I know better than to rub my eyes before washing my hands thoroughly when I'm at work but what did I do last Thursday? Yeap, dug in my eyeballs without washing my hands. Damned allergies hit me in the eyes worse and I'm always rubbing them because of it. So now I'm bloody sick. And I have a harsh 2 weeks coming up at work 'cos I'm working a load of hours!! UGH! I need the money desperately so it looks like I'll be popping the meds and slogging through. Guess it'll show my kid that just 'cos you don't feel well doesn't mean you get to stay home, he really needs to learn this!
So earlier, as I drove back from Target 'cos a new expansion pack for my Sims 3 game came out today @@, I saw a kiddie pool in front of a house. It reminded me of summers past, spent with my grandparents and kiddie pools. When you're a kid, they're the best! I always loved swimming, me and my brother were the sort of kids who would and did pick swimming over everything in the world, including Disney World! Yes, you read that right. We went to Disney when I was 10 (to prove how old I am, they were just starting to build Epcot Centre!) and my brother was 6 and we were much more interested in the hotel pool than anything else! My family couldn't get us out of the pool from the second we got up in the morning until when the sun went down at night! That love for water and swimming has not dimmed for me in all these years, I'd rather swim than breathe. Anywhoo, I always wished we had a big pool in the backyard but that was never to be, even at my age now I live in an apartment that does not offer a pool, though we have plenty of room for one. Anyway so my grandparents, who kept us all summer whilst our mum worked, always had the biggest kiddie pools available and that was just dandy to us to be honest. What I remember most was how my grandpa would fill the pool 3/4 of the way with regular water from the hose but then take a big 5 gallon bucket and run up and down at least 2 dozen stairs with steaming hot water in order to warm the pool temp up enough for us to be able to swim instead of waiting for the sun to warm it up. How many grandpa's would do that for his grandkids? I'm thinking not many. Our grandparents adored us and, in turn, we worshipped them. We looked forward to spending the summers with them, missing our mother sure but hey, we were with the two people who spoiled us the best!
My grandfather was, is and always will be the one man who never let me down, who is a hero in my eyes and always will be. I was close to my grandma but my grandpa hung the moon in my eyes. My mum says when I was born I had colic real bad, I wouldn't stop crying and crying so she'd take me to my grandparent's house, they lived 2 blocks away. Finally one day, after hours of me screaming , my grandfather took me from my mother so she could nap. She says I quieted down immediately, that I opened my eyes and looked at him as if I knew he would be the one person always in my corner and that he loved me unconditionally and I went promptly to sleep, as if I knew I was safe. He did try to put me in my cot but I started crying so my mother said he held me for four hours so I could sleep and my mother too, after all, she hadn't slept in days poor thing. I know how that is as my own son was very colicy too. It seems that since moment me and my grandfather were a pair. He scared the bejebus out of every other baby in the world, he was a loud man, but not me. He never treated me like some frail little girl either, he always said that there was absolutely no difference in what a girl could do and what a boy could do besides pee standing up so that led to him putting a baseball bat in my hands at 3 years old, thus beginning a life-long love of baseball and, most importantly, the Chicago White Sox. I did nothing but play baseball/softball and swim my entire childhood. I was a jock. My grandpa taught me to throw a ball, catch anything that came in my general vicinity and how to hit a ball so far there was no way anyone could catch it. I wish I would have known that, even though the Sox wouldn't hire me, I could have done something with the softball like the olympics, but alas, that's not where my life led. Anywhoo, he taught me everything about baseball and then when he knew I was good at it, we practiced it every day. Then he taught me about football, how to throw one, how to catch one, how to tackle and how to avoid being tackled. I liked football but it was never as important to me as baseball, mostly 'cos football was for cold weather. I remember showing my exhusband how to throw a football the proper way, he'd never learned as a kid. I have to say it was amazing to have such a man as my grandpa as my hero. I always felt that my mother preferred my brother over me, typical kid crap, so it was so nice to have someone who put me on top of his list. Not that he didn't love my brother, he did, my brother was just a lot closer to our grandma when we were kids. When my brother got older, high school, he and our grandpa got closer and he taught him how to do all those important manly things. The same things he taught me first, like how to change oil, a tire, how to check the fluids in the car...that sort of crap I pretend not to know about 'cos there's gotta be a guy around somewhere who can get his hands that dirty instead of me. :o)
My grandma taught me things that weren't very apparent until I was grown and then especially after I had my son. She did teach me how to be a strong woman, how to never stay in a marriage that wasn't worthy of me and how to stand up for my beliefs. She was a religious woman...no wait, let me rephrase that. She was the only truly SPIRITUAL person I've ever known in my life. She practiced what she preached right up to, even though she owned her own tavern, never let anyone leave her place drunk, she'd shove food into them for at least an hour. Or let them sleep it off in the back. You could have a good time at her place but she was responsible and never let anyone get in a car and drive when they were drunk. There is a woman who's been like a sister to my mother her entire life she was so close to our family and she was a raging alcoholic, without the actual raging. She was a soppy drunk. I remember her always being drunk when I was a kid, she was still cool to hang around though. She was the sort who knew she was drunk and told you she was drunk and took no responsibility for anything. However one day my grandma had had enough and sat her down and told her...well I have no idea what she told her 'cos it was just between the two of them, my mother doesn't even know, but that woman has been sober ever since. Honest! At my grandma's wake this woman stood up and said she owed her entire life to my grandma 'cos she'd have been dead long ago had she not sobered her up. My grandma would help anyone who needed it, no matter what it cost. I get that from her. She was an excellent cook and I blame most of my fat ass on her. lol She was the sort of grandma who always was cooking, cooking well, would heap your plate high and make you it all of it even though there was no way you could. I'm a damned good cook, strangely enough 'cos she never really taught me, after all I was outside playing baseball with grandpa and had no time for such girly nonsense. I think it's instinctual and it skipped my mum, me and my brother are both excellent cooks. Our dad was an excellent cook too though, but we barely remember him or his food, just that we never didn't love what he'd put in front of us. I never go off a recipe, I just know what to add, how much and when, just like she did. Her first husband, a cheat who she divorced when my mother was very little, was 100% Italian (who my son got his red hair from, go figure) so my grandma learned to cook and love Italian food, but he was from Northern Italy and liked a sweeter sauce rather than spicy so that's what I like and what I cook. My kid loves it. So much so that he wants to have it every bloody night for dinner! @@ I always said my grandma and her mother were the original rebel's 'cos both of them divorced their first husband's at a time when women just did not do that. They would both go on, as my mum did, to marry men who were beyond wonderful. The one thing I remember most, now with a smile, when I was a kid? Not so much...was she always was after me to comb my hair. I had very thick hair and a tender head so I wasn't very pro-hairbrushing! lol
My grandma ended up with altzimers, which left me questioning the existance of God to be honest. How something so horrific could happen to a woman with such strong faith didn't make sense to me and still doesn't. That disgusting disease took my grandma quickly, she passed away within 5 years, in February of 1996. My grandpa, ever the devoted and adoring husband, hardly ever left her side. He did have to put her in a nursing home but only because she had become a danger to herself and he was getting no sleep at all because she was getting out of the house at night and wandering away. She always wanted to go home...back to where they lived when I was a kid and those kiddie pools were a summer thing, however even when my grandpa would take her, she didn't recognise it. The only day he did not spend with her in those five years was the day I got married, when he walked me down the aisle. When the love of his life passed in February he gave up on life himself and joined her 11th September, 1996. I gotta say when 9-11 happened I was glad he wasn't alive to see it.
So here I am, 43 years old with a kid who's about to become a teenager and I wonder if he's going to look back on his life when he's my age and have as many wonderful memories of his family as I do mine. So I strive, just in case, to make sure he does. I've taken him to his first White Sox game, grandpa would be so proud that I'm raising another Sox fan! I take him everywhere, I want him to experience everything! I have grand plans for my kid! I remember when he was not quite 2 he pointed to a picture of my grandpa and said "Papa John" which to this day freaks me out...'cos I'd not told him about my grandpa yet much less that his name was John. I wouldn't have called him that, everyone called him Jay. My grandma was Katherine so everyone called her Kay. Jay and Kay, how perfect was that! I like to think that before his soul entered his little baby body he spent time with the two people who would have loved him beyond what is humanly possible. PJ was born 2 years after they passed, I always wished they'd have stuck around to see him, especially my grandpa 'cos my grandma was gone long before she passed, the poor thing. My grandma's birthday is 17th September, mine is the 20th, we were Virgo's together, and this year she would have been 99, an impossible age for me to imagine. My grandpa's birthday was 12th June, he was 8 years younger so he would have been 91 in a couple weeks...even more unbelievable. I was very ill when he passed and I firmly believe I'd gotten this weird illness that was causing me to lose my sight because I had too much fluid in my spinal cord because to lose my grandpa would have been beyond traumatic. I'd had to have a spinal, painful and leaving me flat on my back in hospital for a week and then on drugs that made life very interesting for me and everyone around me! I hear I was a riot! So those drugs really dulled the pain of losing the most important person in my life, not that I didn't grieve, I did, but I was one step removed until such a time that I could handle it better. Things happen for a reason.
So my nose is running and, since I can't call grandpa to run and get me some meds to make me feel better, it's up to me to get up and do it for myself! HOW RUDE! lol My son is "cooking" tonight...so this should be quite interesting! Hope he doesn't burn the apartment down! :o)
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