May. 30th, 2005

Post-Party

May. 30th, 2005 07:46 am
mrissa: (tiredy)
Saffron buns for breakfast must be some kind of metaphor for decadence. I also have a bunch of saffron bun breakfasts ahead of me. When [livejournal.com profile] markgritter and [livejournal.com profile] timprov are awake, we'll talk about how many of them I should freeze and how many they think they'll eat before they go suboptimal. I had Mark throw the last cut-up bits of baguette out to the birds after they'd been sitting in the air all night, but I don't particularly want to throw lussekatter to the birds. That's the sort of thing for which they overthrow your kingdom, I think.

People came. There was enough food. It really didn't look like that much food on paper (I had a list; of course I had a list), but when [livejournal.com profile] careswen and [livejournal.com profile] mmerriam showed up with cookies, we had a mad moment of scramble to place the cookies. We have a few leftovers here and there. We will be having stir-fry with the peppers and peapods. Possibly more than one kind of stir-fry. Shish-kabobs. Pasta with pepper sauce. Maybe red jungle fowl's joy. I did that on purpose. I have no idea what we're going to do with the cauliflower, for the simple reason that I'm the only person in the house who likes cauliflower all that much, and even I don't want to lunch on it exclusively.

I went to bed at around 1:45, with the dishwasher running and the food safely stowed or disposed of and the guests all gone home. I woke up again at 6:15 as usual and was able to push my body to 7:00, but then I was up. It's not that I'm not tired, and it's not that I have so much to do today. (I have plenty to do, but I'm not convinced that I'm doing much of it today. Some days need to be like that.) My body just woke me up as usual. And now you know why I don't generally stay up all that late.

For those of you who were here: is anybody missing a long, black wrap? ([livejournal.com profile] greatestofnates, can you make sure it's not your friend's?) Also we found a nuk, but there was really only one possibility for whose that is, now that Robin is big enough to drive. (At least, that's what he told his dad.) So [livejournal.com profile] ladysea, [livejournal.com profile] songwind, next time we see you, we should have a nuk to give back to you. Mostly the give-it-back basket is less full than it was yesterday morning, though, not more, and that's a good thing.

Memorial

May. 30th, 2005 10:30 am
mrissa: (formal)
Every year for Memorial Day I get a little bag of M&Ms, and I eat them slowly.

My great-grandma Lingen used to send me letters at college and enclose $1 "for a treat." We both knew that what she really meant was "for M&Ms." They were her favorite. She was not always an easy person to be around, but you could almost always jolly her up if you brought her M&Ms: partly because she liked them, and partly because you had paid attention and remembered what she liked. In her last year or two, she was diabetic and couldn't have more than one or two, but she wanted to make sure I had some to enjoy anyway.

My Gran (Grandpa's mother) kept a covered dish of M&Ms on the desk in her dining room. She had M&Ms, mixed nuts, and old-fashioned gumdrops every time we got there. Sometimes also chocolate-covered peanuts, but always the basic three, and I don't like gumdrops. I remember that when they came out with red M&Ms, it was startling to see them at Gran's, because it was a change in one of the changeless things in life.

We aren't grave people, my family. From the time I was tiny, I knew that if something happened to me or my parents or my grandparents, we would be cremated and the ashes would be scattered (although my grandpa had a standing joke about large urns as "family burial plots"). Last year when [livejournal.com profile] markgritter's grandmother died, she was cremated. I believe the family planted a tree for her on the grounds of the school she loved. When we remember her, we do it with purple flowers around the house, with contributions to research the disease that took her from us.

What do you do in memory of people in your life? When do you do it?

ETA: I didn't mean in the immediate aftermath of their deaths, although if you want to tell me that, that's fine, too; funerary customs are interesting. What I meant is in your life in the months and years after your loved ones die.

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