Sandy gets vaccinated with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine tonight! Since we are not really vaccinated until both of us are vaccinated, I call this a holiday. I never had the side effects that some had, and I hope that Sandy’s currently overactive immune system will not cause him grief from this shot.
So, two weeks from now is Easter weekend, which we usually spend at Lake Waccamaw with my sister and brother-in-law, the only close family that either of us have now. I hope that we will be able to make the trip down there. They have always been precious to both of us, but that feeling has grown with their absence from our lives. It’s like my sister and I are each other’s mother now.
We have other family that we love dearly, but three of them are far away across the country. One of them I have never met – Sandy’s niece, Lena. We have an online relationship that is good. My niece Brooke is in Chapel Hill and is currently working hard to get her life back on track, and we have always been close. My nephew in North Carolina seems to have distanced himself from our side of his family, which, to be honest, I can hardly blame him. We found out through his brother’s post on Facebook that he got married. It hurts because I often have said that if I could have a son, I would want him to be just like my nephew. I love him very much too, although I never got to know him in the depth that I wanted. It wasn’t for lack of trying. I even offered to buy him a plane ticket to travel with us several years ago when we went to Oregon. Anyway, it has taken me several months of grief but I have come to accept it. I can’t do anything about it, so…I am taking this very big hint and letting him go.
I can understand wanting to divorce your family in certain circumstances. I was lucky to be raised by my parents, who, although they definitely had their problems, were so far and away more normal than my husband’s family. Last weekend we visited with friends outside and he started telling some stories from his childhood and teenage years that reminded me just how appalling his home life was. Then he talked about how that when he met my family, he felt so lucky to be able to become a part of it. It made me much more appreciative of what I had growing up. My husband and his brother were abused and neglected.
One story he told, which I don’t think that I’d ever heard before, was that when he was a teenager, his stepfather stole his mother’s car and ran off to Florida. The police wouldn’t help her, even though it was in her name. So they flew to Florida, she distracted him while Sandy hot-wired the car, and then they stole her car back.
Is that badass or what?
It also is a good example of the hurdles women faced in the 60s. Women still had very few rights when it came to employment, money, credit, and possessions. She was a social worker with a graduate degree. I think that Sandy’s experience growing up informed much of his feminism. He got to see firsthand the damage that misogyny and poverty creates.
Whew, I didn’t expect to go off in that direction.
Sandy finally got an appointment for the muscle biopsy. We will be heading to Burlington this coming Thursday morning, since that was the earliest appointment we could get. Both of us will be relieved to get a firm diagnosis so that he can begin getting treatment. He is very, very frustrated at his condition and talks a lot about going back to either the Y or the aquatic center to begin swimming again.
We both need haircuts in the worst way. Sandy started cutting his hair at the front and now he has an old man mullet. He says that he is going to shave his beard and mustache. Mine is long and getting very gray and falling out a lot. Between that and the cats everything in the house is covered in hair. When I find long silver strands, there is little doubt that I am the culprit.
We had a couple of small tornadoes in our county on Thursday night. It is not unusual for North Carolina to get winter and spring tornadoes, but it is always scary to get that tornado warning. Sandy barely looked away from his computer screen while I was piling up pillows in the center of the house away from the windows. He is never concerned about the weather. I focus on it a lot – I guess partly because of being a farmer’s daughter and we were expected to tell my father the weather report when he got home. Pre-internet and cable/satellite TV, you had to rely on local TV and radio stations, and we didn’t have many. When you grow up in a farming family, and you are a gardener, the weather forecast is very important.
Speaking of, the next post will have PHOTOS!
slowly she turned 