joy and shadows

I have lots of things I could post about, but mostly I'd like to stop coughing. Thanks to all the pathogens JP has been bringing home, I have gotten sick more often in the last year than I have since high school, and this latest bug has been making me cough till I'm breathless. Tomorrow I will go to the MD to get some cough medicine, and I'm half hoping and half fearing that they'll give me codeine. Hoping for it because it works; fearing because it makes me hyper, and while it's in my system, I rattle on about nothing in particular to whoever is listening. It also keeps me up at night.

Husband is downstairs playing L. A. Noire, and shortly I'm going to curl up in bed and play something with Final Fantasy in the title. It will be so nice to get my energy back when this is over, and not from codeine.

Two weeks ago, I posted about how I was sorry my passport had expired and we couldn't make a last-minute trip to the Grand Prix du Canada.

Then we watched the GP on television, and we saw that it was rainy and cold, and the weather got so bad that the race was red-flagged for two hours. Between the cold weather all weekend and the rain on raceday, I would have been absolutely ripshit if I'd been there. What was supposed to be a treat would have turned into a very unpleasant weekend, and thanks to US Customs, I feel like I dodged a bullet.

So, thanks, bureaucracy, for saving my butt!

For several years, my husband and I went to the Grand Prix of Canada. Last year we didn't go for obvious reasons - I was eight months pregnant and there was no way. We didn't plan on going this year, either, but then husband asked me this morning over breakfast: "Do you want to go to the race?"

The answer was "okay, let's consider it." The race is in about nine days, and husband called up to find out that tickets in our usual grandstand are still available, and there were rooms where we usually stay, and my in-laws would watch JP.

Then I remembered that my passport is expired. There's no way I can get it renewed that fast (I checked) and a driver's license is no longer enough to get you across the Canadian border and back.

Although it seemed like a ridiculous idea this morning, now I'm kinda bummed that it won't work out. :/

People with light eyes handle alcohol better than people with dark eyes.

So, I can handle my alcohol well because I have green eyes? :D (that was definitely not the case on my 30th birthday, but there was also a lot of alcohol.)

When I was a kid, my mother's parents used to rent a condo in Highland Beach, Florida for the winter. My mother and I would go down to visit them over Easter break for a week in the sun. There was an old lady named Helen Lammerding who lived in the same complex, and she used to sit by the pool and make kittens out of yarn. I became friends with her because of those kittens, because I always wanted the newest and cutest kitten she was working on. Throughout the years, when I went to visit Grandma and Grandpa, I always spent lots of time with Aunt Helen, and we were pen pals when I wasn't visiting.

Aunt Helen was very talented at crocheting (I still have a chick-and-egg that she made) but what she really loved to do was play Scrabble. I used to play with her all the time once I got old enough. I was never very good at the game, but Aunt Helen was very patient, and she taught me a lot about the game that I had largely forgotten until now.

In my office, all of us kiddies now have smartphones, and we've been playing Words with Friends together. It's a Scrabble knockoff, and it's buggy, but we're having fun. The poignant part is that playing this game makes me think of Aunt Helen, and her lessons about little words that use the 10-point tiles, and opening up a triple word score tile, and other Scrabble strategies. I don't remember them all, but I remember playing with her and having a very good time. Normally I am cutthroat-competitive at games, but in this case, I don't mind having my ass handed to me.

The last year we went to Florida, before my grandmother died, Aunt Helen was also ailing. I was thirteen at the time, and I'd outgrown yarn kitties, but we played a game of Scrabble or two when she was feeling up to it. I didn't hear from her again after that, and she has certainly long since passed away by now. In a weird way, I feel like I'm honoring her memory by playing this silly game, because it helps me to remember all the days I spent hanging out with her in her apartment, watching soaps and talking. Aunt Helen is the reason I know the words to "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," because that was her song with her husband.

Not that any of you asked, but if you want to play with me, my username is Section211.

toffeethesnob made me an amazing icon and you all should see it. Also it is appropriate because I have had two lychee martinis and I would have a third if my husband wasn't going to give me shit about it. Probably because I would fall asleep.