274

Ohio...Ohio...Ohio...

They put him over the top.  President Obama has another four years, and I can start breathing again.

I didn't realize how tense I have been all week until I tried to eat today and everything made me a bit queasy.  Even pancakes, which normally set quite well.  I didn't finish my pancakes (the dogs were thrilled).

I gave myself half an hour to vote and then was in and out of the polling place in less than 15 minutes (I wore my Obama t-shirt from 2008, which, I realized when I saw the "100 feet" polling signs, was probably illegal campaigning, but nobody said anything and let me vote without sending me home to change my clothes.

After voting, I went downtown to meet my friend Ruth for our 2x/month lunch.  We eat at a Chinese place and after having a couple of things I didn't like very much, I usually order the honey walnut shrimp because that is almost always good.   This time it was the best I'd ever had there.  But my stomach was in such knots, I had to ask for a box after just a few bites.  The only thing that went down easily was the soup and I suddenly realized I had a craving for soup and I should start having more soups for lunch.

I drove home and put the food in the fridge and tried to concentrate on anything, but couldn't not watch all the talking heads.  Election coverage, of course, couldn't start until the polls closed but before that there were endless poll results and guesses and all sorts of stuff I couldn't turn off.  I may have taken a nap.  I don't remember.

Anticipating the worst, I even designed a new logo for my facebook page, which, for the past two months has been this:

...and if Romney won it would be this:

I googled "deadlands".  I didn't dare design on for a happy outcome.  Too superstitious.

When the first poll numbers started coming in, I was more and more depressed as state after state was racked up in Romney's column.  I didn't dare hope, though people on Facebook kept pointing out that the early votes came from the South, where Romney had always been expected to win.

Then the Obama states started to come in.  The big jump came when California's 55 votes went to Obama and then that glorious announcement that Ohio had put him over the top.  He needed 270. he had 274 and was leading in all of the remaining "too close to call" states.

The crowds went wild.  Walt was watching TV upstairs, so I called my mother, my friend Joycie called me and I rejoiced with Facebook people.

 

Then came the news that Romney disputed the Ohio results, claims that Romney could somehow get the rest of the states and still win, and Trump was calling for revolution (I've always thought The Donald was revolting anyway).  Was this going to be another Bush v. Gore/Florida situation?  But then Romney did the grown-up thing and conceded the election in a classy speech...and, as it turned out, Obama didn't even need Ohio anyway.

So our long national nightmare is over.  There will be no Ami Bera ads tomorrow (I read that he won in his district, so I guess that's a good thing).

The problem, of course, is that I don't ever remember an election that was so close.  All the votes have yet to be counted, but at the moment, Obama is only leading Romney in the popular vote by 300,000+.  No matter who won this election, 50% of the country was going to go to sleep depressed.  The task ahead of the president in the next four years is to win over some of those people.  Maybe without an election ahead of him, he can do more unpopular things that will promote the things he wants to accomplish and leave behind a lasting legend.

I have every confidence that he can do it.

The Party that WAS

It is 2:30 a.m. and I have gotten up specifically to write this entry, hoping that I can go back to sleep afterwards.  It's the third time I have awakened, since I first went to sleep at 10, unable to keep my eyes opened.  The dogs are looking at me as if I'm out of my ever-lovin' mind.

We went to the party that we thought was last week tonight. Amazing what a difference it makes when you come on the right day!  We figured we had to be on the right day when we parked behind a car with a license plate holder that read "I'd rather be reading Jane Austen."

The house looked very welcoming, with the leftover Halloween scarecrow to greet us.

When we got in the house, there was the noise of happy people mingling, and Peter was wearing shoes.  More good signs!

"Please come and eat," Susan begged.   "People are drinking wine, but nobody is eating."  Needless to say, I didn't need a second invitation and headed for the food table.

I must have given a wonderful example because by the time we left, two hours later, there was very little food left.

This was the first time I was meeting any of the other volunteers at Logos.  We each work our solitary shifts, but don't have any reason to interact at all.  I did meet one woman once, at the store's 2nd anniversary celebration, but she wasn't at the party.  Some of the people there were former volunteers, a couple were neighbors, and two were artists who have shown their work at the store (which features a local artist's paintings every couple of months or so).

I chatted with Harrison, the 20-something manager of the shop, who takes over when Susan and Peter are out of Davis.  He's a delightful, if quiet, person and we talked about a cruise he had taken up the inland passage to Alaska, the cruise I still want to take some day.  He said it was the only cruise he had ever taken and that he had loved it.

I don't "stand" well for long periods, so I ended up being the first person to choose a chair and sit down.  A woman named Bridgit looked relieved that someone was sitting and immediately came to sit next to me.  What a delightful woman!  She is one of the "former volunteers," claiming, good-naturedly, that she was the only volunteer to ever have been "fired."  She explained that she was one of the first volunteers but in the summer when UCD students were looking for volunteer opportunities to punch up their resumes, she had given up her slot to a younger person.

She and her husband, who appear to be at least our age, and probably older, had just come back from a kayaking vacation and I was amazed.  That is like suggesting Walt and I go kayaking for a week.  Walt could do it, I have no doubt, but getting this fat body and these aching bones into a kayak...and then remaining upright for more than a few seconds boggles the mind.  But she did it and laughed about how the guides actually pulled her out of the kayak each day because she couldn't get out herself.

A woman came to introduce herself to me and tell me how much she has enjoyed reading my reviews over the years, which was very nice to hear her say.

We were joined by others and talked about our love of working at Logos and the books that we have found there.  I discovered we all had some of the same favorite books from our youth, books like "Marjorie Morningstar," the Nancy Drew books and others.  I decided that one of these days I'm going to read a Nancy Drew book at the store, just for nostalgia sake.

Eventually Brigit and her husband prepared to leave and I moved to the couch, with Walt and a couple of other people.  One of them was the artist who had displayed his paintings at the store a couple of months ago.  What a delightful man!  Though he studied art in college, "life" intervened and he ended up working in a regular business until he retired.  He rediscovered his love of painting at the Davis Senior Center, where he is the only person now working each week in oil (he says the women don't like the smell of the paints and the oils and prefer to work in watercolor).  Art is obviously his passion and it was so nice to watch him talking about his work.

As we left the party, I realized that I had actually talked to people without feeling self-conscious.  Susan and Peter were gracious hosts, as I knew they would be, and I realized again why I love working at Logos, and working for these lovely people.

Now maybe I can get back to sleep, though perhaps it is not the undone job of writing this entry that has been waking me up, but the terror of realizing that today is election day and the fear of the possibilities out there.

Trying to think positive.  (It was also nice to realize that everyone at the party seemed to be feeing the same way I do about the election, and hoping for an Obama win, fearing a Romney one!)

Get out there and VOTE, everyone!

Back to Normal

Well.  Now.  Where were we before I engaged in a 3-day exercise in narcissism (like a personal blog isn't the epitome of narcissism!)   I have decided, BTW, to finish my story.  Since I posted it here, I've been going this way and that with where to take it.  I think I've figured out what I want to do, so I'll work on it.  When it's finished, I'll post the end of it.  Don't hold your breath!

We are two days away from the end of our long national nightmare.   No matter which candidate you support, you have to admit that the escalation of political ads, talking heads, polls, robo calls and all of it has been a long nightmare.  I've decided that I"m tired of listening to Chris Matthew, Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow, Jim Leherer, and any other talking head so I'm going to spend election night on Comedy Central, where Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be covering the election.  I'm sure I will get just the same level of information, and it will be more fun.

And then, depending on which candidate wins and which you supported, either our nightmare will finally be over completely or just beginning all over again.

One day without seeing an ad for Dr. Ami Bera alone will be like six hours at the seaside.

It was a fun week at the book store.  Sales have been kind of slow on Thursdays, apparently, but they were brisk this week.  I think Peter had 4 sales Thursday morning and I had about 20 in the afternoon.  I also made the acquaintance of a woman whose name I have known for all the years I have been in Davis.   We know a lot of the same people and she was a deightful person.

She is a member of one of the book clubs in town that has been going on for years.  Over the years I have encountered either friends or neighbors or co-workers who have been in long-term book clubs and who just rave about how they have changed their lives, how they made their best friends there, how they were more like support groups than book clubs.  They sit around and drink wine and talk about each other's lives and what they are all reading.  Each time someone brought up the subject of their book club, I always said, rather wistfully, I thought, that I always wanted to be in a book club.  And unanimously they change the subject. Kind of like flunking "rush" at the local sorority.

I fear it's a bit too late to find that kind of rapport and lifelong friends in a book club as I would have if I had been invited to join one in my 30s, though my two meetings with the club in Sacramento were nice and I recognized a couple of people at the second meeting, though I don't remember anybody's name yet.  Still it was nice to be able to talk books with other people reading the same thing.

This was the book I read at the store while I was there this week.

It's actually a book I've had here at home for along time, but never got around to reading it.  But we were going to see the stage version of the book and I thought it would be a good opportunity to read it.

Didion's husband died of a heart attack suddenly one night as she was mixing the salad for dinner.  The book details her travel through grief during that first awful year, a year in which her daughter was also dying of many infections in many hospitals (she finally did die the following year).

The book (which won a Pulitzer prize) is raw and filled with emotion, but also contains a lot of wry humor, as Didion laughs at herself for some of her feelings -- like her reluctance to give away her husband's shoes several weeks after his death because "he'll need them when he comes back."

We saw the play, adapted by Didion herself, which is very faithful to the book.  The incredible Janis Stevens, a local treasure, plays Didion in this one-woman play.  

I've read several reviews of the show when Vanesssa Redgrave did it in New York.  You can pretty much tell which critics have had personal experience with a painful death and which have not.

Obviously I felt uniquely qualified to review this play...perhaps too qualified, since I find that there are so many things I want to say about it, but am limited to 750 words in a review.  Bottom line is that seeing the play was an extraordinary experience, and it was very sad that there were only 20 in the audience. 

Creative Writing - The End

This is as far as I've gotten.  I have a choice of a couple directions in which to take this and I'm not sure I'm going to work on it, but thank you all for your responses, whether as e-mail or as comments in the guest book. It was fun to revisit this, five years later!

CHAPTER 3

In the morning Laura got up and went out to the kitchen to make coffee. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the computer, sitting there in the corner on a table near the desk where she sat to write the checks each month to pay her bills. Tim thought that would be a good place for it, so she could just turn around in her chair and use the computer when she finished with the rest of the work at her desk.

She moved a couple of plants around to try to soften the look. Laura had a green thumb and her house was filled with plants. She could make African violets explode with color. Her ferns were lush and full. She had a couple of ficus trees, which they said were difficult to grow, but they positively thrived under her watchful eye. She couldn’t actually put a plant on the computer, of course, but she found that by rearranging a few pots she could distract the eye from the monstrosity.

“Harumph,” she said, as she walked back into the kitchen. The air was filled with the aroma of French Roast coffee that she had specially ground for her at the local coffee shop. She added a bit of real cream to her cup – it was her one extravagance – and she settled down to read the newspaper. She would read the paper from front to back, including the comics and then she would work the crossword puzzle, in ink, before she would start her day.

As she immersed herself in the day’s news, she could almost forget that...thing sitting in the other room surrounded by plants.

The days passed and she continued to try to ignore the computer. Oh she dusted it. She dusted everything every other day and though she had no plans to actually use it, she would, of course, keep it clean. Nobody was going to come in and give her house the white glove test and find a speck of dust on the computer.

By now she had forgotten everything that Tim had told her about working the computer, and she was even more afraid of using the...thing...than she had been before. Besides, there was a “Monk” marathon on this week. The eccentric detective was one of her favorites and at the end of the day, she would rather sit down and laugh at the antics of Mr. Monk than even think about the computer.

At the end of the week, her best friend Sarah stopped by for coffee.

“Oh! You have a computer,” Sarah squealed.

“The kids gave it to me,” Laura said, trying to keep her friend from hearing the truth of how she felt about the computer in her voice.

“Don’t you just love it?” Sarah asked. “I’ve only had mine for a couple of months, but I’ve just had the best time. I’ve made so many friends and I’m learning about all sorts of things. Do you know you can make a telephone call and have your voice come out of the computer? And you can talk to people all over the world – for free!....”

Sarah went on and on and on about how much fun she was having while Laura made a pot of coffee and set out a plate of cookies, oatmeal with frosting on them. Mother’s Cookies. She had been buying them since Tim and Jenna were babies. They still liked coming home and finding the cookie jar filled with Mother’s Oatmeal Cookies. Jenna still liked dunking her cookie in milk and sucking it as it got soft, just like she did when she was five years old.

“....and if you give me your e-mail address, I can send you jokes and funny pictures,” Sarah ended her monologue. Laura realized, with embarrassment that she hadn’t heard a word her friend said, and wouldn’t have understood it if she did.

Laura mumbled something about having forgotten her e-mail address and said she would let her know later what it was. She didn’t even know what an e-mail address was or if she had one or how to get one if she didn’t have one.

Maybe it was going to be more difficult than she thought to ignore that...thing.

CHAPTER 4

Jenna called the next week.

“Mom!” she exclaimed. “Are you going to come or not? I sent you the invitation over a week ago?”

“What invitation?” her mother asked.

“The one I sent to your e-mail address,” her daughter said, impatiently. You have been reading your e-mail, haven’t you?

Laura admitted that she had forgotten about e-mail and apologized for not having seen the invitation.

“I think it’s time for a refresher course,” Jenna laughed. “I know Tim can be pretty intimidating. He gets so excited about all the new technology. What you need is to have me sit down with you and go through things very slowly so you can understand.”

Laura tried to explain that she was very busy right now and really didn’t have time to sit down at the computer, but Jenna wasn’t listening. “I’ll be by tomorrow, Mom,” she said. “You’ll see–-you’re gonna love it.”

“Sure I am,” Laura muttered to herself as she hung up the phone. .....

Creative Writing - Part 2

CHAPTER 2

Dinner was perfect, of course. The chicken cacciatore was so tender it melted in your mouth and the spaghetti was cooked al dente, just the way Laura liked it. She made a big caesar salad, but left out the anchovies because she knew Tim hated anchovies. Tim opened a nice bottle of chianti and made a toast “to Mom’s new computer.”

Laura went out into the kitchen to get the Parmesan cheese, so they couldn’t see the look on her face.

She kept up a lively conversation at dinner, talking about her volunteer work at the SPCA thrift store and about all the adorable dogs and cats that were up for adoption. She had thought of bringing home one herself, but Peanut was getting old and she didn’t want to disrupt his quiet way of life by bringing a youngster into the house. There would be time enough for that after he was gone, if she even wanted another dog. She was happy with the dog she had. She didn’t want a new one.

And she didn’t want a new contraption to learn either, but she didn’t say that.

“Here, Mom, let me help you clear the table,” said Jenna. Then we can show you your computer!”

“Don’t you want ice cream?” Laura asked. She was a big one for dessert and she was desperately hoping to prolong the moment when she had to sit at ...that...that...thing as long as possible.

“Not yet, Mom,” Jenna laughed. “I’m still full from dinner. Besides, we’re so anxious to show you how your computer works. You won’t believe what fun you’ll have with it and how easy it is to use! We can have dessert later.”

There was no getting around it. Laura was going to have to let her children teach her how to use her new computer. She didn’t have to actually use it after they left, but she had to let them teach her how to use it.

Even the look of it bothered her. It didn’t match the decor of her room at all. All that metal didn’t blend into the lovely dark wood of her den. It stood out like a sore thumb. Maybe she could make a nice quilted cover to go over it so it wouldn’t look so out of place, she thought.

“Now c’mon, Mom. You sit down here and I’ll sit next to you and I’ll show you just how to work the computer,” said Tim.

He showed her the button to turn the machine on. That was easy. All sorts of pictures came up on the screen as it started. She was looking at a cute picture of Alexis, her 5 year old granddaughter, that sweet smile Laura loved so much on her face and what looked like cookie crumbs around her mouth, blending into the freckles that dotted her nose and spilled over down her cheeks. Her red hair was muted in the photo, but it made Laura smile, anyway.

Tim showed her the parts of the computer. That thing they called a mouse and something about clicks and double clicks and then there were programs and graphics and the Internet and e-mail and Laura’s brain began to swim. She couldn’t understand anything he said. The more excited he became in teaching her, the more her brain shut down. She pushed all the buttons he told her to push and watched what happened, but she couldn’t remember any of it. Tim would learn, when he got to be her age, that it’s harder to retain new information and he was throwing an encyclopedia at her.

They sat at the computer for what seemed like hours, with Tim giving her instructions and Jenna clapping in delight every time Laura did something right. She tried to share their excitement, but the longer things went on, the more confused she got.

“I’m getting kind of tired, kids,” she said. “Maybe we should call it a night and take it up again some other time. Is anybody ready for ice cream now?” she asked, hopefully.

It was mint chocolate chip, her favorite. She dished up a couple of scoops for each of them and put them in the little crystal dishes her mother had given her as part of her wedding present. She added a homemade chocolate chip cookie and used the good dessert spoons from her sterling silver set.

They sat in the living room with their ice cream. Tim and Jenna babbled on about all the fun things Laura would be able to do now that she had her own computer. They talked about keeping in touch with the relatives in Ireland, and getting pictures of her grandchildren by e-mail. Laura just smiled, sat back and ate her ice cream.

She would never touch that ...thing... again, once her kids were out of the house.

Creative Writing - Part 1

I'm going to do something unusual for then next three (maybe 3-1/2) days.  I came across a story I started writing for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) back in 2007.  I never finished it and had completely forgotten it, but I re-read it and...I don't think it's all that bad.  So I decided to print the first three chapters here and see what you think.  I know where I was going with it, but by the time I got into chapter 4, I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to get there and ultimately quit.  But maybe you'll enjoy the first three chapters.  This is obviously semi-autobiographical, except the heroine is more my mother than me, yet not exactly either of us.  The children are an amalgam of all of my own children, of course.

---

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition & not of the intellectual faculties. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

CHAPTER 1

The box stood in the middle of the living room. It was wrapped in silver paper and tied with a big red bow.

Beside it stood her children, big grins on their face. They could barely contain themselves, they were so eager for her to open it.

They were so different from each other. Tim was tall and muscular, with curly brown hair and that little curl that would have fallen onto his face if he didn’t keep it slicked back with a thick layer of gel. Right now he had a pencil-thin moustache, left over from the full beard he sported just a month ago.

It was hard to believe that this strapping man was the little boy she chased up and down the street 30 years ago. Now he was a father himself, with two little kids.

Jenna was petite, with blonde hair which hung to the middle of her back. She inherited none of her mother’s curls, but everyone always complimented her on how thick and shiny it was.

“She’ll probably have to cut it when she has children herself,” Laura thought to herself as she turned her attention to the box again. She hoped that they hadn’t spent a lot of money. Tim could probably afford it, with his job at the computer company, but Jenna had precious little to spare from her waitress salary. She had been working at Miz Bee’s ever since she started college. With grad school coming up next year, it would be a long time before she’d be pulling in the kind of money that Tim did.

“C’mon, Mom!” the kids said. “Open it!”

She leaned over to touch the big box. The ribbon was red and had glitter glued to it. It was a huge bow, but then it was a huge box. The paper was silver. She had to save that to use on another gift later on in the year.

The kids were beside themselves in glee watching her agonizingly slow, methodical opening of the box. Remove the ribbon, roll it up and set aside. Put the bow on the table so it doesn’t get squashed. Paper must be folded to minimize creasing. They knew that all these would go into the big “gift wrapping” box under the bed in her room.

When all the wrapping had been taken care of, Laura carefully lifted one corner of the box.

“I don’t know why you’ve given me a gift now,” she laughed. “It’s not my birthday. It’s not Christmas.”

“We just thought this would be something you’d enjoy, Mom,” her children explained, wondering if she was ever going to open the damn box.

Laura’s heart dropped when she opened the box. There it sat. The thing she’d been fearing all these years. It was a computer. She had told her children over and over again that she didn’t need, didn’t want, would never use a computer. “Don’t ever get me a computer,” she had specifically said over and over again. “I don’t want one of those things in my house.” But they’d done it. They’d given her a computer. She knew they had spent a lot of money on it. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but she simply did not want that thing. She knew she would never be able to learn how to use it and she hated looking stupid.

“It’s...it’s...it’s a computer,” she finally gasped, not quite able to get out the words “thank you.”

“Now mom,” Tim said. “I know you said you didn’t want one, but really I think you’ll be surprised at how much you’ll like it when you learn how to use it. I’ll get it all set up for you and get you started on it before I leave.”

“All right, dear,” she smiled weakly, trying desperately to hide her disappointment and her frustration. “You do whatever you have to do with that th... with the computer... and I’ll get dinner ready.”

She left her children happily unwrapping boxes and cords and so much stuff that it scared her to even look at it. She went out to the kitchen to prepared dinner.

Her she was in her element. Laura had always been a wonderful cook and she loved to entertain. Nobody ever left Laura Webster’s house hungry, if she could help it. And she always tried to make a little extra for people to take home lunch the next day.

As she began chopping onions and slicing tomatoes for her famous chicken cacciatore she almost forgot that her children were in the other room fixing her computer for her. She went out to the garden to pick some fresh basil. None of that stuff that came in jars for her. Everything had to be fresh – the home grown tomatoes and fresh herbs made all the difference in the end product, Laura believed.

As the smells began to fill the house, Jenna came out to ask if she could help.

“It smells great, Mom” she said. “What can I do for you?”

Laura asked her to set the table. “Let’s use the good dishes tonight,” Jenna said. “It’s a special night; let’s celebrate.”

She went to the dish cabinet and pulled out the gold-rimmed dishes that had belonged to Laura’s godmother. They dated from the turn of the 20th century and Laura was so proud of them she wouldn’t let anybody wash them, and certainly would not put them in a dishwasher. In fact, she rarely used a dishwasher at all. She liked getting her hands in soapy water and liked the look of the dishes and glassware as she dried them.

Laura was not one for new-fangled contraptions. She liked doing things the old-fashioned way. Why, oh why had they given her that...that...thing. She would never use it. She hated it already.

“Call your brother for dinner will you, Jenna,” she said, her mouth set in that thin tight line she got when she was upset.

The Unicorn in the Garden

I think it was The New Yorker which ran a great cartoon based on the old Thurber story, "The Unicorn in the Garden."  

As the story goes, a husband sees a unicorn in the family garden and tells his wife about it. She ridicules him, telling him "the unicorn is a mythical beast" and calls him a "booby". When he persists, she threatens to send him to the "booby hatch" (the mental institution). He persists, and she summons the authorities. However, after she tells them what her husband saw, they force her into a straitjacket. They then ask the husband if he told his wife he had seen a unicorn. He tells them that he has not, because "the unicorn is a mythical beast." Thus they take the wife away instead, and "the husband lived happily ever after."

As I recall the cartoon, it's a man looking out the window saying "I SAID there's a unicorn in the garden," while the wife ignores him.   (Maybe you hadda been there.)

But I think of the unicorn in the garden and the man's wife's indifference whenever we are with the guy we spent the evening with last night.  I have probably written about him before.  He's so centered on himself, his kids, his life, his famous acquaintances, and whatever trivia he can impart to enrich our lives, that nothing you say makes an impact.

We were discussing an actor we both know and how I had just learned that he was the cousin of a friend of mine, that the cousin had told me about the actor's family, which is kind of like the Barrymores of Northern California, with several generations involved in various aspects of theater and how I learned that I had probably seen his stage debut, as a small child in a production of a musical in which his mother starred, back in San Francisco in the 1950s.  

So far he was following me, but I made the mistake of mentioning that the cousin (someone he didn't know and thus could not contribute anything to the conversation) had gone on to do great things, too, and had, in fact, had the lead in an opera in San Francisco, a huge deal.  I said "That was the first time I ever got to go backstage after opening night at the San Francisco Opera House."

Without missing a beat, he said "I don't know what it is with my wife.  She has terrible allergies."  He then went on to tell me about his wife's allergies, how he can't keep the windows in his house open because of her allergies, etc., etc.  Needless to say, it effectively ended any conversation about the exciting appearance of our friend in a starring role with the San Francisco Opera.

Earlier in the week, we were having an e-mail exchange.  We are both dealing with aging parents and the problems that come along with them.  His mother also lives in the Bay Area, so we are both driving back and forth the same distance, when our mothers need help.  He was complaining that he seemed to be bearing the brunt of all of his mother's care, since his siblings are busy with their own lives.  I tossed out a statement I would never say to most people, but the evil in my soul makes me do it just to see if he can notice the unicorn in the garden.

"It's all relative," I wrote.  "My sister was murdered in 1971, so I have no siblings to be angry with for not sharing the burden!!"

Hopping neatly over the information that my sister had been murdered, he assured me he wasn't really angry with his siblings and went on to explain their inability to help with Mom because of their impressive jobs.

I suppose it would be easier to just avoid him, but we are frequently thrown into contact with each other.  I roll my eyes a lot, but it has also become a game for me.  Can I say anything that will cause him to react to what I've said, or will everything I say be a challenge to one-up me, or turn the conversation to be about him.

I remember the time we were driving somewhere with a mutual friend.   The friend and I have a mutual friend, whom Mr. Me-Me-Me does not know and the two of us were talking about her, about her upcoming visit from the country where she lives, and how much we enjoy her company.  There was a break of a couple of seconds where Mr. Me-Me-Me broke in with a story about his son, who was currently traveling in Europe.   Needless to say, the rest of our drive together was filled with talk about the son's experiences, and any other opportunity to continue our original conversation ended.

His saving grace is that he is an interesting guy and I suspect totally oblivious to how he appears to others.  Another mutual friend and I were discussing him one day and he said "Yes, he's interesting to listen to for awhile, but I'd never invite him to a party."

Pretty much how I feel about it.