potentialities

I'm afraid my iPod and I are going to have to break up.

It's not me; it's him. It was bad enough when he started hanging my entire computer -- no mean feat -- every time I plugged him in to sync. I managed to patch things up after much reformatting by syncing only a few playlists containing a small fraction of my library, but now he's got a new trick where he drops out in the middle of long tracks like audiobooks and skips to the next one, whistling innocently. Just today he's already skipped the train scene in Half Blood Prince, which is one of my favorite bits! I see a trip to the Apple Store in my future.

Ironically, my 3G iPod is still going strong, if you allow for the fact that even the aftermarket replacement battery no longer holds so much as a secondsworth of charge. Stan uses it in bed plugged into the wall.

My grandmother is not doing well. She's in stable condition, but the crippling pain in her hands means that she cannot be released to her assisted living apartment when she leaves the hospital.

If she leaves the hospital.

So, my mom and I are leaving town this morning to visit. Just to let you all know.

This is the first anniversary that my grandparents have not spent with each other in sixty-four years.

With my natal day fast approaching and nearly a quarter century on this earth behind me, I was beginning to feel a trifle ancient.

Accordingly, I was pleased to discover that the Doctor is still older than me. Although not by much.

This was taken in 1991, so I would have been seven.

On Saturday, my grandfather died.

A couple days previously, he'd been admitted to the hospital again. The closest he would ever come to complaining that he was in pain was answering in the affirmative to a direct question, so he must have been bad off for them to be so generous with the morphine. My grandmother and my aunt stayed with him, always speaking as though he might be listening, although he was mostly unconscious, something that was no doubt a great relief.

A couple of weeks previously, I brought Stan to Sioux Falls for a visit, over my parents' strenuous objections, because I absolutely insisted that he be able to meet my grandfather while he was still alive. My whole family interrogated him on his propensities and prospects, naturally, but my grandfather was the only one who didn't ask what use a degree in philosophy was. He said that it's always good to have a philosopher around.

Once, I was sitting by his bed while he was asleep in case he needed anything, and he woke up and told me that I was the most beautiful woman that he'd ever seen. "You've always been beautiful," he added. "But you're especially beautiful now."

I've never doubted that I was smart – like my grandfather, in fact – but I never believed that I was beautiful before.

resquiescat in pace