but you are losing your cred.

I know! I know!

I just e-mailed the Honors Program coordinator, 'cause I stopped by her office this morning and chatted with her and the director about how low of a grade I could get and still get credit for the course. I had told her I hoped for a 40% on the final, but I knew that might be pushing it.

Well, I got a 24, so yeah, 40 was really pushing it. But, I also told her that I don't think I have ever in my life gotten that low of a grade. I'm doing pretty well about not beating myself up, which could I guess be seen as a bad thing, but with me, I think that's good.

It is good. You obviously worked hard if you got 100% on all the homework and impressed the prof with your dedication. A hard-won C- (even if it's not exactly earned the way the syllabus laid it out) is something to be proud of. More so than an easy A.

I have a strange outlook on grades. I have been really angry at getting a D for a class I should have failed.

So my grandmother had a fall a little while ago, and hurt her ankle badly. She's pretty much restricted in her movements anyway, these days - basically she can shuffle from her bed to her armchair ( a few feet away) with the help of a zimmer frame, and she can just about manage to lever herself out of the armchair in order to shuffle over to the commode, which is a few feet from the armchair. She has carers visiting several times a day to help her dress and bring her food and all that jazz, and my mum visits every day. She has one of those 'Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!' buttons on a cord around her neck, which is a godsend.

After having had one fall, and hurt her ankle, she managed to fall again, poor lady, and has now hurt both her ankles. So she's presently in a wheelchair and in Respite Care at a very nice wee residential home a 5 minute drive away.

She's been getting frailer and frailer of late. She's going to be 90 on August 28th. She's been pretty much of the opinion that she'll be dying any minute for the past forty years, though, and has been living accordingly.

If she weren't my grandmother I'd probably feel more affection for her than I actually do - viewed objectively, she's a smashing old lady, and quite a character, and all that. But she had no interest in spending any time with me or with my wee sister when we were children, and she still hasn't any interest in either of us, other than as an audience, or occasionally as a source of one-upmanship. I don't have any affectionate memories of her doing, well, anything grandmotherly at any point, even though she only lives a few streets away. My parents had a string of babysitters when I was wee, because she had no interest in babysitting for her only grandchild (despite being a widow with no social life or hobbies). So we have more the facade of a relationship than any actual relationship. Which is a pity. I'd like to know her as a person, or as a grandmother, but she's never really been either. However, she is my grandmother, so what can you do? I don't hate her, although she can be a very mean-spirited and unkind old woman, she also likes to laugh, and can laugh at herself, so that's all good. I don't wish bad things on her, and I'm sorry that she's so fragile, and that she's hurt herself.

But I'm rambling. (...an inherited quality, heaven help us all...) My reason for posting was this:

Today we went to visit her, and my mother and I were both rather shocked at how much more slurred her speech was. She seemed to have gone rather rapidly downhill from the previous day, even. (The previous day she was telling us that the doctor thought she might have had a stroke, because her speech was more slurred, and we were of the opinion that it was much the same as usual - more slurred than it used to be back in the day, sure, but it's been a gradual decay, rather than an overnight thing, and it's still reasonably clear.)

"Duhah [something something] all righ'?" she said to me, and I, mishearing, reassured her that she looked very nice. She frowned. "Ah SEHD, duhah sowend all righ'? Ah don', duhah?" she said. (I cannot begin to reproduce the slurriness in print, but this'll have to do.)

"Oh," I said, understanding and glancing over at my Mum. "Well, no, you don't sound as good as you did last time. Um."

My grandmother dabbed her mouth, which was a bit dribbly. My mother and I exchanged pained looks. She really did seem to have gone downhill very fast - and my mum and dad are off for a week's holiday in the Baltics next week. I could see my mother thinking that she'd come home to a funeral at this rate.

My mother looked back at her mother and frowned.

"Mum, what's wrong with your teeth?"

"Wha?"

"Have you got your teeth in?"

"Yesh!"

"Well they're not - they're - Mum, you've got your teeth in upside down."

My grandmother quickly spat out her lower set of false teeth, turned them rightsideup and slotted them back in.

"Can you hear me better now?" (continued...)

( continues...) she said, with what passes for extreme clarity in the world of my Grandmother.

My mother and I dissolved into laughter, and the conversation then continued much as it ever does.

Yay, vw! You're still the vw that could. How are you going to reward yourself for completing this class? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but you put a heck of an effort into it and you deserve a treat.

Fay, you should introduce your grandmother to Verizon wireless. She and the "can you hear me now?" dude are a match made in heaven.

How are you going to reward yourself for completing this class?

Hee! Mom asked me basically the same thing.

I'm gonna take a nap. 'Cause I've slept like crap the last couple of nights, due to my asthma. So, I just took some heavy duty cough medicine, and after I eat a late lunch, I'm gonna crash for a while.

I'm not very exciting, am I?

congrats, vw! hooray for passing and for being okay with not doing as well as you might have wished!

Fay, that is hilarious. No matter how conflicted or disappointed you might feel about the nature of your relationship her that is really a priceless moment. (and I know everybody is different and all but I really don't understand grandparents who don't absolutely dote on their grandchildren. My one grandfather may have called me the anti-Christ once but he loved the hell out of me.)

Oh lord, Fay. That's hysterical.

Ok. Apparently only pregnant women get sundresses with built-in bras. Hello, people! Some of us are well-endowed and would like a built-in bra in their sundress. Stupid fashion people.