the Dalaverse

Still here. Been reading flist and whatnot, but sporadically. Brought Dad home yesterday. Tuesday we picked up Grandma Lorraine and my cousin Jack, who's nine and couldn't go in ICU, to visit him. My god, that child not only talks incessantly, he knows everything about everybody in the family. And Grandma was very grandma-like, refreshing after Grandma Libby, whom I can never actually bring myself to call grandma -- you know, to her face. Grandma Lorraine is always, always a bastard pronunciation sounding something like "Gremmaw." But I mostly avoid calling Grandma Libby anything at all because...it just doesn't seem to fit, somehow.

Monday night sucked. Yes, the second half of "Fahrenheit 9/11" was exactly the right thing to watch in such a mood. I cried for an hour.

And in the opposite direction, time-wise, I rang in 2005 sitting by myself in the basement, watching "South Park." Mom came down at 12:59 to make me change the channel, but honestly, the ball is not that exciting. And Philbin would not shut the fuck up. Earlier we'd made a halfhearted effort to get people together, but to tell the truth, all I was really interested in terms of going out was having steak for dinner, not getting wasted as you're supposed to do, or even really hanging out anywhere but home. Dad went to bed at 11, but we watched PoA first. After the Shrieking Shack scene, regarding Sirius and Lupin: "Are they brothers or lovers?" Dala: "Weeeeelllllll..." And then with Lupin's whole "people like me" speech at the end, I said, "You see what I mean?" and he nodded sagely. Heh.

He has five stints/stents (I'm still not sure how to spell it) in one artery now. Grandma Lorraine, who had a quintuple bypass a couple years ago (heart trouble runs in the family. Swell), thought that sounded iffy, and so did Meg's mother, who's a nurse. But Dad likes Dr. Schindler and turned down the idea of seeking a second opinion on what they've already done, so...::shrugs:: Mom still wishes he'd gone to Washington Hospital Center, but Shady Grove was the closest. He has to take a month off work and go back for cardiac therapy, whatever that is. I'm thinking we're going to singlehandedly support our local Blockbusters for that period of time.

Mean to donote to the Red Cross. Let my paid LJ membership run out, but I wasn't going to renew it anyway, I don't think. Later today I'm going to run to Borders for the fourth series of "Coupling" and a low-fat cookbook, and I think we're going to rake the leaves in the backyard, and...that's about it. Tomorrow my mother and I are going to the Redskins game, even though we don't really want to, because Dad threw a fit when we suggested giving the tickets away.

Much love to everybody else who's had personal problems recently. And to everybody whose holidays went off mostly hitch-free. And...to everybody, really.