Hey there, not much to write today.

I’ve got the day off, so I agreed to take Grandma down to Sioux Falls where the docs can see if they need to give Grandpa a pacemaker for the weird dizzy spells/nausea/BP drops he’s been suddenly having again for the first time in a year. I don’t mind at all, but the drive will probably bother me a little bit since I broke two ribs and cracked another one about a week ago — I’ll have to tell you about how that happened some time.

Anyway, need to get to town, talk to grandma, and see how your uncle’s hip replacement is going. Dad’s fine and said to say hi.

Love, Mom

I think… I think I don’t go home very often because if I did I’d probably strangle somebody.

Yeah...like the time I called home and mom said dad had drilled a hole in his thumb on purpose, to pop a blood blister. "He said he sterilized the drill bit first," she said.

Exactly. No one actually tells me any of this, just drops me a 'quick note' and takes off -- I can't find anyone to find out what's going on.

When my paternal grandfather was diagnosed with bladder cancer back in the mid-90's, my family held it back from me until after I graduated from college, because they didn't want it to be on my mind.

When I found out in 1998, it was in a roundabout way through an uncle, rather than directly from my parents. Fortunately, I found out in time to work in as many trips home as I could (I was in NYC at the time and Grandfather was in Ottawa, ON, Canada) before he passed away in 1999.

And wouldn't you know it, after he passed away, I found out about all the cool stuff he had done (like running guns to the Chinese forces during WWII) that I probably would have loved to hear about from his mouth... had I also known how to speak his dialect.

Hmmm... there's something kinda sad about that and I feel like an essay is brewing inside me, but I need to find the time and place to write about it. I'm starting to get the feeling that my blog isn't the "right place" for certain kinds of exploration in thought.

Right. No more rambling in Doyce's comment sections. Back to writing disaster recovery documentation.