road trip

 I’m going on a road trip in the morning — to Amherst Virginia. I’m quite excited about it, although it’s for a sad reason, as all my trips in that direction seem to be these days. Well, except for the trip to Roanoke a year ago in September to Cousin E’s son’s wedding. That was fun. But the last trip to Amherst was for the cousins’ mom’s funeral. The trip before that in October of last year was the last trip to Delaware for my dad to visit her. This trip is another funeral. Or, more accurately, a memorial service, for Cousin E’s aunt. Mildred was their dad’s only sibling (their mom was my dad’s sister). Mildred lived in an assisted living place near the Delaware Cousins, although she had her own little cottage instead of living in the main building which is more like a nursing home situation. Their mom was in another assisted living place not too far away. I don’t think they even considered living together – Mildred was VERY independent and did not want to share a place. Her health had not been good for a long time, and she had to use oxygen pretty much constantly. Cousin E’s sister, Cousin J, has always said that one day they would just find her dead, and that is exactly what happened. The assisted living people found her- not Cousin J or Cousin MJ, thankfully. That was exactly the way she wanted to go- in her own place, not having to move into the nursing home building. Good for her, but a shock for everyone else. 

Mildred never married and was the fun cool aunt when we were kids. I actually didn’t meet her in person until I was in my 20s – she lived in Charleston for years and J and I went down and stayed with her a few days way back then – but they all adored her and talked about her all the time when we were growing up. So I felt like I knew her. And in recent years when I’ve been making all these trips to Delaware with Daddy to see his sister, we’ve seen a lot of Mildred too. I really liked her, and I’ll miss her. The memorial service is going to be very small — just us, I think, and a couple of Amherst Relatives (that’s where Cousin E’s dad and Mildred grew up, although their parents died when they were very small and they got sent to live with different families, so I’m not sure how much time Mildred actually lived there). 

So it’s a sad event, but I am happy about getting to see the cousins. And really looking forward to the road trip – I’m going by myself and it’s like this big fun adventure because I never seem to go ANYWHERE by myself anymore. Except Asheville, and that’s not terribly exciting. Baker B isn’t going, as he didn’t really know Mildred- he met her maybe once- and he hates to travel and he’s been spending so much time going down to his mom’s and working like a dock hand that he does need a weekend off. It’s about a four and a half hour drive, much of it quite scenic. 

Mildred and The Unbearably Adorable Tyson – Cousin J’s dog. Somewhere I have SUCH a good picture of Mildred, but I can’t find it. I’m starting to think it was from the days of.. GASP… film. But this is pretty good too. And pretty recent.

In other news, we had a very nice and very uneventful Thanksgiving, free of drama and quite enjoyable. Saw all the kids and the kids’ kids. Oddly I didn’t take many pictures and the ones I did take were not all that fantastic. However, a week and a half prior to Thanksgiving we went to Asheville for the Twin’s third birthday party. The Twins may be the cutest things EVER. 

Way Too Cute Twins and Ex-Goth Chick:

And some random kid.

Ex-Goth Chick was stressed out and red-eyed because the Twins Loser Father brought his Skanky Girlfriend to the party. Ex-Goth-Chick kicked him out about this time last year because he was sleeping with Skanky Girlfriend while still living with Ex-Goth Chick. But Ex-Goth Chick kept her cool and was gracious and lovely despite having red eyes and everyone at the party looked at Ex-Goth Chick and looked at Skanky Overly-Tattooed-Ill-Fitting-Jeans-Not-At-All-Attractive-Girlfriend and thought.. what in the FUCK is WRONG with him?!?  

Fortunately the Twins are totally teeny little clones of Ex-Goth Chick, who look and act EXACTLY like her when she was that age. They are smart and talkative and don’t look or act the slightest thing like their idiot drug-addled dad. 

The Nieces and Baby Lilly.

The Nephew and Baby Lilly. They all love babies, which is a good thing since there are now more great-nieces and nephews than nieces and nephews. And the nephew so far hasn’t contributed to the Baby Extravaganza. Hopefully he is not in such a big hurry, but he’s always a hit with them.

I

In other quite exciting news, we…. bought a new television!!! This is way beyond thrilling, since our old TV was at least 12 years old – maybe more, we really can’t remember- and is of course not at all streaming-capable. So if we watched anything online we had to watch it on my laptop. Which is fine for one person, but not so great for two. As a result, there are more and more things we are missing out on for lack of a current-decade TV. We pretty much watch everything via Netflix discs, but discs are on their way out and we are getting more and more damaged discs, and, hellllooo!! TIME FOR A NEW TV!!! (I have been shrieking this at Baker B for AGES.)

SO. Right before Thanksgiving we start seeing all sorts of sales on TVs. And I start sending Baker B links to sales on TVs. And they are really really REALLY good sales. And he finally FINALLY agrees that, okay, maybe it IS time and maybe we would be idiots to pass these sales up, and…. LET’S ORDER A TV!!!! Specifically, the Samsung HD 1080 LED 32 inch one (okay, on the teeny side but our house is teeny and we practically sit with our noses against the TV so it’s a perfect size for us and they are the ones that are cheap since everyone else wants the 78,970 inch ones) that is on sale via both Amazon and Best Buy for $329 which is $200 off the usual price and sounds pretty darned good to us. We ended up ordering it from Amazon because we have Prime so get free two day shipping and that way did not have to deal with the insane Thanksgiving crowds at Best Buy. It seemed weird and kind of scary to order something that major from Amazon, but OMG, it was great! We got it fast, and it is WONDERFUL. We are in looooove!! The picture is amazing, it was very easy to set up, even the remote is intuitive and not full of crazy nonsensical buttons that you can never figure out. We can plug our computers up to it and do whatever we want. (of course a Smart TV would do this without having to plug in the computer, but at twice the cost it’s not a big deal plugging in the computer). And very oddly we are getting more channels than we did before. We have basic BASIC cable – just the networks and a few weird shopping and religious channels – but not only do we now get the high definition versions of our network channels, we are getting CNN and the Weather Channel and quite a few other things I haven’t figured out, plus a bunch of channels (like ESPN, to Baker B’s delight) which aren’t clear but are clear enough to watch. Especially for people who grew up watching pre-cable TV via antennas resulting in channels full of snow and interference. It looks pretty normal really. I watched M*A*S*H for years without really knowing what anyone actually looked like due to terrible reception. 

We are very pleased. I keep thinking of all this stuff we can watch now– like the Doctor Who Christmas Special from last year that never has been available via Netflix DVDs!! We can stream it from Amazon!!! And we can watch QI!!! We’d been watching it via YouTube on my laptop but that is a huge pain. We can stream Downton Abbey from PBS when the third season starts in January, and we won’t have to either watch it when it airs (or figure out how to record it) or wait for the DVD!!! It’s a whole new world!

Old TV:

Decorated inexplicably with boxes that have nothing to do with the TV. And including a view of Cayce coming around the corner. I see I actually did not get the back of the TV in the picture — it’s even bigger than it looks here. It was a nice TV when we bought it — it’s a flat screen and we got it on sale as the new entirely flat HD TVs were coming out. That cost like a thousand dollars minimum. This one also weighs a TON. Seriously, it has to weigh 150 pounds. It was all we could do to get it off the table and into the floor and I don’t know how we will get it downstairs, to Baker B’s study where it is eventually going. Right now it’s still sitting right here in the livingroom floor. You can also just barely see the new TV over the top right side of the old one. So teeny that it’s blending into the wall. 

New TV! 

I especially love the spotlight shining there. You can just imagine the heavenly choir singing "LLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Okay, really need to get off the computer now. Thanks for all the nice foodie compliments on the last entry — I will post the recipes next time!