I'm really not having a good week. On top of being busy with work, I've had 2 people die in my family. The first was last sunday. My aunt Sue just recently made it through emergency surgery only to die about a week and a half later (I think). Although I actually live closer, my sister, who lives in Indianapolis, actually called me with the news. I was very sad to learn that she had made it through and was getting ready to go through rehab, but then died. As I told her children, I will miss her, even though we didn't see each other often. When we did meet, she always made me laugh. Truly, she was one of the most honest people I knew. I didn't always agree with her, but it didn't matter. She was Aunt Sue. I still remember many times when she and my uncle Ed and their kids would come over. I always hurt from laughing. She always had such funny stories. Her funeral was the kind I would want. Laughter through tears. And her children, my cousins, are just as ornery as she was. We told stories and talked of things we would remember about our times together.
The second sudden passing was my Uncle Jim, husband of my Father's sister, Gazella. He really has been well in years and I haven't seen him for quite awhile. He and my aunt lived close to us for a few years. Once I married and moved away, though, I didn't see him at all. Still, I have fond memories of him. When I was a child, my Mother kept my curly hair short. I believe the hairstyle was called a pixie. My uncle always thought I looked more like a boy and called me 'George'. Anytime I would get a pixie haircut, he called my that. He was teasing, of course, and I knew that he knew I was really a girl. Once I was an adult, he and my aunt moved a couple of blocks away from us. They had a dog named Sugar. Sugar got his name because he loved candy. Uncle Jim would go for afternoon walks and sometimes stop for a visit, always bringing the dog with him. My father would give Sugar Starlight mints (those red and white peppermints).
I will miss both my aunt and uncle. I truly wish we had all spent more time together, but, of course, our lives became busy with other obligations. Just like my cousin Susie said on Sunday, maybe we'd see each other at the next major holiday, funeral, or wedding.
There are many other things that have happened with the last couple of days. I'm still waking up way too early and going to sleep either too early or too late. I blame this on the time change and the crazy hours at work. Americans need to get over the idea that they need to shop at such ridiculous hours. When I was younger, stores were only open one night a week until 9 p.m. Even at Christmastime. There wasn't a sale every week--heck there wasn't even a sale every month! I can recall so clearly the jingle for a store called Robertson's in downtown South Bend. They had what they called remnant days every six months. It went something like "save a third, save a fourth, save a half in every department on every floor." Now, it's every weekend during the regular season and almost every day during the Christmas season. And the shopping hours--along with the regular 24 hour stores, during the Christmas season, so many stores are open from early, early morning until 11 or 12 o'clock at night. I always wonder, don't people have something else to do? Where are their children while the parents are out shopping? If the kids come along, they are usually so tired they're screaming or crying. How ridiculous! I talked to one customer about how so many people shop during the day--one wonders how they are working if they have time and money to shop.
Another strange thing that is happening to me lately is that I seem to be missplacing things. A lot. They other day, I lost one of my debit cards. Naturally, I called the debit card company to report it lost. Now, I happen to have 2 separate debit cards with this company. When I spoke to the customer service representative, I told her that one of my cards was missing. She asked for the account number. Since the card is missing, I don't have a clue what the entire number is. I was able to tell her what card wasn't missing and asked if she could please transfer the funds from the missing cards to the account with the nonmissing card. Oh no, she couldn't do that, but she could cancel the missing account and issue a new card with a new account number. It would take about 7 days for me to get my new card. I told her I would need money sooner than 7 days. She couldn't transfer any of the funds to the card I wasn't missing, so no access to funds for 7 days. Irritating as that was, I told her to go ahead and issue a new card. The only problem was that she cancelled the wrong account, so when I attempted to use the card that wasn't lost, it was declined. I called the company back only to be informed that the original lost card wasn't cancelled, but that the nonmissing card was. I told them to please, please, cancel the other card too and send me new cards for both accounts. Apparently, both cards are on their way.
Now, to today's occurences. I went out to my car and found an "abandoned vehicle" on it. I wrote down the phone number, which turned out to be code inforcement. The only thing that was wrong is that I was driving on an expired license plate. I would have 10 days to get it renewed, which I assured the code enforcement officer I would do immediately (at least by Friday when I get paid). He said that would be fine and asked if I lived at the address listed. I told him I did. He said that it looked like we had painted one side of our garage and asked when we were going to get around to painting the other side. Code enforcement had notified us this past summer that we needed to bring the garage up to code, which included fixing the roof and painting. My husband and father-in-law and a friend of ours spent almost 2 months this summer making the necessary repairs and painting both the garage our house. A couple of weeks later, the code enforcement officer called and left a message on our answering machine to tell us what a nice job we had done on the house and the garage. When the officer (who, I swear sounded just like the same person that left the message on the answering machine this summer) asked me when we were going to finish painting the garage, I told him we had already finished it this summer, along with the house. He told me he will be by later to take a look. I swear, if he says it needs painting again, I'm going to go get the paint and the brush and tell him to have a whack at it. While he's at it, he can clean up the mess this time. I am so done with public officials.
Now--on to the next task of finding the driver's license I missplaced while getting my license plate renewed.
Naw--I better get some sleep first. This was just too long a day.
