rough week

Not to speak ill of the dead, but Grandma picked about the worst possible time to die.

I got yanked away with several projects in the air.
One book that we're supposed to be getting to GPO.
Another that I needed to make changes to and return to the editor so she could get it to the author by the end of the month.
A new staff member coming in that I'm supposed to be directing, but I was going to miss the first day or two of work. Luckily, that one got fixed by the completely screwed up government bureaucracy.
And, oh, shit! That person's computer started doing systems updates the other day. So it's not quite ready yet.

In my personal life I'm trying to buy two houses and the bank is fucking around with the loan. So much of my time away was spent on the phone talking to either them or the bank that I brought on to race the first one. Winner gets the business. But both need a ton of information that was very hard to get at from Kansas.

Yummy is moving. I was supposed to help finish packing, get the other bookshelf and more of my stuff out, and help clean, paint, and move. Nope. Yummy had to do it on her own and had more than a few meltdowns over it. Today I'm going there early so we can get her out by the end of the day.
What made it worse is that she had to take care of Gandolf. She loves Gandolf, but I'm supposed to be taking HER birds to MY place since her parents won't allow them at her place. So after the movers left she was stuck in her apartment with no furniture but an air mattress and a non-functional pump because she couldn't take the birds anywhere.
While the movers were there Gandolf got locked in the bathroom so she wouldn't freak out or be in the way. She decided that was the time to eat the door frame she'd been eyeing for a couple of years.

My house needs a serious cleaning before Yummy comes back over. I was supposed to be doing that, too.

Since I had to rush off my car was left where the city would be sure to tow it on street cleaning day. So the first thing I had to do when I got back was find the damn thing. The city website that is supposed to tell you where your car is doesn't work even a little bit. But they do have someone who can look it up for you even at midnight. I didn't get her name, but I want to thank the DC midnight traffic enforcement phone answering person again.


Now lets roll back a week and change. On the Monday before last Grandma had another heart attack. She's had several. Most I didn't know about until much later. Grandma had been moved from the nursing home back to assisted living. After going to the hospital she told Mom "I don't want to go back to the nursing home." Mom told her "I don't think we're going to have a choice." Grandma took that as a challenge. Nobody tells her she doesn't have a choice! She'd die before she'd accept that! So her kidneys shut down.

I got the call Thursday at about 1:30. I had plane reservations before I got off the phone and was stepping onto a plane about two and a half hours after I got the call. My brother picked me up at the airport at 8:00. We went to the hospital where Grandma had just been moved. She was awake, which stunned my brother. She'd been out all day and he hadn't expected her to wake up. But she knew us both and we were able to say some proper goodbyes.

The funeral was Tuesday morning. She'd been cremated, so there was no viewing. The crowd was 10 times what we expected. Her son had passed away back in 1990 and we didn't know how to reach his kids even if they were on good terms with Grandma. That left Mom, Dad, my brother and I, and one cousin of Mom's for family. We were there, plus the people from the company Grandma did her investing through, the guy who sold her cars, the Red Hat Society ladies, people from the farms near Grandma's old dairy, people from Cheney where she lived for a long time, people from Clearwater where we lived and Grandma stayed in assisted living and nursing homes and built the town golf course, people from both churches Mom currently works at (and Grandma attended), people from the churches Mom worked at before (and Grandma attended), the people Grandma played cards with, people from Dad's side of the family who ended up adopting Grandma as part of their family since her side was so small.

The service ended with the song "A Bicycle Built For Two". Grandma's name was Daisy. We wouldn't have picked "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..." as an appropriate song, but it's what she wanted. The mortician found an instrumental version to play so it wouldn't be as obvious.

The burial was just the 5 of us in the immediate family. Her first husband died in 1970. The stone was big enough for two, but Grandma refused to have her name put on it until she was properly dead. A hole was drilled in the ground by her side of the stone and some boards left to keep people from falling in. Her ashes went in the hole. A prayer was said. Lunch was had.


Now I'm back. Today is likely to be crazy busy. Don't expect a lot from Friday Links.