To Feel How an Ice Cream Felt

My last grandparent died today. It's a strange feeling, not having any grandparents, but I didn't really have this one for a long time. He was what you might call "estranged." That sounds a little more exotic than it was. It was just that he didn't really have any sort of relationship with his son, my awesome Dad, so there was no reason to bring over a Hillshire Farms sausage basket on x-mas. As evidence of the lack of said relationship I would offer up that my Grandparents wrote maybe one letter to my Dad during his two tours of Vietnam as a paratrooper. Or that they encouraged him to drop out of high school the same year that one of their friends offered to pay $100 for two of Dad's art class paintings at a Back to School Night.

Maybe that's not a lack of a relationship. That's a lack of something deeper than that. Like a Dad.

My Dad, on the other hand, is supportive, loving and inspiring. He broke the cycle of crazy for sure. How did he do that?

So as Morales says in Chorus Line "I dug right down to the bottom of my soul, to feel how an ice cream felt..."

Olympia - it's not just for the Olympics anymore

I spent the past week in Olympia, or "Oly" as we WA State types like to say. Vic's parents were on a romantic getaway, but we were on an unromantic getaway to said Vic's childhood home to take care of the 17-year-old cat that they call "cat" because her real name, Garfield, is so distasteful to everybody. This cat ain't eating lasagna. We had to feed her Catlax to keep her, uh, regular.

I imagined, as I do, hopelessly, that the time would be a wonderful renaissance of creative activity for me. That I would not be distracted and would barrel down and get some last minute writing going. Not so. I did study the four-act structure of the hour long drama, however, watching episode upon episode of '24' season one and wishing that David Palmer's wife would D-I-E. No matter what I do there is no escaping who I am. I long to be an artist but I just can't seem to rise above. Poor Jack Bauer.

The passover question

Sometimes you ask yourself the passover question on a day that's not passover. Being Episcopalian, I rarely get a chance to ask it on passover itself.

Why is this night different from all other nights?

Today I am starting this blog. I've stayed away from blogs, not wanting to assume that the minutia of my life is interesting to anyone. Most days it's barely interesting to me. Hoping I'll find a way to make this space entertaining or useful. Or maybe I'm hoping that sharing some thoughts with the world will push me to have new and exciting answers to the passover question.

What makes this night different from all other nights? What makes this day different from all other days?