I’m glad to know that my blog has been sorely missed by some (and moderately by others). I was being optimistic when I made an offline entry two and a half weeks ago, thinking that ecom meant it when they said my credit card would be reprocessed in 24 hours…
Where to start… Jeez. I never thought I’d actually use my website to communicate with people, no matter how small an audience. You seven people are important to me, dammit! 🙂
OK… here’s the narrative of what you missed.
Week After The Wedding: Honeymoon, duh! Monday was a travel day — got to Cummington, Massachusetts in roundabout 12 hours, give or take eating and fueling. Aaron drove the whole dang thing. Tuesday we drove up to Mt. Greylock, the tallest peak in the state. Wednesday we drove out to Boston and spent the evening and night there; Thursday evening we drove back. Friday we left Cummington and headed west to Niagara Falls, where we spent Friday night. Saturday afternoon we completed the drive home, only to get the message that Memaw had just died that day (shortly after we had driven through Cleveland, in fact. How weird). What a downer. Called work on Sunday, left a message that I’d be out for three more days.
Week Before Last: Didn’t really need to take all three available days of bereavement pay, but I did. The funeral was on Tuesday in Parma, and I drove there because Aaron had to drag his ass out of bed much earlier than he would have liked. He slept a good deal of the way there. Got there, ate lunch at Mom and Gary’s, and steeled ourselves for the funeral. The "viewing" was the first hour, although Mom had opted to have the service be closed-casket. I provided a nicely matted and framed Olan Mills portrait of Memaw back in the early 80’s, before she even went gray — the way I remember her best. The viewing was a little strange, because I saw people I hadn’t seen in years and was glad to see, despite the circumstances. Also, Aaron and I received many congratulations on our recent marriage, in the shadow of Memaw’s death, which confused my brain. I wasn’t all that mournful to begin with, but I was downright happy after a while, seeing my Aunt Connie and Brother Squire from church and all. The service was small, relatively brief, but appropriate — come to think of it, the drive to the cemetery was longer than the service, I think. 🙂 We ate dinner afterward at a local restaurant where my step-brother Philip works as a cook (he’s 16 and just got a car, fyi). I guess the best part about the whole affair was that Mom got back together with her best friend Connie.
Last Week: Full week of work? Wow. Same old shit, finally. Oh, yeah, and we picked up our wedding proofs.
This Week So Far: Flew to Fort Worth, Texas on Saturday (and boy are my… oh, nevermind). First airplane ride since I was less than a year old. Fun. I want to do it again, despite having to remove my shoes for the nice metal detector. Texas was actually OK; we visited the Water Gardens (featured in the 1970’s sci-fi flick Logan’s Run), Cowtown (the original Fort Worth downtown, complete with fake gunfights on the hour and more cowboy hat stores than you can shake a shotgun at), and a water park (with a wave pool and enough innertube rides to keep me happy and my face out of the water). The Smoke clan is actually much cooler than you would think, given only Gary as an example. Mom and Gary stayed until today, but I bailed on Tuesday. Got home around 10pm, went to work the next morning. Since then, things have been pretty normal again.
Don’t worry, I’ll supply a better, longer, and illustrated version of the honeymoon soon. I’ve just been disinterested in updating lately, since, well, no one was going to see it.