YAY! Good luck, o_a!

{{{Drew}}} I'm glad you're there and able to see your dad. ~ma to you and yours.

{{{Connie}}} I'm sorry for your loss. Peace~ma to you and your family.

My house smells of baking pumpkin muffins. Nice.

Drew and Connie, I hope you were able to sleep well. All kinds of peace and coping thoughts sent your way.

Yay for stuff getting moved in!

Drew, I'm glad you got to see your dad.

Connie, I know what it's like to not know how to feel when a parent dies. By the time my dad died, he had put us through so much that I was long past loving him, and then he was in a terrible state of pain and helplessness for the last years of his life. I could only feel relief, but I felt guilty about it. My mother was able to cry, but she recognized that she was finally crying about the loss of the man she loved, who had left us long ago. I hope going home for the funeral helps you come to terms with your past.

Drew, how you doing over there?

All my shit is off the truck, mover dudes left with cold bottles of water and ice cream sandwhichs.

Fuck, now I gotta UNpack! This moving thing never ends! I guess it was a good thing the sofa & recliner can't be delivered for 2 weeks. Gives me time to clear out all the boxes. Guess I know what I will be doing every night this week.

::borrows Sparky's megaphone::

YAAAAYYYYY D!!!!! Awesome triathalon woman!!!! [link]

{that was iris, who cheered her on. ok gotta go feed the runners now}

jumps up and down waving and shouting Go d!!!

most impressive

go d!

I've been reading your blog all along, pulling for you with each struggle

Drew, I'm so glad you made it home to see your Dad, and I hope that you got a good night's sleep. Your family is still in my thoughts.

Connie, what a shock! Even if you hadn't spoken to your mother in years, hearing the news without expecting it was going to be a huge shock. However you decide to honor your mother -- going to PA, or staying home and honoring her in your own way -- I know you'll be able to handle it.

ION, I finally snapped and replied to a political e-mail from my uber-Republican uncle (who knows I'm a Democrat). It was one of those forwarded dealies with alleged quotes taken out of context from Obama's 2 books, all of which were cherry-picked (or made up) to prove that he's (at best) a racist, or (at worst) a Muslim. The e-mail was led into with something like "read these quotes and THEN see if you're still comfortable with this man as our next president!"

I replied (to everyone on the list; sorry, but if you spam people with untrue political shit, I want everyone on that list to know that it's not true) that I don't appreciate receiving forwarded e-mails containing un-researched and untrue information that was taken out of context to prove an agenda.

And then I did it. I included a link (I didn't paste the actual quote into the body of the e-mail) to the account of McCain calling his wife a cunt, and said "I prefer to have a president in office who respects his wife."

And after that I just said "please don't include me on your political e-mail list any longer. There is a long way to go before the election, and I don't want something as simple as an un-researched, out-of-context forwarded e-mail to cause anger and bad feelings among family members who love each other.

"We can always argue about the really important things in life -- like who makes better tiramisu: Aunt P or [local restaurant]! (Actually, I think you and I agree on that one -- Aunt P -- so we need a different dessert to argue about.)

"I ALWAYS want to hear about what's going on in your life, and other family news, family photos, silly stories, etc. But it's going to be much better in the long run if we make a "gentlemen's" (gentle-relative's, perhaps?) agreement to not discuss politics.

"I've had to make this same request of some of my friends, and it's kept us from becoming EX-friends. So please don't feel I'm flying off the handle with you -- I just want to keep the peace."

And if he keeps sending me political e-mails, then I reserve the right to lose my shit entirely. Gah. Relatives.

I could start Rickrolling him, I suppose.

You rock, d!