WOE IS HE

 

Yesterday, my grandson broke his wrist after tripping and falling in in PE class. Just what we need.... My son is a single dad with full custody of my grandson and half-time custody of his older sister, age 17. I'm with my grandson, who is 12, in the afternoons till his dad gets home from work, when his sister is not at the house.

At first, the doctor thought he would have to insert pins to hold the bones in place, but he was able to set the break without pins and put on a cast.  GS is at my house today and may return to school tomorrow.  We'll see.  School will be closed Good Friday.  He wanted my readers to see the color he chose for his cast. 

I didn't sleep well, and I'm a little spacey today, so if I say silly stuff, you will know why. 

FAMILY DAY

Yesterday, I was gone from home all day, spending time in activities with various members of my family. The first outing was to Grandparents Day at my granddaughter's high school. Grandpère could not go, as he was due at the boat museum at the same time. Last year, we made the grand tour of the entire school, so GD didn't think we needed that again, but she did want us to visit her art classroom and see the work she had done in class. While we were looking at her pictures, the art teacher came up and said, "Your granddaughter is a very talented artist." I said, "We know." Still, I was delighted to hear the art teacher affirm what we knew. The picture is from our visit to the school last year. The photo from this year will be mailed to me.

Next up was a pleasant lunch at a local restaurant with my daughter-in-law and son to celebrate my DIL's birthday.  I enjoyed spending time with them, catching up with what's going on in their lives and the life of their son, my grandson, who is at LSU.  I have sworn off discussing politics with my son, except about matters upon which we agree, and I managed to keep my oath till the end of the lunch, which mercifully concluded before the discussion became too heated. I'll simply add that we all agree on certain matters political, which I will not detail here.

My next destination was my son's house to stay with my grandson until his older sister, my granddaughter in the top picture, came home from school and running errands. My GS is now a couple of years older than in the photo.

So. There it is - my family day - which is why I didn't blog yesterday.  Busy, busy, busy.

OUR STRADIVARIUS

Pictured above is our genuine Stradivarius violin purchased from Sears by my father-in-law in 1913.  The year is hand-written on a label printed with the words "Antonius Stradivarius", which is pasted on the inside of the fiddle beneath the F-hole (Quiet in the back!).  The instrument is 99 years old.

Another view which shows the carvings on the tailpiece.  I believe the chin rest, fingerboard, and tailpiece to be of ebony.

Now for a bit of human interest - my grandson posed with the violin.   Yes, I know the positioning of the instrument is not quite right.  He's the busybody who snooped around and found the violin in the closet, but I'm glad he did, because I had not seen it for quite a while.

UPDATE with further information on the Sears violins:

This Sears ad reads "A two piece maple back, beautifully flamed, as shown in the illustration. top of resonant spruce, especially selected; reddish brown varnish, beautifully shaded in imitation of an old violin. The neck and scroll are made of curly maple to correspond with the back and sides The fingerboard and tailpiece of solid ebony. Readily retail at $15.00. No finer model in existence than the celebrated Stradivarius. In addition to the violin as above described, we furnish a regular Artists' Tourte model wood bow, german silver trimmed; ebony frog and button; & a solid wood case, American made, handle and lock: a piece of artists' rosin and a full set of four strings and one of out most valuable and complete instruction books."

The violins were mass-produced in Germany and Czechoslovakia, but ours appears to be well put together.

PAR FOR THE COURSE

No, neither Grandpère nor I are golfers. The title is a metaphor for our lives. If Grandpère would submit to an evaluation, I'm fairly sure he would be diagnosed with ADHD. My friend Cathy thinks I have ADD, and I tend to agree with her. The diagnosis would explain a lot about my life. An instance: My grandmother, who was an excellent pianist, tried to teach me to play the piano, but as soon as I moved on to playing with two hands, I was blocked. I could not concentrate and coordinate playing different keys and rhythms with two hands. My grandmother and I tried and tried, because I wanted to play the piano, but I could not do it. End of piano lessons. It's quite difficult for me to focus on more than one thing at a time. You know the saying about walking and chewing gum? I'm not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

Today was Grandparents Day at my grandson's school, or so Grandpère and I thought. However, neither of us paid close attention to the letter from the school, which advised that only grandparents whose names started with 'M' to the end of the alphabet were to be at the school today. The 'B's were next Friday. Of course, Grandson was not in church for the mass where we were to meet him, because we were there on the wrong day. Someone went to get GS out of his classroom, and the authorities were going to permit him to stay with us, because other grannys and grandpas had come on the wrong day, too, and all was to be cool.

Grandson didn't fall far from his grandpa's and grandma's tree, as he has ADHD, too. GS glides more smoothly through life when routines are followed, and GP and I were out of sync with the school's routine, so he really did not want to be with us today. Plus I believe we may have embarrassed him by showing up on the wrong day. He's 11, in the 5th grade. We decided we'd let him off the hook and walked him back to his classroom. However, his teacher urged him back out to the mass with us, but when we were outside, GS began to tear up. I said, 'You really, really don't want us to be here today, do you?'

He said, 'No, I want you next Friday, but now my teacher probably won't let me back in the classroom.'

I said, 'Come with us, and we'll explain to your teacher, and maybe she'll let you stay.' And she did, so we'll return next Friday. Oh dear! We will have to do better!

We'd planned to go to the computer store after the Grandparents Day activities, so on we went a bit earlier to buy a new computer before our old machine not only crashes frequently, but dies forever. We accomplished the task, and the store will be transferring my material to the new computer. For now, I'm functioning on my laptop without all my stuff, documents, pictures, music, all of which were difficult to use on the old computer anyway, because if I had more than 3 tabs open, I was asking for a crash.

Our son, Grandson's dad, joined us for lunch, and when we told him the story, he said, 'Oh no! With him, the routines must be followed.'

There you have it - the story of half our day.

PLAN V. REALITY

THE PLAN:

1. Take Grandson and Granddaughter Christmas shopping. The two wanted to pick out their own gifts, and we did not have time to do so before Christmas, as they were at their mom's house.

2. Take Granddaughter to her friends house for the gathering before the Sadie Hawkins dance at her school (her first date!)

3. Bring Grandson to my house to stay until his dad got off work.

Simple.

THE REALITY:

1. Arrived at the home of GD and GS to learn that GD had typical symptoms of a bladder infection, so we had to make a detour to the Urgent Care Clinic. TBTG for the clinic, because we avoided the nightmare of the ER. Indeed, GD had a high infection count.

2. While we waited our turn at the clinic, GS became bored and restless, so I called Grandpère to pick him up and prevailed upon him to take GS to the game store to buy his Christmas present.

3. Dropped off prescriptions at pharmacy.

4. Went to Walmart for items GD had to have.

5. Returned to my house to wait for medications to be ready.

6. Picked up prescriptions.

7. Returned to the home of GS and GD to pick up GD's clothes for the dance and for spending the night at her friend's house and to pick up GS's game player, so he could play his new game at my house.

8. No time for Christmas shopping with GD.

9. Finally ate lunch around 4:00 PM.

10. Took GD to her friend's house.

All for the love of the two pictured above in the pool from a few years ago. Not quite so simple as I planned, but all's well that ends well - I guess.

I know. This post is boring. But I feel better.