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Like family
While growing up, our family was super close to another family. This friendship went back to my babyhood when my parents lived in the same building as their parents. The dads worked at the same company and were best friends for many years. When one moved to Atlanta, the other soon followed and our families were close all the years I was growing up. At this point, our lives diverged quite a lot and we saw less and less of each other. The last time I saw them was at my wedding over 25 years ago. But I consider them close friends despite the distance and time away. The dad in the family died yesterday and I’m feeling pretty gutted about it. This is hitting me harder than losing some family has been.
I talked to my mom tonight and while talking I also discovered another mutual friend had died some time ago. She was ten years older than me and lived across the street. She was our babysitter and at times she had all six of us kids together at once and loved it. She often spent more money on us than she earned. The last time I saw her was at my brother’s wedding which was a few years before my own. My parents discovered this while checking out her Facebook page and seeing an RIP message from someone going back a couple of years. It aches to know it’s been so long but we had no mutual contacts who might have alerted us to her death.
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Anniversaries
Three days ago, it marked one year since our cat died from injuries likely caused by a dog attack. In some ways it seems a long time ago then it doesn’t seem so long ago. There are still the occasions when I return home and expect to see her lazily walking down the driveway, making me wait to pull the car in. :) I changed my Facebook picture to one with her in it last year but I think I will soon change to something new since it’s already been over a year.
Today would have been my close friend’s birthday if she were alive. This is my local close friend who died four and a half years ago from bowel cancer. She should be 54 now. She is still on my mind a lot of the time but so it’s kind of weird to think it’s been so long since we talked now.
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Good Tuesday
Tuesday was a pretty good day. It warmed up and I stopped feeling cold all the time. My aches and pains subsided quite a bit too. A friend I’ve not seen in a long time came to visit. I even allowed her into the house because I knew she wouldn’t judge me by my house like some people would. We had a really good chat then went off to Sushi Master for lunch. As it turns out they have half price main meals on Tuesdays so we splurged and had bento box meals and they were quite good. We were both full by the time we left and neither of us finished our food. By this time it was late afternoon so my friend left before peak hour traffic became too bad. So far so good…
In the evening, the Scientist and I got to finally join the advanced tai chi class. After last term ended and I’d finished my level six moves, I was quite excited about this. A few days before the class I got a bit nervous about it. In the beginner class, we had warm up exercises, work on an 18 move set called shibashi, and walking practice before going into the week’s lessons. In the advanced class we’ve already learned all the moves in the tai chi set so I didn’t know what to expect during the lesson part.
We left early that night to get a bite to eat before class. As I was still full from lunch, I skipped dinner and just had a gelato for dessert. We still had almost two hours to kill for before class so we went to a nearby shopping centre and wandered around a bit, bought a couple things from the grocery store and then exhausted that location. Most of the stores closed before we got there so it was like walking in an empty mall most of the time. We moved on to the actual venue and arrived about an hour before class time. Rain had begun to fall at some point and started getting quite heavy about the time we parked there. There’s a yoga class that meets before this class so we sat in the car in the rain and watched a bit of what was happening there until it was too difficult to see much.
We finally went inside about fifteen minutes before class and got settled in. We became reacquainted with a few people we’d not seen for a while and finally the class started. It started much the same as beginner class with a warm up. Then we started working on the second version of the shiboshi. This was a really nice set of moves, much better than those in the first set. And those are quite nice on their own. But these are more involved and move your body much more which added to the experience. Afterwards we all worked through the entire tai chi set and I managed to stay pretty close to the right moves throughout. Funnily enough I had a bit of a blip during the level five moves, which were the ones I found easiest to learn. I think I just lost concentration and that threw me off a bit. I have been practicing more these days and it definitely is showing through. The rest of the class was focused on breathing, which is the special topic for this term. This has been the area I’ve had trouble with along the way due to just trying to learn all the moves. It seems to be an ideal focus for me this term anyway. Afterwards it was the end of class and we finished with the usual lotus set of moves to finish off.
I was nervous for no good reason because it was all even better than I was expecting it to be. Next week we will forgo the eating out part and just leave a lot later in the evening. I’m looking forward to the future lessons.
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Thursday musings
Seems we are not having a heat wave after all. At least it’s not happening at the moment. We’ve had two very pleasant days and tonight is already quite chill. Our air conditioner hasn’t come on all evening, which is nice for this time of the year. I think I’ll be adding a blanket to my side of the bed since my feet will likely go cold with this chill. It looks like it might warm up a bit over the weekend and into next week.
The place I visited to see the trackball contacted me a couple times yesterday and this morning although I managed to miss all the calls. I assumed the Slimblade Trackball might have arrived earlier than expected. I just happened to be in the area this afternoon and stopped by to check it out. It had arrived and different guy to the one who I spoke to earlier opened it up for me to have a look. It’s a lot like my old Expert Trackball mouse but much sleeker and probably more ergonomic than the earlier model. It was a bit pricey but I went ahead and bought it since it the temporary replacement has been driving me bonkers. At least I know I can use it for short periods of time should I need to do so in the future. I’ve only used it for a little while but it’s been pretty much a breeze so far. The click sound is different than I expected but I’m sure I will get used to that. Also, this doesn’t have a scroll wheel but I quickly found it easy to turn the trackball like a scroll wheel and I think that’s going work out well once I get the hang of it. I think it’s just a matter of working out what’s comfortable for me. When I was researching potential replacements for my old trackball, I read this one was great until you got to the software support for the device. Apparently there was none for quite some time after its release. The good news is that seems to have been rectified and there is software that I might download and try out.
This morning the boys and I went to visit an old friend of Game Fanatic from his Dungeons and dragons/ board game group. That group sort of disappeared quite some time ago and aside from one of those guys, we haven’t seen anyone for at least two years. I’d kept a slight contact with this boys mom via email and more recently on Facebook but we hadn’t seen them at all. This guy had recently earned a perfect score on his year 12 exams and had appeared in our local paper (his distance ed high school is local to us) but not theirs. I had offered to collect some copies of the paper for his family and it was a good opportunity for Game Fanatic to get a bit of social interaction happening. It was also an opportunity to put Lego Lover in some sort of social situation.
I didn’t think Lego Lover would wake up in time since he sleeps late almost every day lately. But he did wake up almost immediately. I had offered a positive consequence if he went and was well-behaved so think this might have been a good motivation for him. It was a bit harder to get Game Fanatic up but he did manage and got ready reasonably quickly. Once there I left the boys in the kitchen to play a board game (Age of Mythology-which apparently bears little to no resemblance to the computer game) while I chatted mostly with the mum. We had a rather nice catch up in the limited time we had there. And Game Fanatic enjoyed playing the game with the two older brothers for this family. Lego Lover mostly stood and stared at the ground but eventually started showing some attention to the game that was being played and even talked to Game Fanatic a little bit from what he tells me. It’s nothing big but I think it all went better than I expected. Lego Lover’s involvement is just a starting point in a plan I have to get him more socially involved this year. As the school year will be starting soon, I may post about that in more detail before then.
I should also add to the above bit about the friend’s achievement that this is the second boy from the same D&D group to have a perfect score on the year 12 exam. Another boy did the same two years ago and is now studying to be a surgeon if I remember correctly.
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Fading memories, old friendships
My father sent an email with photos he’d taken while visiting his hometown recently. Most were photos of family members but he also took a couple photos of the apartment where my parents lived when they were first married. This was effectively my first home, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve seen black and white photos from the time we lived there in the past. I’m pretty sure my parents have shown us the house when visiting family too. But it was kind of interesting to see it’s still standing and looking pretty decent after all these years. At least it looks okay from the outside.
I was just a toddler when we last lived there so obviously have no memories of the place. But I have reminisced about other places I’ve lived over the years and it seems so many of the memories are fading. And it’s not just places either. I was flipping through my high school yearbooks the other day. I recognised only a few faces in the sea of senior photos. The names triggered better recollections. Those I remember most would have been in my home room. I can’t say I knew them personally all that well , having been one of the quiet, shy students hidden at the back of the class. But at the time, they were extremely familiar to me and it seemed I would remember them forever. I was wrong, of course!Â