I'm Back

Didja miss me? I spent the past four days doing the funeral thing. First was my great aunt's. Then the first visitation for Brenda followed by her first funeral. That's right, she had two funerals. Anyone who met my aunt would know that it was just like her. (She also had two weddings) On top of the very sad events, my loving husband gave me a summer cold. So at 10:30 Sunday night in O'Fallon (by St. Louis) my mom and I were at Wal-Mart to get cold medicine. Now I gotta tell you that St. Louis was hit by two waves of very nasty storm. Much of the surrounding areas were without power and a tornado actually hit by Lebanon. So when we were at Wal-Mart, everyone who had just got their power back was there. Not pleasant.

I took Nate with me to the first visitation. Now he is old enough and had seen Brenda enough to recognize her. My dad took him up to the casket and they had some sort of discussion. Afterwards, Nate came up to the group I was visiting with (including Brenda's oldest son). He proceeded to introduce himself and everyone in the group and then said "Do you wanta go see Aunt Brenda? She's over there in the box. She's happy in the box." Ah, there is nothing like a three year old at a funeral.

My nephew didn't hold up quite as well at the second funeral. Seeing as how he is just two, he was very bored and tired and generally not well behaved. To be perfectly honest my sister and I didn't hold up very well at the second one either. My mom plays the hammered dulcimer (quite beautifully) and Brenda had asked her to play at the funeral. Well, my mom always makes faces when she hits wrong notes. Nobody but those of us who have heard her play the songs numerous times would ever know that she hit those wrong notes, but she always makes a face. So she was trying to figure out where to put the dulcimer so that she would have to face the audience (is that the proper term for funeral attendees?) and so that she wouldn't have to face Brenda because that would be way to hard to do. Well, she hit a wrong note in the first song she played (What a Friend We Have in Jesus). My sister and I looked at each other and started giggling so hard that I had tears coming out of my eyes. I was picturing the look on mom's face when she messed up and Liz remembered her wedding when mom started the wrong song because she had the wrong music (same church, different instrument). What was worse was it wasn't our only giggling fit. Cameron had a pill bottle that he was playing with and when he couldn't open it he would hit the side of it and then grumble at it. He took it to everyone he thought could open it. All of us were laughing at that. Brenda would have appreciated the moment

We had fabulous food afterwards (way more than even my huge family could finish). They sent food home with everyone. Ben is planning on going to the Lake House (Brenda's boys and husband are still here visiting) to stay for a couple of days.

Ben's swim meet on Saturday was good. He was 1/10 of a second away from getting the high point trophy. His next meet is the conference championship. It will be interesting watching him do relays with the same boys he has competed against all summer.

I have some pictures to share, but of course left the camera at home. I did a little knitting but on the whole the weekend was far to draining to knit much (plus the one mindless project I had with me, I thought I had forgotten the DP needles to finish. We stopped at two Wal-Marts to get some. I have never seen such a crappy selection of needles than in those two stores (and keep in mind that I HATE metal needles and typically wouldn't use them at all). Then at the first funeral for Brenda, my Aunt Darla had a thread pulled out on her sweater. I pulled out my little case that I always carry with the usual needles, crochet hooks, tape measure, etc. and lo and behold there were the needles. Just my luck.