Call for October Entries

Okay everyone . . . it's now time for your monthly blogger updates for October. Don't hold back, tell it all. After all, we're family, if you can't trust us . . . well, maybe you're smart not to trust us.

For Ellen's birthday yesterday we went down to Grandma K's house for our Family Quarterly Dinner. This is something Grandma set up to make sure that we all get together at least four times a year. Only the first generation of lineal descendants and their spouces (aka, the "lower case") are invited.

Grandma was doing great. I talked privately with her for quite awhile, and she advised me that she has recently increased her social activities. She is now a member of a club (which includes some of her close relatives and older friends) who attend a weekly social at which a continental breakfast is served and they watch an old time movie and then discuss it (and complain about how modern movies don't even begin to compare.) She was thrilled with this past week's offering: "RoseMarie" with Jeannette McDonald and Nelson Eddy which features the memorable duet of "Indian Love Call."

Grandma has also started Tai Chi lessons weekly. She enjoys this, too, and demonstrated some of the "healthful moves" and poses they use. They have a paid instructor but their best lessons are taught by an actual Chinese lady who pinch hits when the instructor is not there. Grandma actually seemed quite pleased with how well she is progressing in this new interest.

Others attending the quarterly gala included Richard, Kathy, Shirley (Kathy's mother), MaryAnne and Jan, Steve and Linda, Rosena and Alan, and MaryAnne (Ken's wife). Ken is still in Peru until November. (Ken, you will remember, retired early and joined the Peace Corps only to realize later that he was years away from qualifying for Medicare (a really big deal for people in our age group--yes, even bigger than having a great profile on Facebook), so he had to re-up with the Peace Corps every other six month period in order to keep their nice health insurance.

The dinner was delicious. Things went well until Steve and Linda started to preach the liberal heresy of global warming and praising Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing it. Rosena gave a speech on how the education voucher system was going to wreck Utah public education. Another spontaneous "paper" was presented on how wonderful totally free universal health care was going to be and how it wouldn't cost anyone anything ever. At this point, I had to leave the table and hurl chunks in the toilet.

Things calmed down later. (Richard and Kathy were the strongest defenders of the conservative (aka, true) religion and were quite eloquent, though not as strident as the liberals) Things turned to less charged subjects for dessert (one of Grandma's famous apple pies--no one comes close to equaling her pie crust), and everyone joined in singing a"happy Birthday" to Mom--now 59 years old. We left soon after.

I suggested that the quarterly family dinner by-laws should be amended to provide that two sessions of the dinner be held to which only Grandma would be invited to both. The rest would have to declare their political leanings (as if we don't already know what they are) and attend either the Conservative or Liberal session.

Well, that's it for this entry. Thanks for reading. Remember to send in your monthly entries--and lots of photos!