Once I got home, I was immediately struck by how old and tired my dad looked. I have to say that it was a little depressing.
With all of the really deep bruising leaving him a dark shade of purple in a bunch of different areas he looked like someone had kicked the crap out of him.
The major incision in his chest wasn’t as bad as my grandpa’s had been, though, and given that they sealed the incisions with something like super glue rather than stitches should minimize the scarring.
In any case, I should look so good after effectively dying and having pieces of me moved from one spot to another inside of me, and the fact of the matter is that after a good night’s sleep he looked liked his usual self on Wednesday morning.
No random person looking at him would be able to tell that he was 70 and had just had quadruple bypass surgery less than two weeks earlier.
Speaking of Wednesday, I spent it not doing much of anything. I helped my mom open up the gazebo, which my dad had sealed up with a tarp for the winter, and that was pretty much it.
On Thursday my brother Brad came in, so I drove us up to the airport to pick him up. We stopped and had lunch, then went over to Kim’s to visit for a while before doing some shopping on the way home.
Friday we had to head to town again, as my dad had a doctor’s appointment. While my dad was at the doctor’s I went to the nearly-deserted mall to get a haircut.
(On the topic of the mall, it’s just sad. It was never much of a mall to begin with, but now it’s about 95% empty.)
It was a strange change of pace to get a haircut from someone who spoke more English than just “How you want?” and “Fourteen dollar.”
More significantly, it was a very nice change of pace to have the person understand “how I want” and actually cut it that way.
Also, this haircut was only ten dollar.
While he was waiting for me my brother randomly bumped into one of his best friends from high school, who actually had a daughter graduating that weekend.
After that we picked up my dad and went out to eat again. This time it was at a restaurant that used to be bar. It wasn’t a bar I went to often, but I drank there a time or two.
While we were there my mother began to more fully realize just how difficult it is for my dad to dine out on his low-sodium diet.
The sodium thing is insane. He has to try to stay below 2400 mg of sodium every day. Do you realize how little that is? There’s sodium in everything. As my dad jokingly told his doctor, there’s 200 mg of sodium in a toothpick.
Really, the only option available to my dad is to just eat very small portions and accept the fact that there are certain things he’s never going to be able to eat again.
After that we headed home, where my dad eventually suggested that we take my mom to the casino to give her a chance to get out of the house and blow off some steam.
Of course my mom wasn’t about to leave my dad (who had nearly made her blow her top on Wednesday by walking down the stairs into the basement) home alone, and since I’m not that big a fan of gambling (Or as I call it, losing, as there’s no real “gamble” involved; I’m just flat-out going to lose), that left me with dadsitting duty.
A little after 8, though, my dad decided to go to bed, and I couldn’t help but think that I must be lousy company. After all, my brother and mother ditched me, and my dad went to bed while the sun was still relatively high in the sky in order to get away…
Most of Saturday was spent helping my mom make food for the party, but that night my brother asked me if I wanted to go to the casino. I didn’t, really, but I did want to get out of the house, so he and I went for a little while.
I lost about $15 in short order, but I put $20 into an “Amazing Spider-Man” game and took out $30 (prior to hitting that bonus I was beginnig to think that maybe J. Jonah Jameson is right ant that Spiey really is a public menace), bringing my total losses down to $5, and ending my desire to do any more losing.
My brother soon lost interest as well, and so we headed home.
Ever since I began going home for regular visits after a 2+ year absence back in 2003 I have begun noticing just how ugly the people there are. I mean, not everyone is ugly, but there are enough ugly people that you begin to suspect that someone set off an ugly bomb or something.
Beyond that, the guy who made that “Super Size Me” documentary should check the place out. I’ve come to suspect that, along with fluoride and chlorine, someone is putting fat in the water supply.
The casino provided quite a cross-sampling of these fugly people (though there was one pretty little thing in a short skirt…with her big goon of a boyfriend), and given that the median age was even higher than the flight of the Geritol Brigade that I was on out of Dulles, I began to suspect that the U.P. may, in fact, be where ugly people go to die.
I know, I know, this is an extremely harsh way to talk about the land of my birth, but you have to consider that it is, necessarily, the place that serves as the source of most of my memories, and it should come as no surprise that most of my memories aren’t good.
The U.P. (U.P. stands for Upper Peninsula, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, the other part of Michigan above the oven mitt-looking peninsula.) is, in terms of its landscape, a beautiful place. Even in winter, when the months and months of darkness and unending snowfall crush your soul in despair, there are moments when you’re struck by the beauty of the blanket of white that serves as a contrast to the iron-gray sky, and in the summer and fall…well, like I said, it’s a beautiful place.
But there’s nothing there. As long as I can remember the entire area has been economically (and intellectually and spiritually) depressed and every attempt at bringing real industry and economic stimulus to the area has failed. Miserably.
And so it remains in a state of almost perpetual decay. Decaying buildings, decaying people, decaying hopes.
And this is where I go on vacation...
Anyway, on a (much) more positive note, Sunday brought us Jourdan’s graduation.
Brad and I were seated in the nosebleed section, with my mom and dad, my sister Kristy and her husband Ken seated slightly lower in the balcony, but we were able to see Jourdan from there pretty clearly.
The ceremony lasted just under an hour, which was good, as it was pretty hot in that auditorium and our noses were assaulted by that scent that’s vaguely akin to that of institutional-grade chicken noodle soup that invariably develops in close quarters.
In fact, the quarters were so close that it seemed rather like one of my visions of Hell in there, with sweaty, smelly people pressed up against me on all sides.
The valedictorian of the class (whom Jourdan doesn’t like, apparently) was something of a Junior Republican. In her speech, which provided sort of a timelines of the lives of the class of 2005, she mentioned that Reagan was President when they were born, and then she mentioned Bush…then there was a gap of eight years before she mentioned Dubya, closing on how in 2004 she got to see him give a speech on the election trail.
I imagine she was fuming when the commencement speaker (a fairly nice guy I used to know back in my PR days, as he was a member of the Board of Trustees at the college I worked for who managed to keep his speech short) not only relayed a positive story about former President Jimmy Carter, but also made a humorously disparaging comment about Dubya…
And then it was over and it was party time!
…
There are a lot of people who claim that you don’t have to drink to have a good time.
Those people are full of shit.
Okay, okay, that was harsh and untrue.
It’s just that it’s so much easier to have a good time when you’re drinking, especially when you’re at a party with my family…
On that point, it was actually the first time in almost six years that the whole family had been together, so it was nice that we were all able to get together.
Overall, it was a nice party, but being one of the very few people there not drinking put kind of a damper on things.
Not that I wanted to drink, but it’s never fun to be the odd man out.
My mom and dad don’t drink either, but even if I wanted to I wouldn’t have been able to hang out with them, as they had lots of other people to talk to.
Jourdan’s friends all hid off to the side of the house so that Jourdan could smuggle beer to them away from my mother’s line of sight.
On the topic of my mother’s watchful eye, she actually carded one girl who was drinking a beer.
Said girl, the older sister of one of Jourdan’s friends, was 24. After seeing the two of us talking, briefly, wheels began turning in Jourdan’s head and she apparently thought that the girl and I would be a good match (despite the fact that said girl lives in Florida and I live in Virginia).
She was actually kind of cute, and we had been finding that we had things in common as we talked, but abruptly, mid-conversation, she just stopped talking to me and walked away.
If Jourdan had any matchmaking aspirations they didn’t get the chance to see fruition, though, as the girl left not long after.
Eventually my dad got tired, so I drove us all (me, my parents, and Brad) home (ah, the joys of being the designated driver). My sister-in-law Shannon hadn’t been drinking either, so she drove my brother Stuart and their kids home, but my sister Kristy and Ken ended up crashing at Kim’s for the night.
In the end, in addition to the gifts with less monetary, but more sentimental value (the chest from my dad and the stethoscope from her dad), Jourdan made out like a bandit, especially considering that they hadn’t really sent out that many announcements.
On Monday Brad and I headed to town to eat at the Chinese buffet place, then were off to the movies with Kim, Dean, and the kids to see “Revenge of the Sith.”
Brad’s flight back to Rhode Island left at 7:15 on Tuesday morning, so I had to get up really damn early to drop him off.
If I had realized that he was taking that early flight I probably would have as well, but when I bought my tickets I had opted for a later flight.
So I had to drive back to my mom and dad’s where I squeezed in a couple of hours more of sleep.
At the end of the day I headed to Kim’s, said my goodbyes to the kids, and then Kim and Dean brought me up to the airport.
Jeremy, who has a learner’s permit, wanted to drive, but I told him that I didn’t want him on the road until I was safely in the air...
Because my dad can’t drive for so long, the van is being left at Kim’s so as to remove any temptation.
My flight to Minneapolis was largely uneventful, though once again (as I did on all of my flights) I found myself on a fully-booked flight.
Along the way I actually managed to spot my parents’ house from the air, the first time I’d done so.
Earlier that day my mom had taken two of the “Get Well Soon” balloons my dad had gotten, which were running low on helium, and set them loose to see how high they would go. It turned out to be pretty high, and it wasn’t long before we totally lost sight of them as they drifted up and away. My dad made a joking comment about how I might find one of them on a trail out here on one of my walks, but as I flew over the house I considered the slightly more statistically plausible possibility that one of the balloons might get caught in one of the propellers…
I hadn’t been hungry prior to leaving, and thought that I’d have a chance to grab a quick bite in Minneapolis, but by the time I got to my gate the flight was already boarding.
Later, I tried to buy one of their “Smart Snacks,” but because she couldn’t break a twenty, which was all I had on me, the flight attendant wouldn’t sell me one.
Once I finally deplaned I found that my suitcase had apparently been the first one loaded on the plane, as it was the absolute last one to come out onto the carousel.
I finally made it outside where Brian, after making 31 laps around the airport, picked me up and brought me home.
And so here I am.
Am I glad I went? Of course, but I have to say that visiting the U.P. always leaves me feeling a little depressed (and glad that I was only there for a visit).
In a typically Jon-like bit of lousy planning I signed up for a two-day training class at headquarters which starts tomorrow.
When I signed up I failed to notice that it was right after I got back from vacation, meaning that I only have one day to recover from my travels, and also that I only get paid straight time rather than time and a half.
Ah well.
It also means that on Friday morning I go in to work for a couple of hours, drive to headquarters for the class for eight hours, then head back to work to round out the day.
And of course on Monday I get to go to the oral surgeon and have teeth pulled.
By the time my post-vacation travails are over I’m going to need another vacation, though ideally it would be to someplace that engenders a little less despair in the pit of my soul…and that has hot chicks in bikinis.
I really don’t mean to make it sound like going home was horrible. Obviously I needed to see my dad, and was relieved to see how well he’s recovered, and I was very proud of Jourdan and happy to see the rest of my family.
In any case, that’s the semi-condensed tale of my travels. I’m sure I’ll have more things to bring up in future entries, but that will do it for now.
Given the timing of my training class I may not be able to post anything tomorrow, so for you Threshold junkies who were hoping for more of a fix after such a long dry spell all I can say is tough sh…umm, I mean, “sorry.”
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