Since turnabout is fair play, here is MY 8th grade assignment on someone else in class. I chose my friend, Craig Beiser. And while I thought, at the time, that I did a better job than Chris did, now I don’t really think so…

Sean MC
Hughes-5
9/29/87

Craig

His hair was wrapped around his head in a peculiar sort of way as he wrote “I Love Jennifer Beam!” on his bookcover. Jennifer didn’t like him too much, but he still insisted on practically worshipping the ground that she stood on. As he looked up from his paper, his blue green eyes focused on me.
“Hi Craigsky,” I said. “I can see you’re over Holly now.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been over Holly for months.”
No matter what Craig does, he’s always going about it in a humerous way. Craig is a likeable, friendly person. My job: to convince you of this.
Craig is a 5′4 brown haired, blue eyed pseudoskater. By pseudoskater, I mean a person who dresses like a skater, yet isn’t. He has a quizzical little smile that comes out often, and as he smiles his braces radiate light in all directions.
Craig has been called a weirdo and a madman for his humerous looks into the mathematical realm. His work on infinity and the impossibilities of it have appealed to many of the less knowledgable who can’t understand the idea of infinity.
His infatuations with people are worse than mine, if that’s possible. Craig has done things I have tried, but failed, to do. The time, for instance, He sent 50 Strack-grams to a Miss Holly Strouse, wrote I Love Holly! all over his books last year, and sent her ballons on her birthday. I would never be quite so wild about it, especially when she thought I was scum. Then, in 1987, Craig did it again, with a Miss Jennifer Beam, of whom I know little about due to not having any classes with her. Poor Craig is still at work on that one, and, it’s not going much better than the HOLLY incident.
Just to be different, Craig has made up his own language, Neonian. He says he called it that because he’s really an alien from the planet Neon. He rambles on about Neon; how he accidentally created Holly Strouse with his chemical set; and how when he grows up he wants to become a Nuclear Botanist.
To some, Craig is just a overly imaginative kid with an occasional tendency to go overboard. People closer to him feel that he helps give people a better view of the world through his imagination and insight.

I found this while digging through the hidden recesses of my archives. Turns out there was a project in 8th grade to write about someone else in class. This was about me, as done by Chris Wiser. Frankly, I am just as puzzled now as I was then…

“May Budda bless you and may you get a permanent red hickey on your forehead!” yelled the skinny boy as he ran down the hall. Sean McCormick was only thirteen years old and already his friends referred to him as a saint. Eat your heart out Ferris Bueller, here comes Sean.
Sean has a tall, lean figure and wavy black hair. His dark blue eyes cast a zealous stare on their viewer. Pale skin contours his innerbody along with muscular forearms and bulging biceps. A massive nose hides the remaining portion of his face and his enormous mouth is just beneath it.
Although Sean has the body of a semi-superhuman, he never intends to take advantage of its use. The reason for this could have relation to his high intellectual capabilities. He uses a majority of his mental capacity to invent new theories. Most of his theories are quite hilarious, which is another of his extraordinary qualities. Making people laugh is what Sean does best. He’s a natural Bill Cosby when it comes to jokes.
One of his most appreciated qualifications is his eagerness to learn. Sean is constantly absorbing knowledge and loving it. The topic doesn’t matter, if Sean is there he’s learning something.
In Strack Intermediate,the school in which Sean is presently attending, you’ll find most of Sean’s friends. He most definently plays a big part in amusing them. Leading a prosperous and fruitful life, Sean lives on.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises was complete in 1889, one year prior to his suicide. The work was done in South France after Van Gogh’s retreat to establish an artist’s colony and pursue a “breath of fresh air.” His last two years were spent in and around Arles with occasional confinement to St. Remy Mental Hospital. In any case, the Irises is no more than that – a garden of blue irises with special emphasis on a single white iris. The uprising leaves are add to the frustration of the peace with calm yellow flowers coexisting peacefully at the top of the work.
His move to southern France would be the source of Van Gogh’s influence leading to his mental and physical skill established through the Irises. Van Gogh, while in Paris and the surrounding area, joined up with the Impressionists where he found an admiration for lighting, and small, swift brush strokes. These techniques are apparent not so much in his strokes, but Van Gogh’s long and flowing leaves expressing a free flowing, “natural” look to his irises, or directionless appeal. The lack of direction is accented with a certain craziness, a violent fight between the flowers as they race for the light above, the omniscient light. His light, however, implies midafternoon, neither dusk or dawn, leaving little room for shadows normally involved with the rising and setting sun that also brings forth vibrant colors from the Impressionist – none of which are present.
Amongst these influences, Van Gogh’s failing life and mental stability led him to a great depression. This depression, leading to his suicide, was interacted with his brother Theo and develops towards a well developed theory. The emphasis of a lone white iris, enveloped by several blue flowers of the like, could very well reflect Van Gogh’s loneliness, and isolation. His failed attempt at a colony of artists and rejection by such artists as Gauguin could very much be involved in this breakdown. His works, never achieving fame nor fortune from the populace during his lifetime did not provide any reassurement either. Other speak, however, of the idea that Van Gogh simply ran out of blue paint, and being confined during these years, could not attain more thus completing his work with white paint, a color he used little of throughout the peice.
Irises by Vincent Van Gogh were not as recognized so much for his style and addition to the styles of other Impressionist as much as it reinforces one of the oldest establishments for art, that of reflection. A reflection of the artists thoughts, of his/her lifestyles as well as the often reoccurent “tragedy” of being an artist, unrecognized. Art History, this focus of which, Van Gogh’s and the lifestyles of many other artist leads the public to probe, to discover the troubles and reasons leading to artist’s decisions is an expansion of education, for this reason the Irises cannot be overlooked as a successful definition of a “good piece.”

-Travis Breaux

Bonus points if you can guess how old I was (or at least what grade) when I co-wrote this with my friend Gerry…

“James, X is ready to see you now.”
“Thank you, Moneypenny,” James tried to frisbee his hat at the coat rack, but as usual, it bounced off and landed on the floor. “Ah, well, better luck next time.”
“Doubtful,” Moneypenny said as he walked into X’s office.
“Ahh, James. How nice to see you,” X said as James sat down. “Do you remember OO-3.14159?”
“Oh, yes, Double O Pi. Where has he been lately?”
“Under six feet of earth,” X said, “you see, he’s been dead for over a year now.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and that’s the problem. His spouse hasn’t collected any of the insurance money. And she is threatening to sue the British Secret Service for not taking care of the monetary matters as was specified in his contract. Here,” X gave a thick manila envelope to James.
“What is this?” James said, opening it.
“It’s a record of all the insurance claims from the insurance company in question, EnTrust Life.”
James went down the list of zeros until he came to an enormous sum of money equivalent to 10,000,000 dollars. This was followed by 11 other payments of nearly the same amount.
James turned to X. “What does all this mean?” he asked.
“We’re not quite sure, James, that’s why we put you on the case,” X said.”M&M is waiting for you down in the equipment room,” he said as he led James to the door. James exited the back stairs to the research & development room.
“Ahh, James, how’s life been treatin’ ‘ya, mate?” M&M said.
“Oh, fine. Do you have any new gadgets?” asked James.
“Yea, sure do. Found the lucky woman yet?”
“Nope, and I have a feeling I may never find the lucky woman, or even the ‘lucky for now’ woman,” James said rather coldly.
“Well, let’s get this over with,” M&M said. “First, the Excelsior 2. We got ‘er from Moffett Industries. She drives and dives. Into the ocean that is. I shant like to remember about what happened to the Excelsior.”
“Oh, now that was an accident. I couldn’t see the cliff-,” he said defensively.
“And then we have a free electron laser/ion weapon,” he interrupted. “A rather advanced I/PLOW, you know, an Ion Plasma Laser Weapon, I would say. Folds up to be a lighter it does.”
“Thanks. I’m off to see Lelix.” James said as he took the gun and got into the car.
“Lelix Fighter? Be sure to tell him I said hi!” M&Myelled as James drove off.
Later that day, James walked into Lelixes office.
“Hello Lelix. M&M says hi.”
“Oh, hi James. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I need some information on a company, EnTrust Life,” James said as he took out the manila envelope.
“Oh, Well, I can’t help you directly, but I do have some hardware for your Cray XPC 5 just for that purpose.”
“Oh?”
“Here, let me get it,” Lelix went into the back room and came out with a Speed Search Unit and a box of 15 3.5 WORM* data disks. “Here, the instructions are built in. But these are the same type of things you used back when you were an accountant.”
“Thanks, Lelix.” James took the packages and walked out to the Excelsior 2.
That afternoon, James drove around crusin’ for babes, and finding none, he went home to play with the Speed Search Unit.
He installed it into his computer, and turned it on.
On the screen appeared the familiar CRAY logo, and then the voice recognition system clicked on and said, “Hello James. I see you have installed a new ROM card in me. Shall I start it up?”
“Yes, please.”
“Running the new card now.”
On the screen, the title screen came on and the main menu bar was displayed. In dark letters, the word “Help” came on the screen at the top of the menu bar. James moved the mouse to the words “Telecom Startup”. He clicked the button, said to the computer, “Library of Congress”. The computer dialed the Library of Congresses number, and hooked up into the database. He told the computer “Scan and General Search on EnTrust Life.”. In a flash, millions of different pictures, news clippings, and text came scrawling across the screen.
The computer said, “Shall I have the Library access a general search of all the major sources?”
“Yes,” James said.
Using James’ special clearance the Cray accessed the European Central Intelligence Library, the KGB’s Library, the CIA’s, and of course, the BS Service’s.
“Speed Search complete, fourteen files found. Do you wish to examine files?” the Cray asked.
“Yes,” James said.
Up came the first file. “Personal File-Philip Faulconridge.”
On the screen, a profile of the Englishman appeared. Below, in a resume’-type format, his former and current occupations were listed with a brief description.
James noticed that he was currently president of EnTrust Life.
“He’s not only the president, he’s also a client,” James said.
“Sir, I do not understand that remark,” replied the Cray.
“Oh, never mind.”
James also noticed that his past employment included working at the investment megafirm, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, McNeill, Leherer, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Sacko & Vancetti Incorporated.
“Do you wish to save this?” asked the Cray.
“Yes,” replied James, as he inserted the WORM disk.
“Next File?”
“Yes.”
The files went on and eleven other names appeared, Quentin Durwood, Vridar Iphigenia, Tristram Shandy, Enoch Arden, Maurice Utrillo, Saavedra Lamas, Wentworth Roscommon, Richard Feveral, Barnaby Rudge, Amalthea Hassan, and Aurora Leigh. All of these twelve people either currently or in the past belonged to an investment firm.
After saving all of the files, James shut the computer down and tele-called X.
“Hello, X, It’s James. I may have found an important clue, and I may need some false identity.”
“Okay, I’ll patch you up with M&M, just a sec.”
A moment later, James saw M&M in his bathrobe.
“Hi ‘dere James. What seems to be the problem, mate?” M&M said.
I’m going to need a false I.D. Do you think you could get me ‘prints’ and a new I.D. that would get me onto the GSE Platform?”
“You want fake fingerprints, ‘ya say? Easier said than done. But I figure I can get it all toos ‘ya in about eight hours.”
“Thank you, I’ll see you tomorrow, then, O.K.?”
“Fine with me,” said M&M.
“Bye,” James said as he disconnected.
As it was late, James quickly grew tired and fell asleep.
The next morning, James awoke startled as he realized he fell asleep on the keyboard. “Oh, no,” James cried, “my face looks like a printing press.”
He got up and went into the bathroom to shave and to comb his hair.
Later that morning, James started up the Excelsior 2 and drove off to BS Service headquarters.
“Hi, mate. Find any pretty babes yesterday?” M&M asked as James walked into the room.
“Not yet,” James answered. “Do you have the prints and the false I.D. ready?”
“Sure do. But be careful, a bit fragile, they are.”
“I will.” James got in the Excelsior and drove off to the nearest beach, not to get a tan, but to head for the GSE platform. The GSE Platform is a 10 kilometer square complex in the Atlantic Ocean, used mainly for the trading of stocks of major corporations. He hoped to get some inside information accessible only from the GSE Platform mainframe.

James surfaced and entered his I.D card into the slot next to the boat entrance.
“Hello, Mr. Sinclair, it has been a while since your last visit,” said the robotic female voice.
“Yes, it has,” James replied. The doors opened and he entered the complex. Mechanical arms lifted the Excelsior 2 onto the dock, and secured it in a garage.
When James looked around he was astonished at the number of people. A giant screen was displaying the current prices in GSE currency, the dinaryiad, which was equal to 2.35 American dollars.
James walked toward the elevator, and took it to the apartment that he was given for his stay on the platform, on Level Phi, Apartment No. 914. When he got there, he unlocked the door and unpacked. He had his trusty Cray XPC Portable, a gift from M & M for James’ 3000th try at trying to attract the opposite sex, yet each time failing miserably. He also had his portable Free Electron I/PLOW, his laser wristwatch, which he got from the Home Shopping Club, and a jar of sea monkeys. The sea monkeys and his pet dog, Gipper, were the only pets he had.
Too bad, James thought, that Gipper died last year of watching too many old Ronald Reagan films.
After James finished unpacking he watched the sale prices of stocks whiz by on the monitor in his room for a several minutes, until the closing bell sounded. James plugged in the Cray and turned it on. It went through the familiar start-up sequence.
“I am happy to be with you on your trip, James, I don’t get out often,” The voice said. “Shall I run the A.I. card in slot 4?”
“Yes, well I am happy you are with me,” James replied, “Do you think you could access the stock purchase records, then scan through the listings looking for these names: Philip Faulconridge, Tristram Shandy, Vridar Iphegenia, Enoch Arden, Maurice Utrillo, Wentworth Roscommon, Saavedra Lamas, Barnaby Rudge, Aurora Leigh, Quentin Durwood, Richard Feveral, and Amalthea Hassan?”
“It will take me a couple seconds so I’ll get right on it,” the computer replied. The screen went blank for a couple of seconds, and then purchase records flashed on the screen. James noticed purchases of 4.5% (which is just below the level where reporting the purchase is manditory) of many large corporations including: Unified Technologies, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Dianto Motors Corporation, and United Automotive. It was then that James realized this was much bigger than an unpaid life insurance policy. “I have come up with a possible explanation, and if you would allow me I will explain it to you,” the computer said.
“Go right ahead,”James told it.
“Well, you see,” it began,” each of the twelve people own 4.5% of these major companies. If they were to merge, it would be equal to 54% of the total stock of that company. Not having to inform anyone on the amount of stock they owned would catch the host company off guard and give
EnTrust Life voting control of the company, often called by stockbrokers, pooling of intrest.”
“Why were the policies paid up only to those twelve?”
“It was obvious that the insurance policies that were paid was merely a coverup to get the money into the right hands so that they could by the right stocks. The policies that were not paid up were used to get the money to buy the stocks in the first place.”
“Oh, I-” James was interrupted by the Cray.
“James! I am afraid I’m being monitorrrreddddddd.” The Cray went blank and suddenly on the screen appeared the words, “Hello OO0, alias Mr. Sinclair. We have been monitoring your conversation.” The screen went blank and James stared at it for a little while, when all of a sudden, there was a giant thud as the door came crashing down! Philip Faulkenridge and three big thugs came thundering into the room.
“The last laugh is ours, Vagabond.” Philip said. The thugs cocked their guns and aimed at James.
James realized he was defeated, and said, “Before I go, would you take my sea monkeys and put them in a safe place?” One of them nodded and aimed and fired at the jar, sending sea monkey residue all over the floor. “You monster! My poor sea monkeys!” James whined. “Can I please have one last light up before I go?” James asked, “There is a lighter in my back pocket.”
A man reached around and pulled the lighter out of James’ pocket. As James took the lighter, he pressed a button on his watch (to see how many days old he would be when he went) on the watch he got from the Home Shopping Club when smoke started to spew out of it. “Boss, I can’t see!” said one of the men.
James pressed a button on the lighter as he ran out the door and it unfolded into a small I/PLOW.
James ran to the Excelsior 2, got in, drove off the dock, and plunged into the water. As it dived deeper into the ocean, James converted into sub mode, and glided through the water to the nearest shore.
“Get him!” exclaimed Philip to the other 12.
The other 12, already stationed in the water on alert, went after James.
“It’s hopeless, James, it’s hopeless,” Philip said as he got onto his hydrofoil.
James noticed behind him that other subs were following. One of them shot a torpedo at the Excelsior.
James twisted and turned the craft to avoid being hit, but it grazed him. James shut off all power, and the Excelsior glided to a stop.
The other subs swarmed around the amphibianlike craft. Slowly, a few people in SCUBA gear got out of the car, attempting to get inside. James slumped back in his chair and turned on the special radio that M&Mhad given him to monitor conversations.
“Yea, Trist, go ahead and get those WORM disks out of the cabin.”
“Yes, sir.”
A man edged toward the Excelsior, and as he did, the last man exited his craft. Just then, James let loose with the chain guns.
As the water around him turned bloody red, James started up the Excelsiors engines and powered his way to the surface.
James caught sight of it. The hydrofoil was zooming toward him at amazing speed. The indicator on the dash blinked on, indicating he had only one round of ammunition left. I had better make this one count, he thought. James carefully aimed and fired, and he… he… he… he missed. Quickly James submerged, just barely avoiding being smashed to bits in the wake of the craft. The hydrofoil had been left far behind. But it was turning back around, so James hit the thrusters. He was sent hurling towards the platform. The hydrofoil was far behind, but gaining on him. James, seeing that his fuel was low, decided to disembark upon the chase and refuel on the platform. James neared the concourse, realizing that he would crash otherwise, he submerged underneath the water. There was no hope, however, in stopping the hydrofoil. It slammed into the unattended concourse and exploded in a huge fireball. As James sped back to the platform and converted into car mode, he could smell the raw stench of burning flesh.
James returned to the platform to refuel and get his belongings. A beautiful blonde woman walked up to James as he was walking toward the garages and said, “That’s a nice Cray you have there,” pointing to the XPC he was lugging around.
“Oh,” James said casually, “Maybe I could show you it sometime.”
“Don’t bother, you see, I designed it.”
Rats! James thought. There goes 3001…

*WORM- Write Once Read Mostly – Originally described what we would now call a CD-R, where you can write the disc once, and then it is read only. This term alone should date this paper…

Good Afternoon Sean!!!

Welp, I finished my yardwork and listened to my father tell me of how my gardening plans will only develop into those of the next house owner. That is my mother figure seems to be pushing towards the selling of the house. As I displayed an overall air of distaste my father later said, “Well, you know you don’t have to bag the leaves, we can turn them into the soil. Or better, just sell the garden with the house.” I wasn’t any more pleased. The fact is, my father is planning to place the house on the GREAT HOUSTON MARKET for homes sometime in late Winter or Spring…
Sean how ever did I get into your room… – T. Nelson
So it seems my father plans on moving to an apartment w/ or w/o my personal body. Seems I may be assuming financial responsibility sooner than I had thought. What to do. Welp, if anything, I can give the leaves to Gerry in a month, they will be nice to play with by then. Oh, your daddy-dean was going to pay me four dollars to take Tami home, but trusting my 18 miles to the gallon I thought three would be fine, I gave a dollar back. Besides, I felt bad. If I weren’t broke I would take her home for free. Your daddy-dean shouldn’t have to pay for this sorta thing. You see, it is because your sister-chris called in sick. You probably know this. Welp, tell me if you have any good ideas for next year on my living spaces. If I can’t handle an apartment with my father, I could always live in your’s or Craig’s closet! However, I would feel real guilty by abandoning my father, letting him try and struggle in this changing society with his aging mind. Hell, my brother did it! Why can’t I? C(K)ara said something really bright yesterday, “Do you get some of the [house] money?” Damnit, I really should! Yeah, it was a family of four once, lets divide it all in MY favor! Oh well, seeing that my father and mother are the sole proprietors of the house, I am simply the vulture disguised as a duckling falling from the nest. I love AMERICA! Amen. So mote it be! Your Warlock’n buddy, Trav!

Muhahahahaha!

Comments:
squirrel watcher said…
Welp, there are so many things in there to comment on, I just don’t know where to start . . .

Sean MC said…
This is from back when I had an Apple IIgs and Travis used to leave me messages on it when he was over and I wasn’t home.
Apparently Tami was there too at the time. I date this from around 92′~93′.

Welcome to the category of Quondam Salvos. These are old emails, documents, notes, and other silly stuff that promises to be funny, informative, or just inane. This will be an occasional post, as I find something of interest in the archives…

Today’s post is a pieced-together history lesson from 1999 to present.

1999: Last time, on “My Blue Houston…”

Jinny and I started offically dating on Jan 8th, as did my brother and Staci (though we were not aware of it at the time). In late ‘98, we stared going to Austin whenever we could, and so Staci and Scott started hanging out much more. I proposed on March 1st, and we set the date for 9/9/99, at 10:40:39am (9:99:99). Okay, I set the date, actually. It was supposed to be the first of the Y2K problem dates, and I wanted to be far away in case anything did happen. Plus, it’s hard to forget, and Europeans can’t read it backward. :)

So we got married, and it was good, and all was well.

Well, nothing is that easy, really. My mother & father tried to get Christie on SSI (Social Security Income), and her court appearance just happened to be on 9/9/99 at 8:30am. So somehow, they managed to get to the wedding just before everything started. Ultimately, the plan worked, and she is now paid monthly by the government to be a nomadic lesbian. :)

Ugh. That was a mess.

And then there was Avatar.

I had a 3 year contract with them, and all of 1999, they wanted me to stay on, but they weren’t willing to pay me enough. So right before I left, they got this heinous office manager named Wanda, and she caused me no end of trouble for the last month or so of my tenure there.

But Jinny and I honeymooned in fabulous Dallas and Glen Rose, Texas. (It didn’t seem to make much sense to spend a lot of money since I was unemployed at that moment).

When we got back, I started looking for another job, and I found one at the Six Flags Data Center in Dallas. (Well, Grand Prarie to be more precise.) I was the Citrix/NT administrator for the whole organization. Pretty cool stuff, though it was not as sexy as you would have expected.
The Data Center has none of the cotton candy/roller coaster ride atmosphere you would expect from Six Flags. Go figure. :)

Yes, Jinny and I got married within six months of the proposal. But as you may recall, we were friends for about 7 years, since high school. So I really never thought that it was all that sudden, other than the realization that things just “felt right,” and so we got married. We used to bicker like an old married couple when we were younger; she used to call me “dear” in high school, too. Now we still bicker, but we ARE the old married couple. It’ll be 5 years in September.

Christie is on SSI because she has/had some sort of problem where she couldn’t keep a job; she has been through 32 or more since she started working. I always used to say that if being shiftless and lazy was a way to get on the government payroll, where was my money? But really, she does have a couple of problems, albeit not as bad as you would figure.
Really the whole reason she’s screwed up is my father, and, of course, Dr. Pillpopper, her shrink. But we won’t go there. She’s doing much better now, she’s lost over 150 pounds, and she’s not taking anything but a couple of tokes and 20mg of Paxil a day. At one time, she was on
13 different meds! But she was nomadic for a while, hanging out with random lesbians in random places, though they all seem to congregate in Michigan, which is where she is to this day. But I am getting ahead of myself. My sister had a pretty bad episode with her trucker friend Tyler, who tried to kill herself via hanging in front of my sister. It was not a good situation. This was one of those fun 1999 moments that I forgot to mention.
Tyler died, by the way, and Christie was even more of an emotional wreck than she normally was at that time.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have
– the end of 1999.

BTW, Travis once sent me a letter that had “Warning, illegal narcotics inside” written all over it. What a nice guy. Also BTW, Davy became a white supremacist for a while. Travis has since mellowed out and now he doesn’t drive like crap any more.

2000: So, what were your Y2K plans?

My mother spent most of 1999 gathering all the strange survivalist gear she could, on a tip from her sister that the end of the world was coming. My father was okay with it as long as the stuff could be used in case of a hurricane. They stayed home.

Scott & Staci came up to Arlington, where Jinny and I lived, and we feasted on a steady diet of champagne and CNN, watching the fireworks in Bora Bora (or whereever) as each hour approached.

By the time 2000 actually hit, we were too blitzed to go out and party, so we sat on the porch and listened to the passing cars all honk their horns.

Then, the next day, we went rollerblading. (after recovering from the night before, of course).

In early 2000, Jinny and I spend time getting adjusted to married life, and we went to Fort Worth regularly to see our friend Jason. Jinny got a job at a place just up the road from my work, and we got a dog.
Moxie, our Shih-Tzu. She’s a red/white color, with a very cat-like attitude.
Moxie is definitely a travel dog, and goes with us whenever we went anywhere. She stays home on long trips (like our vacation) just because the logistics are troublesome, but on most other occasions she’s all about getting in the car and parking it in front of the A/C vent.

Christie had by this time moved out to MI to be with her girlfriend, Corinne.

Scott and Staci by now both lived in Austin, and they bought a dog too. Dizzy, an irritating jack russell terrier that is scared of everything. Everything, that is, except stepping on your crotch, and peeing on your shirt, which it does with alarming regularity.

So all was going well, or so we thought.

Sometime in April/May, my mother decided she must have a thyroid condition, because she was starting swell at the ankles. She battled back and forth with her HMO, and they were not convinced that that was her problem. But the color started to drain from her face, and her feet started to swell. She was tired all the time, and at one point one doctor told her she had walking pneumonia. But of course, that didn’t stop her from working.

In July, my cousin Shane, a police officer in Michigan, wrapped his cop car around a tree on the way to a break-in. Apparently, the roads were wet, and his car slid into the tree, and that was it. He died almost immediately. My mother was upset by this and at this time was starting to not feel so well.

I knew my mother was not feeling so well, but it did not occur to me to question her; she was a nurse, after all, right?

In late September, I got a call from my Dad, saying she had been admitted to the hospital, and the doctors had diagnosed congestive heart failure. They pumped three liters of fluid out of her chest cavity.

And then her kidneys went south.

So they sent her down to Methodist hospital, where they then diagnosed her with Thrombic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (It’s fun to say, but not to have), and they started her on a regimen of daily blood plasma replacement therapy, combined with dialysis for her now necrotic kidneys.

Then she burst a coronary artery.

So they cracked her open, sewed her back up, and realized that her tissue was very friable.

She was so loving and open; all the pain and crap didn’t seem to phase her.

By now it was late October, early November. I was coming down to see her in the hospital every weekend (a 4-1/2 hour trip) and really, she wasn’t getting any better.

By mid-November, she started losing her composure. In fact, by Thanksgiving, she wasn’t speaking at all, and all the drugs that they had given her caused her to lose complete ability to move her legs. Around this time, she said her last words to me, with her mind half gone, which were “I’m NOT GETTING OUT!”

Two days later her toes started to turn black and go necrotic.

Two days after that her fingertips went too.

And on December 6, 2000 about 4:30pm, she passed away.

What had really happened? Well, three things, that I can gather.
1) She compulsively overworked herself.
2) She had a minor (silent) heart attack in Late Feb. This caused the edema and congestive heart failure.
3) Her tissue became extremely friable as a result of Systemic Lupus.

Well, let me tell you, get ready for messiness when a loved one passes away.
And the messiness just began.

I realized a week or two before Thanksgiving that my mother was going to die in that hospital. And at one point, before she admited to me she wasn’t getting out, she told me that she had made a list of funeral arrangements when Shane died, just in case anything ever happened.

So I went back to house and found them, and took care of most of the arrangements to bury my 50 year old mother.

It’s so depressing to find your mother’s funeral arrangements in her own handwriting; especially when you know you are going to have to use them soon.

At that time my father still had hope, but he was and still is in la-la land most of the time.

So December that year was really depressing. And my mother had passed away on St. Nicholas Day.

Anyway, she was buried in Evans City, PA, in the same cemetary there.
They used this cemetary to film the original “Night of the Living Dead.”
It’s high on a hill, and in the winter, when the trees lose their leaves, you can see down into the valley below the little house that she grew up in.

My father was a basket case for most late 2000. This is why I had to do most of the funeral arrangements. Right after the funeral, he almost totalled his car too. With the help of plenty of SSDI’s, though, he became happier. (That and my mother’s insurance policy, of course). My
mother was the cohesive unit in the family. It soon became apparent that no one went home to see Mom and Dad, just Mom. And then she was gone.

The good news is that by the time she died and was in the coffin, she no longer even really looked like my mother. I lost my mother the moment she said “I’m NOT GETTING OUT.” Because about that time, she had lost all muscle tone, and she just stared off into space in a sickening, vapid way. She didn’t even have the capacity to perform her own bowel movements. By that time the lupus had started eating away at her brain and nervous tissue, more or less. 50 years ago, she would have died three days after she entered the hospital, because they wouldn’t have caught her kidneys going south in time.
A much less painful death. So much for modern medicine.

I haven’t talked with anyone about this stuff in a while, so I’m sorry if it comes out in spurts or reads awkwardly.

So that was funeral #2 for me, since funeral #1 was Scottie Garrison. I had never seen a dead body before then. But it started becoming pretty commonplace soon.

I grew up a lot that year. Most of early 2001 seems like a dreary dream.

2001: the REAL start of the millenium. (Though no one likes a math nerd, right?)

My mother was a compulsive family-letter writer, and Grandma has given me all of the family letters that she has EVER written. So I now have a week by week account of my family descending into madness (er, I mean, ah, growing up). And as Christie gets older in the letters, there is more and more about her and less and less about anything else. It was very therapeutic to go through these letters, and now they are all organized; binders, clear plastic sleeves, the whole bit. It takes up a whole shelf in the closet.

That was one of the things I did in 2001.

2001 was also marked by my father going nuts. He decided to do all the things to the house he always wanted to do that Mom told him was too expensive. He redid the carpet, replaced the oven, microwave, tile in the kitchen, stove, hardwood floors all downstairs, etc. After he got finished with that, Jinny decided now was the time to get him looking a little more fashionable. So we took him to the outlet mall and he spend almost $1000 in one sitting. He looked pretty good, I thought.

What we couldn’t help him with was his love life, and by the end of 2001, he decided he should start looking soon.

Christie broke up with Corinne, and managed to shatter her ankle. They pinned the hell out of it, and she was up walking again soon enough.

I got bored with Six Flags, and Jinny wanted to spend more time with her family. Plus, we thought it might be a good idea to try to steer Dean in a better emotional direction. Anyway, for a variety of reasons, we moved back to Houston and I got a job with my current company (eP) in June of 2001, and we bought a house in The Woodlands in August of 2001.

Then 9/11 happened, and I just kind of felt overwhelmed. I don’t know why, but for some reason, all the changing of jobs, buying a home, Mom died 9 months ago, etc. was just too much. It took quite a few months to adjust to all the crap that had just happened, and then they go and crash planes into buildings. OKC and Waco never affected me at all.
They were sad events, alright, but they didn’t effect me personally.

So we end 2001 with me working diligently on the house; tearing up the old deck, putting in a new one, spending a lot of time working on things to keep my mind off everything else.

2002: Settling into Red Cedar Place

2002 was pretty quiet, all told, except that in July, right after I got back from a trip to see the grandparents in PA, my father met this woman online, and 9 days later, Sherry had moved in (with her 12-year-old kid, too), and two days after that, they were engaged. Naturally, I freaked, so I ran over there and grabbed all of Mom’s stuff, with Christie & Scott backing me up (in spirit, since they weren’t here). Well, this lady stuck around for a while, and I gradually realized she wasn’t anymore crazy than my father, and in fact, we were all warming up to her (slowly, mind you) when Dad and Sherry broke up, probably because she didn’t let him get away with as much as Mom used to. This was around Thanksgiving.

Travis came back from Mongolia where he had been with the Peace Corps, and he had Thanksgiving dinner with us. He made an offhand remark about how he had a friend that was trying to find a Russian mailorder bride, and my father’s ears perked up. Oh no! What fury of God hath Travis wrot?

He started making plans that night, probably.

2003: Deans, Dams and Dismay

On February 1st, 2003, Scott proposed to Staci, and they wound up setting a date for their wedding in May, in… Las Vegas. I was less than pleased, being that, well, Las Vegas is, well, Las Vegas, but Jinny convinced me to make the best of it and we toured the country, driving up through the Texas Big Bend country, to Carlsbad Caverns, then Roswell, and then off to Lincoln, NM, to see where Billy The Kid lived. From there we saw White Sands, then Tombstone, and Bisbee, Arizona, (where we went on a tour of an abandoned copper mine) then off to Phoenix and onward, through the Joshua Tree “Forest”, over the Hoover Dam, and finally Las Vegas.

We were there long enough to see (hear is really more like it):

Scott being rude to my father.

My father being rude to my brother, namely by my father taking the next flight home.

All of this before the wedding. It was great, let me tell you. While I admit my brother was probably being a jerk, my father got huffy and took the next flight back to Houston. So, needless to say, he was not at my brother’s wedding. And the worst part of it was we did not know he was pulling this stunt until the music began playing…

I didn’t talk to my father until Christmas Day of that year, and even then, not until after I had sent him a lump of coal in his stocking. It’s hard to find coal in Texas, I had to get my grandparents to find me some.

On the way home, we saw the Grand Canyon, and traveled Route 66 as much as possible. Good stuff, though my sister spent most of the time in the back seat, talking on her cell phone with her girlfriend.

So 2003 was pretty freaky.

2004: Oompa-loompa Dopity Doo…

My father retired in June, and Jinny’s father retired in August. Jinny’s parents are moving to the town of Stephenville, located about 75 miles SW of Fort Worth. It’s a nice little town, and they plan to stay there for a few years while Pam finishes her degree. Jinny’s brother is dating, actually, engaged, to a real life Oompa-Loompa. Okay, so she does not have green skin, but she really is a midget.

I think I’ve covered enough ground for today; join me tomorrow when I extol the virtues of the Oompa-Loompa (there are none, really).

Scott and Staci’s wedding was pretty, though I would rather saw my legs off then get married in Vegas. It’s so trite, and, well, rather friggin’ lame, if you ask me. If had to get married again, I’d get married in the middle of a large forest, sometime in the mid-morning, late spring, when the trees would have leaves again and the shadows from the tall tree trunks would cast shadows down in alternating stripes of light and dark onto the forest floor.

Or I’d just to the justice of the peace, whichever is cheaper. tee hee.

Anyway, they got married, and the wedding was okay, but Dean and Scott did not talk from May 15, 2003 to Sept 6, 2004. And it was Dean who finally called Scott, which he indeed should have. I don’t believe they have talked since then, though.

I’m kind of torn, because yes Dean was such an a**hole, but since then my brother has followed in his footsteps of a**holedom. So at this point, I’d rather hang out with my father than my brother. Dean just wants to do dinner or smoke a cigar over at my house (not inside, thankfully.) Scott wants to come down, spend the whole weekend and generally drive Jinny and I bonkers.

And then there is the Oompa-Loompa. Jinny’s brother, Mike, has had a saga of his own. He went into the army back in the late 90’s, served 2-1/2 years, and then came down with Crohn’s disease. After a bout or two of that, he was given a medical discharge. So he gets retirement benefits from the army, and he is only 25. BUT– his taste in women is pretty pathetic. Mandy is this girl who used to live next door to them, and yes, she has dwarfism, but that is not why I hate her so. I hate her so because he was recently hospitalized with a bout of his Crohn’s disease, and he was in the hospital a week, and SHE NEVER CAME TO SEE HIM. And she writes hot checks, steals her relatives credit cards, and generally makes Mike work. Which he shouldn’t have to do, since he gets a full retirement from the Army. (Yes, I’m aware it is not a lot, but if she had a job, any job, it would be plenty…) Meanwhile, she is the worst kind of pothead pill-popping drug-seller I have met in a long time, and I have met quite a few.

But Mike “loves” her, even though she treats him like crap, and they are engaged. Maybe he does, and he is just a masochist. Because she is definitely dragging him closer to the grave.

Jinny and I have been married a good five years, and we made a pact we would talk about kids after five years. So, here we are, still talking. Kids are great and all, I’m just not sure– in fact, she is less sure than I am. We were getting gentle pressure from my mother to spawn, but since she passed away, there’s been no pressure, really.

We just got Jinny’s parents moved off to Stephenville this weekend. They are finally in their new home, which is 250+ miles away from us. How well will this work out? I dunno, we’ll see. But now I can finally relax and not lift any heavy furniture for at least a week or two.

Staci has managed to completely alienate herself from all of her friends, and most of those people are STILL my friends. So when they come down, we can’t all just hang out like one big happy group, no, they have to be pretentious and snotty. It’s what happens when you live in Austin too long. If you think Boston is liberal…

My brother bought a bike (a $1200 bike!) and ugh, bike pants, and he is being so-o cool.

So I figured I’d throw them for a loop and tell them I was planning on getting a pickup truck. Not only didn’t they get it, they just kept telling me that there was plenty of room for hauling things in their little Honda CR-V, why did I need a big ugly pickup truck. And then they started chiding me about gas mileage. Can you see me roll my eyes?

The kids issue is kind of floating around over here; I think Pam and Bob (Jinny’s parents) want a grandkid, but they didn’t have kids until almost 9 years into their marriage, so they still aren’t pushing, yet. Still, I don’t want to drop dead of a heart attack before my kid graduates high school, so I think we should do something one way or the other before too long. I’m 30! (yeah, I know, it’s not that old, whatever…)

I always thought adopting a cute Asian girl would be neat, but Jinny was not interested. Maybe she thinks I’d pull a Woody Allen or something? I’m not sure what her issue is on that, but oh well. And here I thought a “recycled” baby was a good idea to avoid stretch marks… :)

Okay, okay, I admit, that a CR-V has a decent amount of space. (for holding luggage, dog crates, etc.) But none of this was the point. The real point is that my brother is wearing BIKE PANTS. This is completely NOT the person he once was. He has made fun of men in bike pants on more than one occasion. So I thought I’d get him by saying I was getting cowboy boots and a pickup truck. But even I am still revolted by the thought of wearing cowboy boots so I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

Comments:

DJ Haggis said…
Longest.blog.article.ever.
:)
Welcome to the blogosphere, you’re linked :)

squirrel watcher said…
Mike was in the hospital THREE weeks and she didn’t call, Travis was here for Christmas, and I wouldn’t mind a Russian baby because they have it worse than the Chinese and everyone’s rushing to get a Chinese girl. Oh yeah, and the Woody Allen thing! But seriously, Dean is more fun to hang out with than your poofter brother and Selma Blair. So can I leave the Longest.comment.post.ever?

Psy Guy said…
wow!
That is Long!
I thought mine was long!
ummmmmmmm
Stop that! You know what I’m talking about!
Pervert!
:)

squirrel watcher said…
There are too many Long Blogs around here! What we need is a Tuna Can!
NOT.