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Lets see, what did I miss, a month and a half roughly? The past six weeks have been pretty much loaded with varying amounts of depression, health ick, stress, Minecraft (oh god, minecraft) with a smattering of noteable. I won't really get into the depression much except to note what ended up being major contributing factors (and not this entry). Or the Minecraft, because y'all really don't want to hear about the week I spent painstakingly building a glass, wood and water "hourglass" or the other one I spent digging out subway tunnels or maybe you want to hear about the scavenger hunt one I made last fortnight for the kids or the maze this week but yeah. Thankfully I AM finally starting to burn out on it some, so maybe I have a prayer of getting other things done this summer? I don't know. I feel like for completion sake I should try playing Starcraft, just to see if I get as crazy addicted to that as I did to apparently War- and Mine-. Not that any of these games are related by more than suffix.
Anyway! Starting at the beginning, I went home the weekend of May 19 to attend a mini-reunion of sorts hosted by Ruthy, for the Browne cousins. Basically, all the kids raised by Dad's generation. There are rather a lot of us.
This isn't even everyone, either. You know that bit in The King and I when you've just got done meeting the King's children (and there are like, 12 or 13 of them and they're all cute and woefully not at all Asian, let alone remotely Thai, but that's beside the point) and he's all "Someday I'll allow you to meet my others" and Anna's like "More?!" and he's all nonchalantly like "67, I think?" That's kinda the situation with my cousins on Dad's side. There were eight siblings to start with, after all.
Anyway. That party was rather off the chain, which is only to be expected when you pack a group of West Indians in an apartment with a bitching stereo system and Ruthy's Dark & Stormys. Also, look at the size of that party, and let me then tell you that the party was potluck and you might get some idea of the sheer volume of food.
I kinda wish I'd managed to write about it at the time, honestly, because there are some things I'm definitely glossing over in my haste to catch up - the whole series of text messages involving one particular trolly cousin and whether the ribs another cousin was bringing were pork or beef and how that conversation panned out (don't troll a troll being the moral of the story - and those ribs were some delicious pork sticks). There's the fact that since all of these cousins are of an age and grew up with the Valkyries and Stanley rather than me, I don't know them nearly as well as I'd like or I should (some of which being my Mom's fault, but that's another post) so a lot of them I only know from family reunions, weddings, funerals, sibling stories, and of late, Facebook. Which sucks kinda - they're all interesting, amazing complicated people. I feel like now that the elder generation is completely gone now what with the last three passing within 2 months (it was a baaaaaaad winter, y'all) maybe I should make the effort, though that would require me being less of an antisocial butt.
Oh yeah, this happened too.
The coat is Judi K's. (The one cousin from Mom's side that got invited to dinner as a special guest, lol.) There's a story about how the coat came into existence that I don't remember all the details on, but it was bizarre to the point of stretching credibility. I'll just say the coat was not originally hers and it is NOT fake and leave it there. The bag is also Judi's by way of Amanda, but thankfully that IS fake. (it was bought to match the coat.) And Ruthy quite literally has glass vases full of every single style of plastic black or tortoiseshell sunglasses you can imagine laying around her house, so I just grabbed a pair, because yes.
(There was an amusing exchange over Twitter with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cell23 that resulted when I instagrammed this picture, but I forgot to favorite it and I do NOT want to page all the way back through to find it. Boo.)
Also Amanda finally got her silent santa present plus the Blue Rose bracelet, because why not.
She absolutely loves them and has been wearing both of them pretty much constantly since. I think I did good.
Aside from the Dinner, that was a fairly low key trip back to New York, and a really nice one for all I had been dreading it. Even being back at The House for the first time since the funeral wasn't super bad or even lonely, really, especially since Judi K was there and she has a bad habit similar to Dad's of leaving the TV downstairs blaring whether she's watching it or not. It was annoying as hell when Dad was around, but now the noise is comforting and does much to fill up the empty. Obligatory wanders through the neighborhood and trips to Sibyls were had (and for once they WEREN'T sold out of butterflaps!), as well as a moment of New York happy with a cheap slice of regular pizza DONE CORRECTLY a cup of bug juice and to finish a glorious cherry Gino's italian ice. I also managed to see the Jaicat before escaping town, whom I haven't seen since my wedding so THAT was a nice thing. (and she fed me port wine and mead, so that was Another Nice thing.) And before Dinner there was a couple of hours where it was just me and The Siblings at Ruthy's chilling and pre-gaming a bit before the party, discussing Serious Family Shit in the wake of Dad's passing, the upcoming Vineyard trip, etc. It seems like the long term game plan aside from keeping/fixing The House is for all of us to try to reduce the sprawl a bit and drift back towards the City - if not in the city itself, closer to than we have been. More of a concern for those of us further out, and it's a brainweasel for me seeing as I always had this nebulous game plan of eventually ending up back in the city. I don't even think Drew would mind coming with me once the kids are more or less grown, which'll only be about a decade from now. 10 years is not very much time at all.
But... neither here nor there at this point. Just... nebulous musing about The! Possible! Future!
Anyway. Have a pre-party Browne selfie:
Insert obligatory comments about how everyone in this picture, myself excepted, is hovering around AARP qualification age. Get used to my face, I will be wearing it, virtually unchanged from the present, for at least the next 20 years, barring spectacular intestinal 'splode or runaway buses.
Next: Part II - Old Familiar Places and Faces. I'll link it when I actually post it.
Anyway! Starting at the beginning, I went home the weekend of May 19 to attend a mini-reunion of sorts hosted by Ruthy, for the Browne cousins. Basically, all the kids raised by Dad's generation. There are rather a lot of us.
This isn't even everyone, either. You know that bit in The King and I when you've just got done meeting the King's children (and there are like, 12 or 13 of them and they're all cute and woefully not at all Asian, let alone remotely Thai, but that's beside the point) and he's all "Someday I'll allow you to meet my others" and Anna's like "More?!" and he's all nonchalantly like "67, I think?" That's kinda the situation with my cousins on Dad's side. There were eight siblings to start with, after all.
Anyway. That party was rather off the chain, which is only to be expected when you pack a group of West Indians in an apartment with a bitching stereo system and Ruthy's Dark & Stormys. Also, look at the size of that party, and let me then tell you that the party was potluck and you might get some idea of the sheer volume of food.
I kinda wish I'd managed to write about it at the time, honestly, because there are some things I'm definitely glossing over in my haste to catch up - the whole series of text messages involving one particular trolly cousin and whether the ribs another cousin was bringing were pork or beef and how that conversation panned out (don't troll a troll being the moral of the story - and those ribs were some delicious pork sticks). There's the fact that since all of these cousins are of an age and grew up with the Valkyries and Stanley rather than me, I don't know them nearly as well as I'd like or I should (some of which being my Mom's fault, but that's another post) so a lot of them I only know from family reunions, weddings, funerals, sibling stories, and of late, Facebook. Which sucks kinda - they're all interesting, amazing complicated people. I feel like now that the elder generation is completely gone now what with the last three passing within 2 months (it was a baaaaaaad winter, y'all) maybe I should make the effort, though that would require me being less of an antisocial butt.
Oh yeah, this happened too.
The coat is Judi K's. (The one cousin from Mom's side that got invited to dinner as a special guest, lol.) There's a story about how the coat came into existence that I don't remember all the details on, but it was bizarre to the point of stretching credibility. I'll just say the coat was not originally hers and it is NOT fake and leave it there. The bag is also Judi's by way of Amanda, but thankfully that IS fake. (it was bought to match the coat.) And Ruthy quite literally has glass vases full of every single style of plastic black or tortoiseshell sunglasses you can imagine laying around her house, so I just grabbed a pair, because yes.
(There was an amusing exchange over Twitter with
cell23 that resulted when I instagrammed this picture, but I forgot to favorite it and I do NOT want to page all the way back through to find it. Boo.)Also Amanda finally got her silent santa present plus the Blue Rose bracelet, because why not.
She absolutely loves them and has been wearing both of them pretty much constantly since. I think I did good.
Aside from the Dinner, that was a fairly low key trip back to New York, and a really nice one for all I had been dreading it. Even being back at The House for the first time since the funeral wasn't super bad or even lonely, really, especially since Judi K was there and she has a bad habit similar to Dad's of leaving the TV downstairs blaring whether she's watching it or not. It was annoying as hell when Dad was around, but now the noise is comforting and does much to fill up the empty. Obligatory wanders through the neighborhood and trips to Sibyls were had (and for once they WEREN'T sold out of butterflaps!), as well as a moment of New York happy with a cheap slice of regular pizza DONE CORRECTLY a cup of bug juice and to finish a glorious cherry Gino's italian ice. I also managed to see the Jaicat before escaping town, whom I haven't seen since my wedding so THAT was a nice thing. (and she fed me port wine and mead, so that was Another Nice thing.) And before Dinner there was a couple of hours where it was just me and The Siblings at Ruthy's chilling and pre-gaming a bit before the party, discussing Serious Family Shit in the wake of Dad's passing, the upcoming Vineyard trip, etc. It seems like the long term game plan aside from keeping/fixing The House is for all of us to try to reduce the sprawl a bit and drift back towards the City - if not in the city itself, closer to than we have been. More of a concern for those of us further out, and it's a brainweasel for me seeing as I always had this nebulous game plan of eventually ending up back in the city. I don't even think Drew would mind coming with me once the kids are more or less grown, which'll only be about a decade from now. 10 years is not very much time at all.
But... neither here nor there at this point. Just... nebulous musing about The! Possible! Future!
Anyway. Have a pre-party Browne selfie:
Insert obligatory comments about how everyone in this picture, myself excepted, is hovering around AARP qualification age. Get used to my face, I will be wearing it, virtually unchanged from the present, for at least the next 20 years, barring spectacular intestinal 'splode or runaway buses.
Next: Part II - Old Familiar Places and Faces. I'll link it when I actually post it.
