6 posts tagged “family”
My parents just called. The hospital just called them. After a year's battle with leukemia, my grandfather passed away at about 1:30 this morning.
Friday was quite the shift. Somebody decided that Stephenie Meyer's abusive-vampire-boyfriend (but he SPARKLES!) fairy tales deserved a Harry Potter-style release party, and goshdarnit, we did one. And thus was the colossal bookstore transformed into a crazyass party for teenagers, including a dancefloor, mocktails, Guitar Hero, ghoulish makeup, inflatable Twister (!), and a fuckin' Aston Martin parked on the patio just because Mr. Sparklyvampire apparently drives one. I actually had a lot of fun, though. I spent most of the night ensconced behind the special orders desk, safely outside of the mêlée and generally having nothing but good news for my customers.
Of course, the combined destructive force of 500 nubile highschoolers is nothing compared to that of my mother. I had a family get-together to attend in Waterloo on Sunday, and that was quite the experience. We started off by going to the new Mandarin buffet in Kitchener (I had never been to one of those beasts before, only heard tales. It's pretty much the perfect storm of heinous gluttony and gratuitous Orientalism. I quiver in fear), and then the whole clan retired to my parents' place, where my step-uncle's story about his search for his birthparents was met with my mother all but exploding about how she never wanted me opening up that particular can of worms. Possibly the only thing that could have made the resulting firestorm more awkward (kudos, of course, to Uncle John, whose Zen serenity didn't even crack) would have been me mentioning that I did open up that can of worms two years ago. Said request was blocked, though, so it's probably a moot point and something I should never mention to her.
On a brighter note, this final month of the summer looks like it's going to be full of all kinds of hilarity. The big publishers are having all kinds of galas and preview days, I have at least two out-of-area-code field trips in the works, and damned if I haven't finally found some jamming buddies.
Ah, Easter, that holiest of days, when the Easter Bunny and his Peep minions bring Jesus back from the dead so they can both hop around the world, giving delicious chocolate and gummy candies to the saved and curse the damned with those awful creme eggs. Or something.
As seems to be the trend with family occasions lately, it was a low-key one this time. My ailing grandparents didn't show up, so it was just my parents, aunt, step-uncle, and I devouring the Easter feast. After that came a very silly game of Scattergories (things that jump, starting with M: "Mid-1920s Stockbrokers").
I'm reading one crazy-ass book right now: Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital. It's a (surprise, surprise) end-of-the-world story about a second Great Flood, with the Ark replaced by a somehow-floating pediatric hospital. The mixture makes more sense when you consider that Mr. Adrian's degrees are in children's medicine and divinity, but it's still quite the trippy read. Lock Salman Rushdie in his fatwa-proof bunker with only the first two seasons of House, M.D. and he might write something like this, except it wouldn't be quite this morbid and magical (though the angel in the elevator is starting to get on my nerves). His prose is gorgeous, too.
I'm just worried, on page 150 of 600 or so, as to how he's going to pull it all together. Don't fail me now.
Life has been so bizarrely up-and-down lately. My grandfather is back in the hospital again, with an apparent white blood cell count of zero and constant shaking, and I get a bad feeling that he might not be coming out this time. Likewise, my uncle's shiny new kidney isn't the perfect match they'd hoped for, he's now a diabetic, and they're scrambling to get him back under the knife again to fix whatever went wrong in Round 1. And my parents wonder why I'm afraid to go home. With my grandfather quarantined out of fear that the common cold might fell him, I'm afraid that I'll have to make my next visit to Waterloo clad in a grey suit and tears.
Maybe I'm a coward for clinging to the stability over here in Guelph, but the joy in this town is what's keeping me afloat. From the all-around most interesting and entertaining academic semester I've had since first year, to the din of jamming and trivia nights, to the rum-soaked hilarity of Meg's 22nd birthday party (nobody parties like the rock climbers, and I got to hang out with a lot of people I haven't been seeing nearly enough of lately), things have never been this good in the Royal City.
Naturally, I've also gotten myself into another odd personal situation. A random acquaintance from this summer spontaneously turned into quite a bit more last week, and now I'm simultaneously enjoying the most honest, open, affectionate, supportive friendships I could hope for, and living in fear of what might happen when one of us finally tires of the ambiguity and tries to put a label on whatever the hell we are (no passive-aggressive jab implied. Could be me, could be her). The fact that we've been so accepting of each other's sundry anxieties has been amazing, but I just hope that we can keep those same anxieties from wrecking everything again.
A month without blogging. Good heavens. I don't know what turned me off from Vox/Livejournal for so long (I suspect a nasty case of seasonal-affective winter blues, given how haggard I'd been for most of December), but I think I'm back now.
What was December? An uphill battle, mostly. Exams, full-time holiday frenzy at Steve-ist Chapters (the beatings will continue until morale improves!), what might have been a few too many nights on the town, and this weird sense of crushing holiday apathy. Christmas was kinda weird too, with half my family now quite unhealthy. My parents' house is comically wheelchair-unfriendly.
Other tidbits from December:
- II'm still trying to decide what to do with my Christmas cheque. My current temptation? A bass guitar.
- I'm officially sour on Van Gogh's Ear after some jerk tried to pick a fight with me. At least the bouncers saw the altercation and escorted him out before he actually started swinging.
- Movies you should see: "The Darjeeling Limited" (not even Owen Wilson can drag down the hilarity), "The Ten" (easily the most surreal movie I've ever seen, but also damn funny)
- Movies you might want to reconsider: "The Golden Compass" (gorgeous, but it majorly fucks with the plot), "Die Elementärteilchen" (a German adaptation of a very bizarre Québécois novel, and poorly paced to boot)
- My new mug says "Decaf is for sissies."
- I'm now on friendly speaking terms with people who once wouldn't even acknowledge my presence on campus. Three cheers for reconciliation!
And finally, to finish this bloated month-long roundup, the mandatory overview of the semester's courses:
- ENGL*3080, The History of the English Language: With my plans to go to grad school for linguistics, I feel like I can't really miss this one. Mote and Dan both spoke very highly of Dr. Powell, and they seem to be right. He's super-young for a prof, and edgier than anything. He takes great pride in making fun of students and being wildly politically correct, and he seems to know his shit. Definitely worth the sign-in waiver rigamarole.
- GERM*3530, Deutsch im Beruf: Season Six of the Waldemar Scholtes show. It's now assumed that I'm fluent in German (holyfuckingshitnotquite), and we're focusing on practical things like the intricacies of German politesse.
- FREN*4900, Applied French Linguistics: Another rematch with a venerable languages prof, this time the always-hilarious Dr. Thomas, king of the vaguely-creepy French scholars. The material looks neat, and I still seem to be on his good side.
- SOAN*4320, Transition from School to Work: Why this weird little soul-searching course exists, I don't know, but it looks quite interesting, and the prof, one Dr. Ujimoto, is this hilarious retired Japanese dude who I wish I'd met a bit sooner in my career.
- SOC*4300, Alternative Social Possibilities: I'm pretty sure that my first visit to this class was my last. The prof seems well-meaning enough, but comes across as an elbow-patched old-guard tyrant of the first degree, and I'm not too keen on writing a gigantic paper, with a partner, on a topic mostly of his choosing, for 70% of the term. I'll miss laughing at that accent, though. He sounds exactly like Davy Jones from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.
- SOC*4310, Advanced Topics in Canadian Society: Basically the same course as above, except with Ujimoto and not an undead pirate captain who might rip my face off with his tentacles.
As my parents' place backs onto the ever-more-bustling Northfield Drive, it can get pretty damn loud over here. Thus was I summoned from Guelph today to help my father assemble the framework of an imposing eight-foot plywood fence along the back of the lot. Dividing my time between the ivory tower and the bookstore had made me forget how much I like working with my hands, especially when the work mostly entails climbing around like a monkey and playing with power tools. The only disappointment is my tender bourgeois paws' apparent unsuitability for the task at hand. I officially have two bajillion tiny cuts on my hands. Yes, two bajillion.
Also: may this note serve as a reminder that I have to bring some goddamn pliers back to Guelph with me.
