Having "The Talk"

The plan for today was to go to my sister-in-law's 60th birthday party. As it turned out, I was the Sykes family sole representative, except for her husband, who planned the party. Walt is in Boston with Jeri, Tom and Walt's sister (and her husband) were at a wedding for one of Tom's friends, and Ned was home nursing his sore mouth.

(all he wants for Christmas is his 2 front teeth--and he might finally get them!)

That left me to help the birthday girl celebrate her day.

The party was at 1:30 so I left early and went to visit my mother for a couple of hours first, since she wasn't feeling well enough to go to the party. And we had "the talk."

We talked about her wishes when/if the time comes that she's not able to live independently and I talked with her about Lifeline. It surprised me to hear that she had been thinking of both. She readily agreed to wearing a Lifeline pendant and we agreed that if it comes to the point where we don't feel she is safe to live independently, she would prefer to go into an assisted living facility instead of having someone come into her house.

In truth, that is pretty much what I would have suggested, but it's nice to know that she agreed with my thoughts.

Whew. I'm glad THAT's done!

Then I went on to the birthday party. Talk about surreal experiences. I keep forgetting, since Olivia and Norm have been married for so many years, that her uncle had sung with the Lamplighters in its early days. In fact, I interviewed her uncle and his wife (and their 4 or 5 white poodles) for the first Lamplighter history, many years before Norm and Olivia ever even met.

It's a branch of the family that doesn't usually show up at the Easter dinners, so when Aunt Alice and her children were introduced (I'd probably met them before), Marilyn said "Didn't you write the Lamplighter history?" and then talked about how they had found Uncle Ray's scrapbook with all the newspaper clippings recently and how she had taken on a project to scan them so that everyone in the family could have copies of them.

So there I was at my sister-in-law's birthday party talking with an old Lamplighter's family about Lamplighter memories and people we all knew from years and years ago, long before my brother-in-law had ever even met his future wife!

(Not only that, but Marilyn works with the Marin Humane Society, so we had that in common as well.)

But the first surprise had come when I walked through the door to the party and was greeted by Olivia's friend Paulina, who was full of comments about my recent little break-in experience. Turns out her husband has been reading Funny the World since our Russia trip (hi, Bob) and had told her all about the midnight napper. Very flattering to learn about this new reader, but strange to discover. I enjoyed talking with him about blogging in general.

The party was very nice and I had a good time, and even better when I came home, someone had posted a bunch of photos from the party on Facebook (since I forgot to take my camera)

I finally had to leave to come home. I was glad of the long distance involved in getting here because my audio book was getting riveting and wherever I had the choice of which direction to turn, I always took the way I thought was the longest.

I must be off my game because, again, I hadn't brought my camera with me today, but I did text with Walt a couple of times and it was a surprise to get a note from him that Jeri has eye glasses, presumably for reading music. I always thought it strange that both Walt and I have worn glasses since our childhood and all four of our parents wore glasses, but none of our kids have had eye problems. But now that they are middle aged, Ned has had to get reading glasses and now, apparently Jeri has too.