Ash Wednesday

In my spare time, I volunteer to take pictures of headstones in local cemeteries for people doing genealogical research. If you live in East Bubbleflip and your kin are buried near me, I make a trip to the cemetery and take a picture or two. I then send them via email and/or I post them on a virtual cemetery website. This way people who live far away can get a sense of a cemetery visit (or at least a gander). Or, if they're working on their family trees, the pictures can serve as a primary sources of information or sometimes give them additional details that they didn't have. It's fun, easy, and doesn't take a lot of time. And the people making the request really appreciate the help.

A few weeks ago, I saw a couple of photo requests for a cemetery a few miles from my house. The person making the requests had excruciating detailed instructions where to find the two headstones. Perfect! I have no sense of direction so I thought the instructions would help. I click to agree to volunteer and then ask Tim if he wants to come along because really, what's a better way to spend an sunny, summer afternoon than a trip to the cemetery?

Answer: Nothing.

We spend over an hour in the blazing sun looking for these people. We keep consulting the map and the explict instructions: "Area A & B, rows yadda, yadda, spaces blah, blah, blah." We're searching in Area A & B - no dice. We even traipsed over into Area C, D & E - nope, not there. For good measure, we even checked the mausoleum vaults; the areas where the cremains are buried; the veterans' section - nothing. This cemetery is huge. It would take days to go through and read names on every row in the place. And it's a Saturday. The cemetery office is closed.

I leave feeling like jerk. And a disappointment. This person is depending on me to get the headstone pics and I've failed. I go home and send the person making the request an email. I tell them that I tried to find the headstones and was unsuccessful. I also tell them that I'll go back when the office is open. "I'm sure the people in the office can help me and I'll get the headstone pictures. I promise." They write back and say, "Here are the instructions where to find the headstones."

Yeah. I had that info.

On my next day off, I head out early to the cemetery. I stop by the office and speak to the two ladies working there. They're very nice and totally willing to help. Yay! One hops on the computer and types up the names. She turns to the other lady and using that "Uh-Oh," uncomfortable tone of voice I use with passengers when flights are delayed a couple of hours, she says, "Ummmm, Nancy?"

Nancy walks over, quickly reads the display on the monitor and then turns to me and cheerfully chirps, "Sorry honey, they've been cremated! There are no headstones for these people. They've been scattered over in the rose garden."

Holy crap! I'm pretty sure I said that outloud.

"Just go take some nice pictures of the flowers!" she happily suggests. "Because God only knows where they're scattered out there."

While walking to my car to go fetch my camera it occurs to me that the person making the photo requests has absolutely no idea that Grandma and Grandpa, or Aunt and Uncle, or cousins WhatsTheirFaces have been cremated and scattered. Apparently, they didn't keep in touch so much. The people I'm looking for have been dead for a mere 10 and 20 years respectively. In genealogical terms that's about 3 or 4 minutes. They both were both born in the midwest and died in Los Angeles. I know this because I did a little research beforehand. I like to know who it is I'm taking pictures of out of respect. I don't know what these people are doing scattered, nameless in south OC. Did someone in the family decide to take the more ecomonical funerary road and maybe...ummmm, fail to mention this little fact to the rest of the family living in East Bubbleflip?

I grab my camera and take a bunch of pics of the memorial garden. I tried to make sure the pictures were lovely so as to give a cheerful, optimistic twist to the burnt and scattered truth. I then wrote an email gently letting them know there is no "row yadda, yadda, yadda; spaces blah, blah, blah." Feeling bad about having to break the news, I start chatting up the memorial garden, like I'm writing advertising copy. I use words like "beautiful," "serene," and "lovely." I mention the many colors of roses and the general feeling of peacefulness. I don't mention the apartments directly facing the garden - epecially the one playing mariachi music, loud, at 9:30 in the morning. Life is celebration and it most certainly goes on. And that's a good thing. This just probably isn't the time to discuss the merits of those ideas.

I haven't heard back.

Perhaps they're seeking a second opinion.

Wade

Someone I knew and cared about died suddenly yesterday. The details are sketchy at best but the point is he's gone and the world is lesser place without him. I wasn't close enough to Chris Wade to say that he was my friend - but he was certainly more than just a work acquaintence to me. I worked with Chris at Southwest for years before he left to work the ramp over in Phoenix with his best friend, Erik. Chris was a good guy with a kind soul. He was always there doing his job with a smile and a hug for the CSAs working the gate. I was sorry to see him leave OC. I'm much more sorry today.

I can't begin to imagine what his family is going through.

Rest in peace, Chris. I was blessed by God to know you.

iLaurie

As most of the free world by now knows, I am the happy owner of an iPhone. I'm not usually the sort of person that has to have the latest and greatest gadgets nor do I own any other Apple products. But I've been jonesing hard for an iPhone since the thing came out. I'm surprised Jersey Boy didn't suffocated me in my sleep just to get me to stop yammering about it for two solid years. Hell, six months in, I wanted to kill me.

I've been to iTunes and downloaded and used some cool applications. I pulled in some of my photos and music; I've bookmarked my favorite Internet sites. I've used the iPod, I've sent text mesasges, I've Facebooked, and (get this) I've even made some phone calls. I'm pleased to say that this iPhone thing is everything that I'd hoped it would be and more.

Yes, there are many, many terrific cell phones out there and yours is probably much better/more powerful/advanced than my iPhone but...can your cell phone be operated by a drunken chimp? Because that's the cell phone demographic I'm in. Like a neanderthal communicating by the use of iconic pictures on the wall of a cave, I too, have a heavy dependence on the use of icons. When I want to text someone, I don't want to have to deal with anything more complicated than poking my finger at a picture.

Complimentary neanderthal-style grunting, of course, is strictly optional.

Speaking of Neanderthals, since when did they become pronounced ne-ander-talls? What happened to the "h" in there? Granted, I spent most of my life mispronouncing "Orangutans," "Orangutangs" as if they were apes made out of a manufactured "orange juice like" breakfast drink designed for the purpose of space travel - but this stuff with the neanderthals is different. My best guess is that someone really smart dropped the "h" and now everyone else has decided to follow suit.

Of course, the great and simultaneously infuriating thing about the English language is that words evolve; pronunciations and meanings change over time. I recently saw an ad chastising kids for employing the word, "gay" as a negative description of things. It reminded me of my grandmother who wasn't pleased that homosexual people usurped the meaning of "gay" for themselves. My grandmother wasn't homophobic; she was once a flapper and was "gay" in the archaic definition. She took issue with people using a word she identified with and turning it into something she could no longer identify with personally. It would be like a group of Chinese basket weavers in France suddenly deciding to call themselves "Californians." I'd think, "Whoa, wait a just a second now..." I'm not Chinese, I don't know how to weave baskets, and I have never been to France.

Of course, none of us own words. No one gets to be the ultimate authority on their usage based on their personal preferences. Majority always rules. Sure, people can try to influence language usage but at the end of the day we're all just gay neanderthals poking at pictures of orangutans.

Mama Yin & Daughter Yang

My mother called yesterday, around quarter to noon. My niece was getting married over at the old courthouse in Santa Ana and my mother wanted to know if Sabrina was getting ready. Of course, Sabrina wasn't. Sabrina was sleeping. In my bed. Exactly where I had left her when I woke up to answer the ringing phone.

Sporting a cold, I had woken up around 7am. I dosed myself up with Mucinex, Aleve, cough-syrup and a Sucrets. I then promptly went back to sleep. Until the phone rang at 11:45am.

The wedding was to take place at 4pm. I couldn't go because I had to work. Sabrina was going to the wedding with my mother. Sabrina was "representing" my little branch of the family. You may think it odd that my mother would call to see if a non-bride person was preparing for a 4pm wedding at 11:45am. This is because you do not know my mother.

Though my mother was never a Boy Scout, she is, if nothing else, prepared. And not just prepared like a normally prepared person, either. She is thoroughly, dare I say excessively prepared. When the Social Security Office informed my mother that her retirement checks would reflect the fact that she did not pay Social Security taxes for the years 1979-1981, my mother pulled out the original cancelled checks to prove them wrong. The woman has owned a business since 1976 and has carefully saved each and every invoice and receipt for every single monetary transaction since she opened the doors. Want to know how much money the business took in back on April 17th, 1985? July 30, 1976? January 3, 1992? Just give her 10 minutes to find it.

So you can imagine her surprise in discovering that somehow, as if God were playing a very non-funny, giant cosmic joke on her, she was given perhaps the least prepared daughter that has ever existed on the planet. A daughter that cannot be counted on to know where her shoes are any given moment that they aren't physically secured onto her feet. A daughter that regularly says things like, "Beats me!" and "Psh. I'll figure it out when I get there." A daughter who needs to be reminded that she needs to remind her daughter to get ready for a wedding. My mother doesn't just remind - she can remind to the 2nd power.

Don't try this at home, kids.

Though she seems to keep her sense of humor when dealing with me, I suspect she finds me annoying. The poor thing continues to try to teach me an important-to-her lesson I keep failing to appreciate fully. I know in the long run she is much smarter about this life thing than I am - that's obvious. But being fully prepared just isn't me. I'd feel, well, comatose - as if I were going through the motions of life rather than actually living it. I enjoy the adrenaline high of sheer panic. It's exhilarating to live flying by the seat of your pants. Hanging on the precipice of disaster is, my friends, is par for The Laurie Course. Ten minutes of living my lifestyle would make my mother break out in big ass hives. Perhaps even hospitalization, prescription strength medication, and expensive specialists in the field of dermatology would be involved.

But she loves me just the same. I know it. She doesn't really "get" why someone would choose to live like this but, ummmm....okay.

While my mom attended my nieces wedding, impeccably dressed with matching shoes and handbag; her freshly bathed and nicely attired grand-daughter seated next to her, on the other side of town a flight booked to 68 going to Phoenix suddenly cancelled. I had to help figure out what to do with all these impatient people who needed to go to all those places. And we needed to make it happen 10 minutes ago. I loved every friggin' second of it.

To each her own.

New Digs

How do you like the new place?

After much thought and consideration, I decided to move my blog away from Myspace. It's not that I don't like the myspace blog; I'm just not spending a lot of time over there anymore. Oh, I'll still use Myspace to keep an eye on the kiddies and to intercept the odd messages here and there but I enjoy the more immediate interaction of Facebook. Reading status updates that tell me someone is eating a pizza or just washed their hair is fascinating to me. I'm easily fascintated. I may be an intellectually simple but the upside is that I'm rarely ever bored.

My former blog remained untitled over on myspace all the years I posted there. It's just too much pressure to come up with something jazzy, smart and descriptive and then have to live up to the fabulous title. I had to cough up a title here. They made me. I settled on "Absolute Laurie" because it's the only promise I can fulfill.