Have I mentioned how much I love my mom? Like seriously, my mom is easily 80% of the reason I am the person I am today. I learned how to work hard from her, I learned how to apply myself, how to motivate myself, what to accept and not accept in relationships, and, most importantly, how to love unconditionally. I would trade my happiness in a heartbeat for my mom to be as happy as I am in life right now. And it kills me, because she is lonely and I know it, because no matter how self-sufficient you are, no matter how complete as a person you are, there is something special that having a great significant other adds to your life to make everything better and maybe a little bit easiers. So my latest side endeavor is to find a good man for my mom. I've put up a couple of profiles for her on a couple of dating sites, but seriously, I have no idea what middle-aged men are looking for. And it's annoying me, because the ones that respond well are the ones that aren't quite right somehow.... And it's making me a bagillionty times more grateful for having found my soulmate already so that I don't have to go through this bullshit on my own behalf. It's possible I'm being too picky, but y'all, my mom is an amazing lady. Ask anyone who's met her, any of my friends she's adopted, she's the bestest ever. Cross your fingers or work your mojo for me. At the very least, please, dear god, above all else, let me find her a date for the wedding so that my sister baboon of a father will keep his disgusting self far away from her, not pester her to dance, and maybe get a bit pissed off and jealous (that would be the icing on the cake.)

OMG plz die!!!1!!11!

so, new video, by request from Meigan, it's a brief intro tour to my school. There's more, and I'll prolly upload it later, if I have time.

Also, in lab, we started testing unknown substances to try and determine their contents. I ran my tests twice, almost ran out of time, but dammitt, I got full credit on mine for getting the exact right ion contents, so it was worth it. My prof called it my "first csi moment." *sigh* I'd much rather it were my first forensic files moment. or maybe crime scene reconstruction with dr lee moment.

So now that I'm back at home with Fuzzy, I'm slowing back down into things, relaxing a bit, but also plowing into school, which is now at full swing.

The funeral was really hard, but also really inspiring. Grandma Mary was an amazing woman. There were tons of people there from the neighborhood she lived in, grown ups who always loved her like their own mother or grandmother, because thats exactly how she treated them. There were old friends of Susans there who recounted how she filled the roll of their absent mother, or just provided them with a place where they were always welcome. There were, essentially, people just like me, with no genetic expectation of her unconditional love, but who were eagerly supplied with it none the less. Her pastor performed the service, and while he rejoyced in the shared good fortune of both Grandma Mary and her loving God, and while he called it the fulfillment of a lifes worth of good work and true Christian living, he cried because he, just like the rest of us, selfishly wishes that we could keep her here just a little while longer. I smiled at his words because my memories of going to Sunday School with her are perhaps the only good memories I have involving church. If all Christians were like her, I would probably still be one of them. The hardest part was seeing Grandpa Eddie. At the beginning he thanked everyone for coming, and his grief was plain, raw, and overwhelming. I wish I could hold him and comfort him, but nothing would ever compare the comfort he got from her. At the end, he went to her casket and crumpled to his knees, and I swear I thought I would explode from the saddness of it. Maybe it would have been harder on all of us, but I wish that they had died in the very same moment, holding each other, so that one would never have to spend a day without the other. Valentines Day would have been their 58th wedding anniversary.

When I grow up, I want me and Chris to be like them. They weren't openly passionate about one another, and I never witnessed a glimpse of romance or wooing between them. In fact, most of the times I was there, they were each seperately doing their own thing. But they were my best example of what true love looks like. It's not fireworks, it's not always spectacular, but it's a presence in your life that makes everything a little better, even if it's doing the laundry or mowing the grass. It's the kind of thing that holds you up when you're tired, that makes the sting of loss just a little less painful, that makes every small joy just a little bit bigger. Even when you're not talking, just knowing the person is there makes you feel more safe, more secure, less lonely. And slowly, usually imperceptively, you depend on that warmth, and you forget what life was like before you had it. Being at home this week, without Fuzzy, was a sharp reminder of what life was like before him. It was minor, really, just 4 days, and me all the while knowing that it wasn't permanent, but it gave me the tiniest inkling of what Grandpa Eddie must be feeling. His grief right now, and for the rest of his days, will be monumental because it will echo in everything he does, everything he says. He has 58 years worth of memories with her, and so everything that happens must, in some small way, remind him of her and that she's not there with him anymore. There are no words for it, no comfort that wouldn't be hollow, unless it's the family they created together, the lives they've touched, the good that's rippled out into the world in waves that span continents. I hope everyone will stay by him, not forgetting that the loneliness won't be over in a week once they're all back at work, back into their own lives.

My own grandmother, though I'm so mad I shudder to call her that, was being as reprehensible as humanly possible the day of the funeral. She was in her stupid woe is me mood, and spent the entire day trying to make everything about her. I'm disgusted by her. I think she went only so that she could hear me sing and feel sorry for herself. She displaced all her bitterness and all of her selfishness onto Grandpa Eddie, saying that everyone says they'll be there for him, but it's easy to take people for granted, acting like she's so woefully mistreated. She was being so bad that my mom blew up at her on her way to take her home. Thinking of Grandma Mary also brought my experience with evil Grandma into rather sharp relief. I have no happy memories of my mother's mother. Not one. She has spent my whole life, in addition to the betrayal she wreaked on my family, making me feel like I was a disappointment of a grandmother, like because I wouldn't be the person she wanted me to be, because I didn't spend every fucking moment with her, that it was somehow this huge failing. She acts like she wants to be close to all of us, like all she wants us to do is care about her, but every time we try she turns it against us and uses it to make us feel like shit. She is selfish, and has only ever cared about herself. As my mother said this week, it's like she's deliberately trying to make us hate her so that when she dies she can wallow in self pity over how we never really loved her. I am so sick of her shit, seriously. I know she's old and set in her ways, but I swear that she exists soley to make us all miserable. Her pleasure in life is sucking the joy out of other peoples lives. My mother has been trying so hard to take care of her, and my grandmother just bitches that she's not doing enough, or not doing it right, or not doing it because she wants to, or any other thing she can possibly bitch about. She's the most miserable, horrible person I have ever known, with the possible exception of my cousin, who has worked so hard to be nothing like my grandmother that she's actually becoming my grandmother.

I told Susan she has to take care of Grandpa Eddie, because I want to have at least one good grandparent at my wedding.

And now I'm home again, back in the same space with the person who restores my soul and my happiness, and I am more inspired than ever to cherish him and love him forever, or as long as I am on this earth and breathing.

So now that I've got the basics down for this here newfangled video machiney thing, what sorta things would y'all like to see? My life isn't terribly exciting, so I can't really think of anything...

So thanks to the generosity of the almighty Phug, we are now the proud owners of a video camera =D

This first little clip should give you an indication of what my flight home was like. Sorry it's shaky, I don't have a tripod yet, and this was a spontaneous video, inspired by a glimpse into the cockpit.

Last night, my Grandma Mary, the one I reminisced about so nostalgicly a few posts ago, passed away in her sleep. This loss feels overwhelming to me, she's the only grandparent I've lost that I was never disillusioned about in any way. She was the same amazing woman from the day I met her to the day she died, always embodying the qualities of grandmotherhood that legends are based on. She was always accepting, and never once, ever, did she make me feel like I wasn't her very own natural grand child. I can't imagine there was one single person on this earth who didn't adore her. I remember spending the night there on some occasions, and the big green swing in the backyard, and how we'd sit on it in the afternoons. I remember the frozen mugs she kept in the freezer that we'd make slushies in, the silly surfer figure on the wall, the clown paintings, the board games, going to sunday school with her when she still taught it, and mostly an environment of serenity and unconditional acceptance. I feel wounded in a way that I can't quite express, and I feel like the world has lost a real jewel, the same sort of loss it incurred when Mr. Rogers and Mother Theresa died. I'm doing everything I can to go down for the funeral. Right now I feel somehow lost, like I need to be there with the rest of my family, remembering her, and grieving for her.