mother's day...Part II
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Lest anyone get the impression that Mother's day was no fun around here, allow me to submit the following photos. These are just a few of those captured by my ever-present and trusty (but aging, by digi-cam standards*) Oly C-2500L. After getting home from visiting my mom, we returned home in expectation of a visit from another Mother/Grandmother of note, that most of this audience would know as "Marg". Cassie and I prepared a HUGE batch of chicken-broccoli-dijon pasta, one of our signature dishes. After enjoying dinner with Marg and Spmarg, we simply spent several hours in stimulating conversation unitl they had to leave. That left our family a few hours to wind down after a generally very nice day. Early in the evening, Raymond and Ted began hovering around which is generally an indication that they are getting hungry. It was just a bit chilly outside so we has started a small fire in the woodstove, so Ray decided that he would REALLY love to cook hotdogs on sticks over the fire for dinner. Approval was granted so I went outside and grabbed a few hot dog sticks, prepped the dogs, and Ted and Ray proceeded to cook. A minute or two into the operation, Ted declared that "My face is getting hot!" and passed the stick off to me to finish off. Ray deemed his done, put on bread with all of the requisite condiments, took a bite and declared it the best hotdog in the world, ever. Curiously Mrs. A felt exactly the same way, when she tried hers. As did Ted. Anyhow, the smell of food cooking soon attracted some of the big ones. Not wanting to be left out, 'Drew and Chaz decided to do some cooking on the fire. Chaz started on a hotdog of his own. As Drew has never been a fan of hotdogs, he opted for the slab-o-pepperoni-on-a-skewer instead. Things where going along great, until Drew decided to check the progress of his pepperoni. Upon withdrawing it from the fiery furnace he shook it a bit, splattering a bit of scalding pepperoni oil onto his hand. This caused him to jump, thus flicking the skewer holding the red hot sausage. The quivering mass you see here, shrinking into the fetal position on the floor is Chaz, who got sprayed in the face by a much larger quantity of said flaming hot fat. Luckly, he slowly recovered. For some reason known only to him, Drew ran into the bathroom, and proceeded to rinse off the pepperoni in the bathroom sink, chased by his mother, yelling at him to not get grease all over the bathroom that she had cleaned just that morning. She chased him out of the room, smacking him on the back of the head as he ran off. All was well in the end. Chaz made a full recovery, soon being well enough to engage Cassie in a few rounds of that "try-to-smack-the-top-of-my-hand-before-I-can-move-them" game that none of us could remember the name of. Drew ate his pepperoni. And peace reigned in the land. If enduring this asylum-like enviroment 365 days a year is not a monument to the endurance of a mother, I don't know what is. Take a bow, (my) Mrs. A., you've earned it. * Cheap, sly (and likely ineffective) plug with BOTH my birthday AND Fathers day just around the corner. Heh... |
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| thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 7:26 PM | |
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Monday, May 09, 2005
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Mother's day...
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As expected, Mother's day tends to prompt all sorts of thoughts about ones mom. We of course went over to visit what little remains of my Mother at the nursing home where she now lives. As any one who knows us or regularly reads the nonsense that we post here knows, my Mother is a victim of Alzheimer's disease, a most cruel condition that causes your body to long outlive your mind. It is an indescribably difficult thing to watch happen. My mother is able to do some simple things for herself, but most of the person I knew as my Mother is gone. She can communicate only with difficulty now, and most of what she says is a sort of gibberish, and is seldom connected in any way with reality. She has little or no ability to recall the order in which things occur and seems pretty much unaware of the passage of time, though at this point I consider that something of a merciful blessing. But now even the old memories are vanishing. It is curious to me that of the little bits of my mother that remain, among them is a bit of her sense of humor. It was always a bit wacky, and she would always laugh in that hearty way that makes you laugh too, even if you missed the joke. And while it is impossible to sum up anything substantial about a person with a short anecdote, for some reason I thought today of a time before Sue and I were married that we came into my parents house after school. Though she had left for work, my mother had left a huge (probably 2' long) stuffed green frog on the kitchen table. Pinned to the frog was a little torn off piece of notepaper that read: "Sue, please take me home. Nobody here loves me. Love, Baby Frog." A proverbial child of immigrants, she was not well educated. She spent the first 3 years of school completely confused, as she spoke no english. No ESL or bilingual ed in those days, and speaking anything but Greek in the home was forbidden. She later left school somewhere around the middle of the 8th or 9th grade in order to work so that her brother could attend college. (He was the first and only of her family to do so, and despite being poor and un-connected he managed to earn a full scholarship and graduate with high honors from Harvard. He was killed over France when the heavy bomber, on which he was filling in for someone else as navigator, was shot down.) But in spite of her lack of education, or perhaps because of it, she never came across as ignorant or foolish. She had that sort of street smarts that I suppose you develop when you have nothing else and have no choice but to inhabit reality. It was the sort of thing I never fully noticed nor appreciated until a day or two after my father died, when a relative came by our house to express their condolences and asked my Mother how she was holding up. "I'm OK," she calmly said, "Lots of people have far worse." I snapped a few pictures while we were visiting yesterday. I rather like this one, because in spite of the fact that none of us really knew what it was my mother found so funny, she had everyone laughing anyhow. This snapshot is a bit harder for me to take, because I dislike the detached look on her face as it seems to highlight the fact that a person who escaped poverty, survived losing family members to war, disease and old age, survived a year and a half in a TB sanitorium, Legionnaires disease, a near fatal bout with blood sepsis and so much more, and still managed to be so full of life, is visited by such a rotten end. Worst of all, I dislike the knowledge that although she is surrounded here by her grandchildren, the people that she loved so unconditionally that it nearly defies description, they are mostly just strangers to her now. |
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| thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 7:00 PM | |
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