Happy Birthday to my boy Karl. Double digits today. My baby boy! **wahhh**

Karl on 50's Dress-up Day

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Today after I take him to school so the cupcakes will transport safely, my mother and I are driving out to the family plot 1/1.5 hours away. It's important to her. I will at least see my late cousin's grave. *sigh*

Have a day, peoples.

http://community.livejournal.com/vidding/1475351.html

I downloaded it but with everything else going on today, I don't know when I will get to test it out. It's only available today, so grab it while you can.

There's also a free dvd converter at the bottom of that post, and I grabbed that, too.

I went with my mother today to the cemetery, where we made our nods to our family there and wandered the rest. This cemetery was dedicated in 1897, I think. It's old.

My cousin Jake is there. His headstone includes the name of his partner with a birth date. Jake died Nov of 1992. His partner was ten years older than him. Jake was 25.

My grandmother. Her sister. My great-grandparents and their families.

It was really pretty; out there, it's mostly farmland. We could see Mt. Angel Abbey from the cemetery, way up on the hill. This land looks very much like Austria/Germany, and my mother and I, in a psychic moment, both began to talk about how we expected to see Fraulein Maria come down from the abbey. *LOL*

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My sister called when we were on our way back home. She had called my aunt, who was driving up to my grandparents. She was very upset; the latest information was that Grandpa was not breathing well and being unresponsive again. This does not look good, not good at all. I've tried to call my aunt but no answer.

The selfish place inside me wants the ultimate to not happen today. It's Karl's birthday. I don't want it to happen today.

Whenever I see a '66 Ford truck, like the one currently sinking into my backyard, I think of my dad.

Sometimes they show up in my field of vision at important times.

On this trip I took today, I saw FOUR.

FOUR.

All '66. No '65's.

FOUR.

I think that may be a sign, if nothing more than to emphatically say, "I'm here."

FIVE.

And then on the answering machine, when we got back from the school carnival, was a message from my uncle, because he didn't know if we'd been told about grandpa yet. I called him back and he was just up the street at the high school sports venue, watching his youngest play for the high school team.

So I went up there with Karl, we watched the game, we talked a bit, I got numbers from him that I needed, talked about dad, and I told him about seeing FIVE DADDY TRUCKS.

We cried a little.

He's driving down tomorrow. Dylan hadn't been told -- he had a game to play first. He has a double header tomorrow but they knew he'd bag the games to go see grandpa, so I don't know what they'll do. I told Ed to keep me in the loop since I couldn't raise anyone in CC - no one is home, or not answering their cells, or changed their numbers and I didn't have updated ones.

I'll start making phone calls again tomorrow.

*sigh* As my sister just texted to me, "this sucks."