Family Ties

I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that I don’t hold any particularly strong affection for the place of my birth.
After all, there’s a reason – a lot of them, actually – that I no longer live in the UP.
If I didn’t have family there, I can’t think of a single reason why I would ever go back.  Certainly I’d never be driven by any sense of nostalgia or some kind of quest to reconnect with my youth or whatever, though that has more to do with the kind of person I am – one who’s not typically motivated by those kinds of things – and not so much with the place itself.
It’s not that I hate it there, or that I don’t have any good memories of my life there, but…it’s just a place.  A place I happened to live in for the majority of my life.
(For the record, it’s not like Northern Virginia is all that great either, though it certainly has some things going for it that, on balance, make it more appealing than the UP.)
In the times I’ve visited over the years several people have asked me when I’m moving back, as though doing so is a foregone conclusion.  “'’Never’ seems like a good time,” I typically say, finding myself greeted with a horrified look of shock and dismay, as this is taken as a personal affront.
I’ve insulted their home, and by extension I’ve insulted them, because they feel personally invested in the place in exactly the way that I don’t.  I understand that reaction intellectually, but I don’t really understand it on an emotional level.  A place is a place, and, for the most part, it’s only as good as what you make it, but some places give you a little more to work with than others.  The UP just doesn’t give me the raw materials I need to work with in order to make it a good place for me, and I’m never going to share that chauvinistic belief that there is something about the area that makes it inherently superior to others.  Does it have things going for it?  Of course.  It’s a beautiful area – when it’s not buried under snow – and I like how it stays light so much longer there on summer evenings, and in contrast to NoVA, the lack of traffic is almost heavenly.
But, as I’ve said many times before, while I call it “home,” it hasn’t been my home for a very long time, and honestly, it never really felt like it was.
So that’s my little preamble, and now I’ll talk about the few days I recently spent in my kinda-sorta home.
As I said, it’s really only family that brings me back to the UP, and in this case it was a new member of my family.  My niece Jourdan recently became a mother, and so it came to pass that she and her husband Andy made the voyage north from Arkansas to visit the family, which is what drew the rest of us in, as we were all eager to meet this new addition.
I’ve already written about my experience getting there, so let’s get to the details of my first day back in the UP.
After sleeping on a too-short couch – I managed to sleep only because I was so exhausted – it was time to begin the day, which involved having breakfast with my mom and my brother Brad.  (I do miss my mom’s French Toast, but it’s not something I can eat very often given the restrictions of my diet).  Later in the day, we headed out to Walmart for my brother to pick up a few things and for me to buy a wireless router for my mom so that she could make use of the new Windows RT tablet I bought for her.
Later that afternoon, my sister Kim arrived with Jourdan and the baby – Chole – so that my mom could take her “trick-or-treating” around the building to show off her great-granddaughter to all of her friends.
While displaying her to one particularly enraptured neighbor, my mom attempted to introduce my brother and I.  I said, “She doesn’t care; she’s got a baby to look at.”
And I can’t fault her at all – Chole is much more interesting to look at that either myself or my brother.
Later that evening, with my mom and brother in tow, we headed out for dinner before making our way to the casino.  Unfortunately, while the food my brother and I had – we got the same thing – was excellent, my mom’s didn’t sit well with her so she decided that she should call it a night and my brother and I dropped her off at home and headed on to the casino.
While there, my luck managed to be about typical, which is to say it was terrible.  I’m not that big on going to the casino in the first place, but I’m even less inclined to do so now, as I only like (inasmuch as I like anything there) to play standard slots, and those have become increasingly rare, replaced with the convoluted electronic games in which you play a thousand lines at a time and some crazy shit happens and you have to scratch your head to figure out what that crazy shit actually means.
The few standard slots that remain are difficult to get to, as they’re generally spoken for, but eventually as the night wore on I was able to score a spot at one of the machines I like.  It turned out to be worth the wait, as I ended up cashing out $350.
On the way home we came within inches of hitting a bear.  So that was neat.
Sunday was the official family get-together at Hancock Beach, and my sister Kristy, her husband Ken, my brother Stuart and my nephew Todd, and a foster child Kristy and Ken have taken in – whom I just learned about the day before – arrived and we set to eating a lot of food and sitting around talking.
It was the first time that all of has been together since before my dad died.
When we first arrived at the beach, I spent some time talking to Andy and Jourdan before going into the pavilion to greet the others.  There was some odd little man I didn’t recognize sitting next to my sister, and, seeing the Monster Absolute Zero in my hand, without any sort of greeting he said to me, “Those are bad for you.”
Thinking, “Who the fuck are you?” I shrugged and said, “I do a lot of things that are bad for me.”
”I don’t drink pop at all,” he said, and it was clear that there was something….off about him.  “Just water.”
”Oh,” I said, as if this were somehow worth knowing.  “Okay.”
I looked to my sister in confusion, and she said, “A straggler.”  I had assumed that someone there – family included my brother-in-laws family and a friend of my sister’s and her daughter – knew him and had invited him, but he was, apparently, just a crasher who was at the beach and decided that he’d join in.  He went on to inform several other people about his new “water only” policy, but as the time came for us to actually start eating, my brother-in-law gave him the boot.
That evening we were all too tired and bloated to do much of anything.
On Monday my brother got a visitor, as someone he went to high school with lives in our mom’s building.  I’ll say that this was…entertaining and leave it at that.
That evening we headed over to Kim’s to visit and a friend of my mom’s stopped by to see the baby.
I was up early Tuesday morning to bring my brother to the airport.  I had originally intended to leave the same day, but clicked the wrong date when I booked my flight.  (I had wanted to avoid the worst of the 4th of July travel, but my previous post tells you how well that worked out.)
On Tuesday I bought a book to read on my flight back and my mom and I had lunch, and then I spent the evening visiting at Kim’s.  We had intended to see a movie that night, but the only thing I wanted to see was too late for Kim, and Dean ended up getting a migraine anyway.
And that more or less brings us up to date.
The highlight of the trip was, of course, getting to see Chloe, but it was nice to see everyone, and, again, it’s only the people that can get me to go back to the UP in the first place (and to put up with the travel nightmares that invariably plague me when I do so).
It’s still strange to think that my sister is a grandmother, but it’s clear that it’s a role she loves.
My niece Jenni is heading to Arkansas with her sister for the summer to help out with the baby while Jourdan goes back to work.  I slipped her a fifty from my winnings for her trip.
And now I’m back here, settling into my routine, and trying to find the raw materials to work with in order to make this place that is now my home into a good place.

Here Comes (The Uncle Of) The Bride

As mentioned, last week found me winging my way to the UP for my niece Jourdan’s wedding.
I travelled to the UP for this despite the fact that 1. I’d already been there just a few months ago for Jourdan’s graduation from Nursing school and 2. This meant missing out on the Baltimore Comic-Con (with Guest of Honor Stan “The Man” Lee), so that ought to give you some indication of how important my niece is to me.
The flight there was mostly uneventful, except for two things.
One was the little girl sitting next to me who provided a fair amount of irritation, mostly due to her attempts at singing.  She couldn’t carry a tune, so, not being able to carry it, she decided instead to beat the tune to death with a stick.
This was made more annoying by the fact that she didn’t really know the words to most of the songs she was attempting to sing.
Still, it was only a minor annoyance.
The other “eventful” thing was when, before we took off, my name was announced over the PA, and I was asked to press the call button if I was on the plane.  I did so, and nothing happened for a long time, until finally a flight attendant came along to shut the call light off and said, in response to my questioning look, “They just wanted to make sure you were on the plane.”
I shrugged it off, but there was a growing paranoia gnawing at my subconscious.  It’s not like I had anything to worry about, that I knew of, but you always hear those horror stories about mistaken identities and whatnot that lead to people ending up on “No Fly” lists, or worse.
When I arrived in Hancock and was getting off the plane, the paranoia flared up again when I was walking into the terminal and passed a Sherriff’s Deputy – there’s always one there, but at the time, given my state of mind, it seemed odd – and I was certain that I heard a voice say my name and stating that I”d just gotten off the plane issuing forth from his radio as I walked past.
(The paranoia eventually faded, then flared up again on my last day there when my bank card was rejected when I was gassing up the rental car, despite the fact that I had plenty of money in my account.)
During my layover in Chicago, I got lunch from a Johnny Rockets.  I’d wanted to get a chili dog, but that wasn’t an option, and, feeling pressured to order something right now, I ended up getting this massive lunch that made me think, “I don’t know who I thought I was ordering lunch for; this is enough for at least three of me.”
Actually, because a specific context can bring about a specific craving, what I really wanted was a slice of Sbarro pizza.  I mean, I know it’s not good, and it’s not something I would normally seek out, but when I’m in an airport it seems like the thing to eat.  However, I didn’t know if there was one anywhere nearby – or in O’Hare at all, it being Chicago and all – and I didn’t really have enough time to try to find one.
Anyway, eventually I was in the UP and, apart from the wedding itself, not a whole lot happened.  My mom has some back trouble – a bulging disc, they think – so her mobility was limited.  She had to be in a wheelchair for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.
At the wedding itself, we nearly had a “runaway grandma.”  As I was pushing her along the recessional line and she was hugging/talking to Andy, the groom, Jourdan sort of lunged at me to hug me, and I let go of the wheelchair.
We were on a bit of an incline.
Fortunately, Andy was able to grab the chair in time.
The wedding itself ws held outside at a place called “The Bluffs,” which overlooks Houghton and Hancock.  There’s a very nice building there which serves as a retirement home for senior citizens (at least the ones who can afford it; the place is, understandably, expensive).
It may sound cruel, but it seems like kind of a waste to build such a nice complex in such a scenic locale and then fill it with old people.  Just sayin’.
The reception was held in a pavilion at a park in nearby Chassell.
I have to admit that I was pretty bored.  I spent most of the time just wandering around,occasionally talking to the handful of people that I knew there.  Eventually, after the Dollar Dance, I brought my mom home, then headed back, as I’d promised my sister I’d give rides to anyone who needed them, given that I was, of course, sober.
The next day my brother-in-law Dean said that he’d kind of wished that I still drank, so that I could have shown everyone how it’s done, as most of the people at the reception had been, in his estimation, lightweights when it came to drinking.
I ended up only having to give one person a ride home.
The next day we went back to the pavilion to clean up – I did very little in the way of helping, as 1. I’m lazy 2. My contribution was just being there in the first place – and for Jourdan and Andy to open their gifts before getting on the road and heading back to Arkansas.
During the clean up my sister discovered that one of the disposable cameras that had been left for the guest to take pictures with was missing.  She mentioned that my nephew Jacob had one with him, and asked me to check the playground area, as that’s where he’d had it.  So I checked by the playground and found the camera’s box, but not the camera itself.  Clearly Jacob had taken it apart and tossed it, but he wasn’t willing to admit it.  Later, he finally admitted that he had been – and I find this hilarious – trying to “take the memory out” after all the pictures had been taken.  11 year-olds, apparently, aren’t familiar with the concept of film.  He said he had then dropped it and forgotten about it.  I made another sweep of the playground and found it.  My sister thanked me, and called me an “Ace Detective.”  I said, “Everything I know I learned from Batman.”
Not much else that was notable – or that I feel like blogging about, at any rate – happened, other than when, during the dinner at the reception, one of the bridesmaid told my sister “That was the best potato salad I ever had!”  This is notable because the potato salad had been a joint effort between myself, Jourdan, and my niece Jenni.  Jenni did the peeling and dicing of the potatoes, I chopped the onions, boiled the potatoes and the eggs, peeled the eggs, and put the whole thing together.
It was a lot of potato salad.
There ended up being a lot of cake (and ham) left over, so I’m sure my sister and her family have cake (and ham) coming out of their ears at this point.
As for the rest, well, I told you about my trip back to NoVA, so I think that pretty well covers it.
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Getting That Arduous Task Out Of The Way

So there’s actually a reason that I’ve been avoiding making a post about my time spent in Michigan.
I know what you’re thinking: that reason is laziness.
And you’re right. However, it’s a specific laziness.
Basically, while I didn’t take a lot of pictures, I did take enough that using Blogger’s picture-posting feature – which is, at best, hit or miss when it comes to actually posting pictures – looms over me threatening to be a huge pain in the ass.
I don’t feel like doing one of those photo slideshows either, so as a result I’ve just been avoiding the whole thing.
However, I suppose the best thing to do is to just get the pictures part out of the way.



First up is my “Family Tree,” a display of pictures of me and my siblings when we were kids that my mom has, arranged by age.
At the top is Kristy, the oldest. To her lower right (your left) is Brad. To his left is Stuart. Below him is Kim, and to her right is a wee little cross-eyed baby Jon. (I know, I know: I was so cute…what happened? Screw you. That’s what happened.)


Here we see the car Brad rented, a Nissan Altima. It was kind of cool, as it had one of those “smart keys” that you just have to have on your person in order to start the car with the push of a button.


The view of Houghton across the Portage Canal that can be seen from behind my mom’s apartment building.


My nephew Jeremy standing next to his graduation cake. He had been giving a “thumb’s up” and a goofy smile right before I took the picture, until I called him a jackass.

Jeremy opening his gift from my mom. Due to the payout ratio, whenever you hit a blackjack at the casino, you get a 50 cent piece. My mom saved up a bunch of them in an old cigar box (totaling $128.50) and gave them to Jeremy, along with a pocket knife that belonged to my dad (which my dad got from my brother Brad’s former boss, who was, at that time Vice Chief of Naval Operations). Also seen in the picture are my niece Jenni at front left, my niece Jourdan behind Jenni, and my mom standing at the end of the table. The other girls are Jeremy’s cousins on his dad’s side. As they aren’t my kin, I can’t really be expected to remember their names or who they belong to.


In the background, from left to right, we see my brother Brad, Jourdan, my sister Kristy’s husband Ken in the red shirt, Kim, and her husband Dean.


In the background of this picture you can see my brother Brad on the left, our sister Kim talking to him, our brother-in-law Dean behind her in the white shirt, and our sister Kristy to Dean’s left in the red shirt.


From left to right, Jourdan, Jeremy, and Kim.


My brother Brad.


Jenni, giving me a dirty look from behind her mother.


Jenni, hopped up on sugar, provided some of the afternoon's entertainment by dancing on a table. The mop-topped boy in the red shirt is my nephew Todd, my brother Stuart’s son.


Here we see Todd with my sister Kim. Kim’s youngest, Jacob, can be seen climbing up onto the table with his sister.


Several hours – and beers – later, the party moved into the kitchen. At the back you can see my sister Kristy, and to her right is her husband Ken. My brother Brad is quite possibly the funniest person I know, and, as is usually the case, had most of us in stitches. After all, he was in the Navy for 24 years, and has been all over the world, so he has some great stories. For those of you wondering, yes, Kristy, Ken, and Todd are all wearing matching shirts. Before coming up for the party they were at a race in which Ken’s brother was competing, and were wearing shirts in support of his number. Stuart couldn’t make it to the party, so Kristy and Ken brought Todd up.

As I’ve said many times, I’m a lousy tourist, in that I don’t end up taking a lot of pictures. I took a few more than this, but these are the most noteworthy. In any case, with that out of the way, I’ll move on to actually writing about my trip in a future entry (I promise).