The Family

This is the place we call Sunset.  My in laws bought it for weekends and we go when we can. Usually there are 8 of us on any given weekend. It's quiet and beautiful. We are free to wake early, sleep in, take naps, hike, swim or play. The only rule at Sunset is that Happy Hour starts at 5:00. The family is serious about this (I so married into the right family!). The children adhere to this ritual as well - the seasons dictate their drinks: cool drinks for warm months and hot chocolate for the cooler ones.  I love that my in laws do this, and that they have given us all such a beautiful place.  This past summer my FIL and Shug put up permanent polls to hang a volleyball/badminton net from.  That was when we discovered that Badminton is the perfect drinkers sport.  One can play badminton with a wine glass in hand or any drink for that matter and it wont spill.  I love that!!! 
Pictured from left to right are:  Shug, HO (my boy), GG (MIL), SIL (who is pregnant!), EB (my girl), and Papa (FIL). Not pictured are me (picture taker) and BIL

Original Dad Outtake

My parents divorced when I was very young and they both remaried before I was three. For the longest time I thought everyone had two families.  As I grew up they all began to see the value in each other and so it was that they grew to become friends and care very much for each other.  This whole set up seems very normal to my children who have spent more than a few holidays with both sets together plus a set of great grandparents thrown in. Recently I realized that my 7 yr old thought that my step dad and step mom had been married to each other before, just as my mom and dad had been married to each other before - then they all switched partners, got divorced, and married the other one - which is swinging not what happened.  And he calls my first dad "original dad" when referring to him in stories. I love that. I always hated saying my "real dad and step dad". A few weekends ago Sister and I took  the children & my dad (the widower) to see my original dad and mama Susie (that's what we call her).  The picture showcases my dads and the video is my original dad. And yes that is a Mohawk he sports. Enjoy! I have NO IDEA why the hell he is doing this.

The Ash Project makes it to Fairview Peak

The whole family went to Colorado for summer vacation.  I finally climbed to the top of Fairview Peak.  I have been trying to get to the top for several years. I have stopped before making it because I am was lazy, out of shape and it was just to damn hard.  It is after all 13,214 ft.  This year (after much training and prep) I made it.  Once at the top I spread some of mom's ashes - Which leads me to The Ash Project.  My mom's ashes sat on my bookcase for awhile before Sister and I could figure out what to do with them.  Mom (Navae - her name) had always wanted to travel but never actually went many places.  She talked about it, planned it, but never made it.  Maybe the fact that she got sick and died way earlier than she thought she would had something to do with it.  Anyway, Sister and I decided that her ashes should travel and The Ash Project was born.  We have spread them in so many places we love.  We also give them to people who are traveling to neat places and they spread them.  So far her ashes have traveled to some really amazing places on this planet.  From the Taj Mahal to Cuba to Pitkin CO.  And lots of other places.  This is a project that has made my sister and I laugh our heads off (because sometimes it's just funny to say "Mom's on a flight to _____ and I can't believe she's riding in the suitcase") and sometimes it makes us cry because she would love what we are doing so much.  We are really trying to get the blog about it off the ground.  Seems a little harder to create and link the way I want than I thought it would be. And because, as mentioned more than once on this blog, I am lazy.  If your reading this blog (all 3 of you) then you now have a link to the unfinished TAP  blog and you know about the project... so if your traveling anywhere cool or know of a great place to spread some ashes and aren't creeped out by the idea let me know.  Or if your really handy with blog making and want to help get The Ash Project blog to look really kick ass let me know.

Another Day Another Death I'm still not a Mortician

M - You might not should read this post, you just had a baby which is so happy and wonderful, and your hormones might still be wacky, and this post could be a bit of a downer to you.  So skip to another one!

I hesitate to even write about this death because my followers (the 2 of you) might be getting bored with the death and dying posts.  In 20 months I have lost my mother, my paternal grandmother and now my maternal gradmother.  I realize that everyone experiences death and I still sometimes can't fucking believe the shittyness of this lot.  Is shittyness even a word? Anyway, Sister and I took the children to see Mema for Christmas and a week later she had a stroke, never really recovered, and then Sister and I took her to Hospice and she died the day before mom's birthday. One of the craziest parts is that I feel like Sister and I should change our last name to Reaper because we have to keep sending people to hospice.


 We come from a matriarchal family and have now lost our three strongest women.  Our leaders, the ones who made the decisions, the ones that taught us how to be strong, bossy women, women that don't take anything less than what we deseve from a man.  Somedays the loss feels huge and other days it feels like there is a ton of pressure gone because these women who we have always felt the need to answer to are no longer checking on us.  You know how sometimes you look at a porn star and wonder... what if her mom or grandmother found out? Well, I could so totally be a porn star now because those women are gone from my life.  Not that I would, I'm just saying I could if I wanted.
 
Now Sister and I become those leaders.  We will teach my daughter how to lead, how men should treat her and how she should treat them.  We will show her how to be a fiercly loyal friend, a caretaker of her planet, a woman who knows how to give love and be loved.  And lots more.  We will be able to do this because we had such good teachers.  And she will also, by default, know how to throw an amazing funeral. Because she had watched us plan so many. And I'm not kidding when I say that we know all the ins and outs of funerals and ours rock.
 
PS I am still not smoking! All the stress of the holidays and the dying and still I refuse to take the habit back up!  I may or may not have made my own version of the candy necklace with Xanex, but I haven't smoked!!!

Drug Pusher Posing as Father in Law

This post was originally written in January but just now getting posted. 

I quit smoking.  I picked what might be the shitiest time of year to quit, wait maybe the aniversary of my mom's death might be a worse time but that would be it.  So hear I am on a another fab family vacation with all the in laws and I am now a non smoker. Let me sum up this vacation.  My MIL gets drunk off 2 glasses of wine 3X a day (remember the gastric bypass), BIL still doesn't talk and I'm still not believing that "he's so shy" bullshit, SIL is pretty cool this trip and promises not to post ugly picts of me on FB, and for the grand finalle...my FIL continues to try to force offer me lit cigaretts whenever no one is around while saying shit like "come on, no one will know", and "I won't tell anyone I swear". What the hell? He's like the worst drug pusher ever because he's wearing a grandfather costume.