In spite of everything swirling around me - Christmas was lovely. Erin and Hunter drove home and spent the holiday with us. They stayed at Chris and Megan's house. Doug continued his quest to hump everything in sight by trying to hump Hudson constantly. Again, what is a gramma to do? We had a lovely Christmas Eve where Erin wowed us again with her culinary skills and then we started cooking our Christmas dinner. Chris was officially in charge of the dinner and he did himself proud. The meal was amazing - the turkey was tasty and the dressing - shut up about the dressing! It rocked!
Speaking of rocked - Erin and Meg and I formed a rock band and we discovered that we are AWESOME at the Xbox Rock Band. I was amazing on the drums - Erin on vocals and Megan on guitar. Most of the songs we had never heard but dang we were good! I surprised everyone with my drumming skills. Little did they know that as a kid I wanted to be a drummer so bad and I was pretty good then. My parents had bought me a small drum set that I played often and honed my drumming skills on. My friends and I formed a "band" if you want to call it that. We wrote songs and called ourselves, The Compositions. You know - after the black and white notebook. Weird right? The strange thing is that no one played the guitar - they just strummed it so that it sounded like they were playing it - AND someone played the tamborine. Oh, I also played a mean tamborine. Anyway - here we were on Christmas having a ball being a rock band. The name we came up with was...Tonipail. There is a story behind that. My mom has been in the hospital for a month. She ended up having a lung biopsy because she wasn't getting over her pneumonia and they couldn't figure out what was going on. So, after ICU she went to rehab where they finally washed her hair and they pulled it into a little ponytail in the back. A new look for her because she is always going to the beauty shop to get her hair into what the girls call her "gramma 'fro" She looked really cute! Since this was like her second day in rehab, her speaking was rough and she wasn't thinking clearly. She says to me,
"they put my hair in a tonipail...wait, that's not right - hold on...a tonipail!
No! - (deep heavy sigh) - wait - a TONIPAIL!"
We giggle together here at her inability to say ponytail.
"okay - hold on....pause....pause - deep breath - "Tonipail"
When I told the girls this story we laughed and laughed. I'll remind gramma when she is feeling like laughing at herself. But we couldn't resist naming our rock band Tonipail. Sort of a homage to my mother - sort of.
So - here I am, still unemployed but working on my resume and getting up the nerve to begin sending it out. It's just so weird that I'm having to do this. I stupidly thought I would retire in my previous position or at least with the company. It's weird to be 51 years old and having to start over again - it's weird.
Mom is coming home from the hospital on Wednesday. She'll be bringing an oxygen tank with her and will have to be on it all the time now. It's weird. She will bring with her a whole new routine and a bunch more medicine. We went and cleaned her apartment tonight - no easy feat, mind you. But now she will have a comfortable home to move around in. Our routines are going to have to change. We discussed how we're going to have to take over her bills - her grocery shopping - all of that. Cleaning her apartment more often will become a part of our routine. So, while I'm whining about how weird it is for me to adjust to not having a job and how much my life sucks - I can only imagine how weird it is for her to realize how different things are going to be for her now. When I put my weird up against her weird - I think her weird has got my weird beat. I just pray that she doesn't let her weird get her down as much as I do. Otherwise we're going to be two sad weirdos.
