Thanks to Bossy, whom I call "Awessy" in my head because she's so cool, I've spent too much time reading the forums for an AARP article on how some funeral homes have ripped off people who bought pre-need plans.
I want to be cremated and kept in an urn until Mike feels like scattering my ashes somewhere meaningful. If Mike goes first (and he will, I just know I won't be lucky enough to get to have him every day), then just scatter me at Disney World. But, I told Mike that if/when he does go first, then his urn will probably be put straight in the "scrapbooking box," which sits by my craft table and may as well be called the "someday box." But eventually I'll mix his ashes with embossing powder and make some really cool layouts.
Let's get off this icky topic. Have a LOLcat:
When we were in Texas a few months ago, Mike and I stayed up late one night and took many pictures of pictures, which you know also meant Mike had to sit on the sofa and feign interest in all kinds of stories. ("Really? Your second cousin's daughter? And you went to the park that once and never happened to meet up again? And she was too young for you to pay much attention to, so you don't really remember her? I bet it was weird having an extra cousin in the car.) I didn't say any of them were good stories.
OH WAIT. So I've just remembered how we got into my grandmother's stash of snapshots in the first place.
We're in the living room. I don't remember what we're talking about. Religion, I think. And I say to Mike that one thing that really kept me from questioning anything about religion as a kid was the fact that my grandmother had a photograph of Jesus.
Not a picture, a photograph. She showed it to me when I was five or six, probably. Jesus was standing in the clouds, arms raised like he's about to give the world a hug (red and yellow, black and white, everybody), and Mimi said a friend of hers snapped this from an airplane window.
And she didn't just say it, she mentioned it, real off-hand like. And I'm just there spazzing out: Wow! WOW! A photo! Of Jesus! Wow!
I just could never get over how casual she was about it. It made me think that anyone with good timing could get a photo of Jesus, really. You just had to stop reading your inflight magazine and bother to look.
The photo was in a cupboard inside a coffeetable in the living room, which of course is still there. So Mike looks at the coffeetable. And I look at the coffeetable. And sixty seconds later we're covered in old Eckerd photo processing envelopes, having found a slush pile of three decades worth of snapshots.
(I just wiki'd Eckerd Pharmacy, wondering what happened to them. Looks like they became Rite Aid a few months ago. However, around here, Rite Aid has just become Walgreens. Are you nervous, CVS? Are ya?)
At first we couldn't get the cupboard open. Tug-tug-tug. Dad was in the room with us again, watching us go all Nicolas Cage in our hunt for Jesus. Tug-tug-tug. Dad frowns, saying he doesn't think the handles actually do anything. Tug-tug-tug. Whoa. Was this cupboard facade... ornamental? Then how did I...? Whoa.
And then I hopped around to the other side of the table and, ta da, doors swing open. Dad: "All these years - I never knew there was a cupboard in there!" I figure it's like the third (and second and maybe first) Indiana Jones movie, and not just anybody can open it, you know what I'm saying?
Well, we never did find Jesus that night. Lots of memories, though. I didn't want to ask Mimi for the pictures because I think it's probably irritating when you reach a certain age and suddenly everyone wants your stuff because you aren't "using" it. They're just snapshots, not the kind of staged family portraits you'd make professional copies of.
So, I took my own snaps-of-snaps and will share them here, now and again, when not in the mood to read postcards or complain about work or compose odes to buffets.
Let's start with why I had bouts of low self-esteem in the 80s. That is just not 1982 hair. And these were back in the days when I went to the salon every six-to-eight weeks. Perhaps you're thinking it's not too bad. Perhaps you don't realize that I was probably attempting to feather it.
Now, with the kindness and affirmation tendencies of my old age, I tell myself I've got a bit of a Tori Amos vibe going. Pale girl, lips together but not quite curved, piano... well, it's more of a forced image than a vibe, but okay.
Speaking of Tori, just the other day I was thinking about the Romanovs again, wondering what was up with the DNA and those two skeletons last summer and whether anyone ever conclusively said whether the missing body was Maria or Anastasia (answer: not yet, new skeletons still being examined). Tori has a great piece called "Yes, Anastasia," see? And I got to remembering how much I used to love Tori Amos. The first album is still a breathtaking marvel. And her version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? Delicious rendering. (Sorry about the anime in that link. Hopefully it's not any of that R-rated Japanese stuff.)
Verdict on the second album? Yes and no, mostly yes.
But then I remember when the third album came out, and I got annoyed with all this stylized heavy breathing going on. (Little did I know about Britney's stylized heavy hiccuping to come.) I never really gave that third album a chance - just heard a radio cut and dismissed it. And then I never happened to listen to anything she wrote again. Really. Pitiful.
I'm just reminding myself that I ought to explore her last four or five or however many albums there have been since then. You can't go from looking forward to the morning commute so you can listen to "Precious Things" or "Mother," then just breaking up. So, put it on the list:
Fan video of "Yes, Anastasia" (unfortunately, the part where the song gets good is when the pictures of Anna Anderson start - how could anyone think they look alike?):
(But why did so many people at the time say that Anastasia escaped? Why not Tatiana? Olga? Marie?)
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