shockingly, i hadn't been down to grandma's house since summer of 2000, when i stopped there on the tail end of my drive around the country. so, it was time to go again. grandma's house isn't actually a whole lot of fun, so i got mom to join me down there for mother's day.

there are things about grandma that are charming: she uses 'it's' instead of 'there's' as a place holder in existential constructions. e.g. "it's a drugstore on our way" rather than "there's a drugstore on our way," or "it's some lemonade in the refridgerator" instead of "there's some lemonade in the refridgerator." this is common in southern american dialects. other cute grandma speech patterns: saying 'carry' rather than 'take' or 'drive' as in "i carried Dixie down to see Weyman last week," and actually using the phrase "over yonder."

there are things about grandma that are slightly annoying, but still endearing: her world, perhaps understandably, revolves around meals and mealtimes. as soon as i arrived on friday afternoon, she wanted to know when i wanted supper. on sunday, after supper, we had literally JUST finished eating, she asks mom and me what we wanted for lunch the next day. cue fits of giggles that i only just managed to keep under control. it's not even like she was going to prepare something, so needed time to plan. we were just going to have the same leftover ham sandwiches on croissants with leftover broccoli and cauliflower salad and corn chips that we had just finished eating. not that she wouldn't have prepared something, had we wanted it.

then there's the non-sequitors. her train of thought is on an entirely different track sometimes. so at this same sunday dinner immediately after which we were asked what the next meal should be, she suddenly pipes up with, "they came to the anniversary." huh? who came? to what anniversary? mom says, "who? kathy and sharon?" (two daughters of a childhood friend of my mom's, who we had been talking about 10 or 15 minutes before, but had not been talking about just then). i say, "the church anniversary?" (grandma's church had had their 50th anniversary last year, and we had mentioned it a couple of times in passing the previous day). yes, yes, kathy and sharon came to the church anniversary. so i guess we understood, but really. anaphora resolution is not grandma's strong point.

there are things about grandma that are really just annoying, and not so much charming at all: whenever she's sitting, with nothing to do with her hands, she puts her index fingertips to her lips (hands in "prayer" position) and blows lightly. do that now. see what it sounds like. imagine someone doing that for 20 minutes at a time.

then there are the things about grandma that i wish weren't: she, and some of the rest of my family in georgia, are, um, shall we say, not the most racially sensitive people i've ever known. grandma still talks about 'negros' and 'colored folks.'

we were watching the news on friday night, and she asked about one of the anchors, "is she colored, or is she hispanic?" i wanted to say, "does it matter?" but i didn't. i said, "i don't know." and to be truthful, i didn't. she may have been neither. i hadn't thought about it. it didn't matter. then on monday morning, mom and i were asking questions about granddaddy's job at the brickyard. at one point, the family moved out there and lived on site, because granddaddy was the plant manager, and was on-call all night. mom asked if granddaddy had retired early. grandma said no, he'd quit. why? because he'd gotten tired of being on-call every night, and having to be after workers who didn't show up reliably. she said, "and who wants to be going into negro quarters at night." i bit my tongue.

on the one hand, she's 78, and grew up in a very segregated South. on the other, more important hand, that's no excuse.

in other racist news, you may have seen the news about taylor county georgia, in whence a particular high school's junior class decided to throw two proms, one for whites only and one for everyone. this is one year after this high school was lauded for *finally* having one integrated prom, after decades of having one for whites and one for blacks. the linked article, and others that i've read, are almost unbelievable. how can the students say, with a straight face, that "it's not racial." how can the parents "not see anything wrong with holding separate, private parties." if the students are "all friends... all very close," how can the white students agree to attend an all-white prom? that excludes some of their "friends"?

granted, the parties are not paid for or sponsored by the school or county. they are organized by the students and paid for by the parents. but doesn't the school have a responsiblity to at least question the practice? one county resident, interviewed on tv, said that "it's not racism, it's tradition." yeah. the tradition of racism.

in other, non-race related news, i got a couple of things from grandma this visit. one is her baby ring. it is a tiny gold ring with a ruby, for a baby's finger. it fits over the first joint of my pinky. she also had a tiny gold heart-shaped pendant that has a teeny mark in it from her first tooth. she bit the heart, way back when. that is reserved to be given to the first great-granddaughter. the other thing she gave me was a 1935 series dollar bill with "hawaii" printed across the back in big, outline-only letters, and two small instances of "hawaii" on the front. he brought it back from the war. not that he was ever in hawaii. he was a paratrooper in italy. but still.

two bug-related incidents. (one) i woke up sunday morning to find that i had rolled over and crushed a small spider during the night. ewwwwww. i went downstairs and, as soon as grandma left the room, asked mom to check me over for spider parts or eggs. (two) last night, in bed, karl found a small bump on my side. a tick. ewwww again. i must've gotten it walking through grandma's woody back yard. karl pulled it out, grossed out the whole time (sheltered boy: they don't have ticks in england, apparently). he insisted i check him (even though ticks are far from common in our city home) and check the bed. i checked this morning for a lime disease bull's eye, but seem to have escaped unharmed.

last, and probably least. we were watching "star search" and lo! and behold! but it was none other than butch, one of the members of the Id, a sketch comedy troupe that my ex, ben, co-founded with butch and two other funny bostoners. would've linked to the id, but apparently their web site is no more. not surprising, really, since they've been defunct for, oh, about 5 years now.

okay, i've been writing this entry (on and off, of course) for 16 1/2 hours now. it's time to post it already.