I somehow managed to finish chapter 10 of my book and am the crampiest I’ve been since I started spotting a week ago, two weeks before I should. It’s almost up to a light flow and I wonder if I’m going to have a full-blown period soon. Tom thinks I might just end up having my period a week earlier, which he says goes with the spotting time. Yes, I do usually spot a bit before periods, but not a whole week!

I think that as good as the Mylar does at keeping body heat in this bed, I’m going to get the thinnest foam topper I can find at Walmart this weekend that’s made of just plain foam. It will not only work just as well but foam holds the sheets in place much better. Right now the sheets are slipping and bunching like crazy on the Mylar and it’s so “noisy” with the way it crinkles. Sort of like the wax paper we sit on when we go to take a seat on a doctor’s examination table.

Later…

The spotting turned into a full-fledged period and if this keeps happening every other week I’ll scream. I don’t see why it would, though. I think I’m just having a fluky month.

Tom’s become addicted to looking up old records from 1940 and even I have to admit it’s been an interesting learning experience. It’s one of those things you usually have to get older to appreciate.

I called mom to see how she’s doing. She’s getting along but still has 5 weeks left to go in the cast. That must really suck. If an arm cast was as shitty as it was for me, I can just imagine how having one on your foot would be. Ugh! Tammy’s still there, too. For a woman who is so controlling it must be both hard and strange for her to have to rely on someone else for help. At least she’s got someone to help her. Who the hell’s gonna help us when we get old???

Mom is usually pretty tight-lipped when it comes to trying to pump any information out of her, no matter how trivial it may be. But while she couldn’t remember her grandparents’ names, she did remember the street she lived on in 1940 and that was Alderman in Springfield.

It took Tom, who said he could sit and pour through old records for hours, about 20 minutes to go through the scans and find the proper street since they’re not very orderly, but sure enough, they were on Alderman St. in 1940. It wasn’t a house, though. Instead, it appeared to be an apartment building, based on all the other names listed at the same address. It doesn’t seem to exist nowadays when I looked at the area via satellite. Now there are just a couple of two-family houses, so it was probably a very old building that has since been torn down.

I don’t think my parents owned a place till I was born. Maybe the house Nana and Pa lived in next to us at that time in Longmeadow was also their first owned home, who knows? I just know that while I’ll never have the money they did, I didn’t have to spend any of my youth in an apartment.

The tenants were all white with one possible Hispanic or Italian tenant in the building. This doesn’t surprise me as the Puerto Rican boom didn’t really get underway till the 70s and 80s.

Pa worked at the exterminating company he would eventually own, making a grand a year and paying just $20 in rent. While that was still about 20% above normal wages for that time, he didn’t really start making a lot of money till probably around the 50s or 60s. Nana wasn’t working at the time which surprised me since they had a kid to care for and another one just a year or two away, but with that income and that rent, one could work for 3 easily enough. Pa worked full-time. Nana (I keep starting to call her Nane) had been a dance instructor and I guess like most women after they’ve had kids, her body went to hell and that was no longer an option for her.

Mom, whose name they spelled wrong, was 7 at the time the census interviewer interviewed Nana, but her bastard brother was yet to be born. Nana and Pa were both 30 and Pa was listed as an alien, LOL. Apparently, you didn’t have to apply for citizenship right away like you do now. It’s still both strange and fascinating to know my grandparents spoke German and Russian and I didn’t even know it, though Russian’s never been a language I’ve had any interest in learning. Then again, neither was German till Tom read that article and then I met Nane online (that time I meant to say Nane with an e at the end). I wonder what Nana would think if she knew one of her 5 grandkids would learn Spanish and other languages that did not include Hebrew or Yiddish? I suppose that’d be nothing as opposed to learning that one of them would be predominantly lesbian.;) looks towards the heavens Yes, Nana, that woman who helped inspire me to learn German is hot as hell!

Also, I was damn proud of myself for being able to understand most of the German lines in the movie I watched last night! Yeah, I’m such an “accomplished loser.” Can’t drive, can’t keep a schedule, but I can learn lots of languages and write lots of books, LOL.

I think Pa might’ve changed his last name upon entering the US to the very common and generic last name he had to escape the shit that went with having a Jewish last name like my very German/Hebrew maiden name. Hell, it’s amazing what I’ve learned since I apparently didn’t even know the guy’s first name. I’ve always known him as Jack, but he was listed as John. Tom said Jack was usually a nickname for John, but I’ve never heard that before. How do you get Jack from John???

Papa was like my dad, mellow and likable. Nana, on the other hand, was much like my mom. In other words, she was a domineering bitch. I had a few chubby spells as a kid and I remember her taunting me about it, saying that one day I wouldn’t be able to fit through the doorway. Funny thing too, since she was so big herself. I’ll never be a fraction of the size she was. I sure hope not anyway! Well, I certainly can never be tall, but she was kind of tallish like maybe my sister’s height at 5’ 7”, a few inches taller than my mom. She had to be at least 200 pounds. Unlike Pa, who had blue-gray eyes, she had brown eyes. I only knew her as a blond, though she was a natural brunette.

I wonder why they never retired to someplace like Florida like so many older folks seem to do. They certainly could’ve afforded it. Maybe they just didn’t want to leave the business (now in their son’s hands) and their friends and family. Despite how negative and mean Nana could be, I do sometimes miss her and my jovial grandfather. A part of me hopes there is such a thing as reuniting with loved ones in the afterlife, but I won’t count on it. I guess we won’t know for sure what happens until we die. Anyway, they both died in 1985 just 6 months apart at age 75.

How did they manage to have kids 8-9 years apart in a time when BC didn’t exist? Pa must’ve either refrained from letting the damn burst or pulled the plug just in time for the eruption if he didn’t. Probably did a little cycle counting too, as I’m pretty sure they at least knew back then which days were most dangerous to play around on.

I didn’t know my other grandmother as well, but I do know she quit narking on me real fast about smoking and things like that when she came to live with us after her second husband died in California and she got to learn what life with Dureen was all about.

Another peek from the troll today, but this time she wasn’t even in my blog for a minute. Still no posts from her and I still don’t get it. How can she suddenly have this amazing self-control? Some new medication for crazy people? Is her mother sitting there physically controlling her online actions? Something else?