Archive for September, 2011

Maternal grandparent in-laws

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Justin’s maternal grandparents are traveling the country this summer in a camper trailer.  They live in southern California and have traveled up through Wyoming and all the way over to Vermont and now down as far as South Carolina.  I honestly haven’t spoken with them very much about their trip, so I don’t know what they’ve seen, but they have certainly covered a lot of ground in the last handful of months.

The entertaining thing about their trip is simply the fact that they’re traveling together.  Justin’s grandparents have been divorced for many years.  But they have houses next to each other.  When Justin’s grandma has been visiting us before, Justin’s grandfather would call at least once a day.  Seeing them together, I can understand sometimes why they are no longer married.  And yet, they still do a lot of things together, including travel across the country, although they are doing that each driving a separate vehicle.  The whole situation is just a little bit off kilter.

I’m not completely sure I’ve got this right, but this is how I’m remembering their travel plans to our house.  Originally, they were going to arrive in early to mid-August.  They were delayed on the way down by visiting different tourist sites and then by a problem with their refrigerator in the camper.  They changed their ETA to be sometime over Labor Day weekend, which was problematic for us because we’d already made plans to visit our friends up near Athens, GA.  We’d made the plans months ago and informed Justin’s grandparents of it before they left Vermont.  They were able to delay a couple more days, and told us they would get into town on the Wednesday after Labor Day.  We went to visit our friends, getting back into town on Monday.  I went to work on Tuesday and the grandparents arrived later that afternoon.

I’m kind of fuzzy on all that, but it seems pretty close.  I know that they were three weeks late and one day early.  But with all the other things that have been going on, the exact details of their travel times weren’t important enough to remember.

They’ve been here for about a week now.  They’ve parked the trailer at a park about 10 minutes from our place.  I can’t remember when we saw them between Tuesday and Friday, though I’m sure they stopped by the house, and we ate dinner together on Friday.  We went to Hunting Island on Saturday to go to the beach, and they went back again on Sunday morning – we stayed home, but they stopped by in the afternoon to drop off beach accessories.  We had dinner together Monday evening.  Yesterday, Justin and Grandma helped Jessi with her dorm room, but I didn’t see either of the grandparents at all.  Justin’s in Hilton Head with Grandma right now, and we’re going out to dinner together either tonight or tomorrow.  And I think they plan to head out of town on Friday, but plans are all very squishy.

It’s been nice visiting with them.  I’d met Justin’s grandma several times previously, but this was my first time meeting his grandfather.  It’s been enlightening, to say the least, getting the opportunity to see that far up on Justin’s family tree.  Justin’s grandpa helped me get the grill going on Friday when the coals wouldn’t start.  Justin and his grandma had a great discussion about the politics of laws regarding corporations over dinner on Monday.  Pies and pastries keep appearing in my kitchen.  Grandma and I wandered through shops in downtown Beaufort (I got a plate shaped like a turtle; she got Justin a book called “All my friends are dead”) while Justin and Grandpa took a hike on the trails on Hunting Island (at least I think that’s what they did – I was shopping).

It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable visit.  The only thing I could possibly complain about is that I’m never really sure of the plans in advance – for example, I’m not sure if we’re doing dinner together tonight or tomorrow.  And we have a friend who could use computer help and we keep telling her we’d love to help, just as soon as we know if we’re going to be home or not.  But as far as the unpredictability goes, they are certainly on the mild end of things.  They tend to just stay in their trailer or do things on their own.  We’re more likely to not see them for the evening than anything else.  It’s a huge difference compared to another branch on that tree.

It’s actually hard to believe that they’ve been here for a week already.  It’s been a very enjoyable visit with them so far.  I really have to remember to get a photograph with them and Justin before they leave town.

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My sister-in-law is going to school!

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

I’ve decided that I’m thinking too much, so I’m just going to chew one thought at a time, write it down, and spit it out here.

My sister-in-law got into town last Thursday.  Her arrival was pretty much indicative of the rest of her time here so far.  I was at work that day, but planned to meet up with Justin and his grandma and his sister and go out for lunch at Captain D’s, a seafood restaurant chain.  The understanding was that her plane arrived sometime between 11:45 and noon, but since her mother wouldn’t actually tell anyone the flight information, there was no way of knowing for sure.  Justin and his grandma went to the airport to wait.  I had to run an errand but planned to meet them at the restaurant after that.

At 12:15 or so, they determined that her flight wasn’t expected for at least another 30 minutes, so we decided to meet for lunch and then they’d pick her up after that.  I was already close to the restaurant, so I told them I’d meet them there.  Except when I got there, Captain D’s was closed and the building was up for lease.  So we went to Appleby’s instead.  They brought me the wrong salad and lost Justin’s order completely.  As he was finally taking the first bite of his food, Jessi called to let us know that she was waiting at the airport.

But her school has really been the interesting situation.  She arrived without any financial aid worked out for her semester.  I’m really not completely clear on the whole situation, but I know she kept asking Justin if an email had come in with information about an application that she put in after she arrived, when she could get her grandfather to co-sign on a loan.  That was submitted on Thursday, I think, and by Sunday morning we still hadn’t heard anything.  Meaning, there was no way she could pay for school.

At that point, she went to school and un-enrolled from all her classes.  We started to figure out all the details that would go into moving her into our house for the semester – clearing out space in the upstairs bathroom for her toiletries, clearing out my not-often-used office to make space for her to have a bedroom, finding a way to make space for her to park her car in front of the house, looking for job opportunities for her to make some money….  And she went to the beach for the 3rd day in a row.

Monday morning, I went to the office still working out the details to accommodate our unexpected roommate.  Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, Justin called and told me that her loan application had gone through and she was heading back to school.  She was on campus, trying to enroll in classes and moving things from her storage unit into her dorm room.  Justin’s grandma made dinner and while the four of us (Justin, me, Grandma and Grandpa) sat down for dinner, she came back to the house, decided not to join us for dinner, packed up all her stuff from the house, and went back to her dorm.

Last night, because the grandparents are traveling via camper trailer, Justin and I actually had the house to ourselves.  This morning, Justin and his grandma were helping Jessi move things from her storage unit into her dorm.

And according to Justin’s calculations, she’s going to be paying more in school loans per month than we pay in rent and utilities…for the next 40 years.

I have decided that as long as she’s not staying in the house with me, then what she does is Not My Problem.  She’s 20 years old and an adult and she can make her own decisions.  When the plan was for her to stay with us, our plan was to treat her like an adult, let her come and go as she pleased, and let her make her own decisions.  Now that she’s not staying with us, that notion still stands – she can come and go as she pleases and make her own decisions.  The difference is that now that she’s in the dorm, none of those decisions will have any effect on me.

I’m happy for her – she’s back where she wanted to be, hanging out with her friends, and going to school.  And if she decided that she wanted to stay with us, I would do whatever needed to be done in order for that to happen – including boxing up all my books and buying a bed for her to sleep on.  But I admit, it is a relief for her not to be spending the semester with us.  And I think she probably agrees.

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People at the beach

Monday, September 12th, 2011

We went to the Hunting Island beach on Saturday with Justin’s grandparents and sister.  We set up our camp with our umbrellas and chairs and settled in.  Actually, Justin’s grandma and I went shopping in Beaufort while the rest of them went on to the beach to set up and we caught up with them a couple hours later.  But that’s not the point.

The point is that while we were sitting there, enjoying the cool breeze off the water, the couple next to us started smoking and the smoke drifted over to our seats and caused some irritation.  So I watched them for a little bit to try to decide if they were going to quit anytime soon, and I noticed that they were both using sign language to communicate.  My ASL is really rusty, but I can identify it when I see it, and I thought it was interesting.  I tried not to stare too much, but I kept peeking over at them.  Plus, I kept hoping that they would stop smoking.

After a while, they went into the water, and when they came back to shore, I saw them taking pictures of each other with the ocean in the background, and then trying to take a picture of the both of them by holding out the camera backwards to take the picture.  I caught their eye and gestured that I could take the picture for them.  So I took the picture, counting to 3 with my fingers, and it turned out that they’re both hearing impaired.  They told me that it was their first time in the ocean and tried to tell me a story about what had happened while they were in the water, something about the waves, but it didn’t go very well.  I couldn’t understand what they were trying to tell me and it was frustrating for all of us.  But they were happy that I could take the picture for them and I was happy that I could help.

They sat down and went back to smoking until the water started coming up as far as their blanket.  Then they packed up and waved to me as they left.  The smoking was annoying, but they were a cute couple and it made me happy to help take their picture.

Taking pictures for people on the beach is almost a recurring thing for me.  The last time it happened I was on Hilton Head Island with my friends Becky and Julie and a family of four was situating themselves on a dune and trying to figure out how to do their picture.  So I took that picture for them, too.  They were visiting from Ohio and were surprised that I actually lived in the area.

I’m working on a long post about what’s going on around here.  I’ve been working on it for three days and it’s running onto the 3rd page in Word.  I’ve still got some work to do there and then I have to go back and figure out if I can shorten it some or if I’m going to make it a series of posts or leave it one whole long essay.

I left it at home to work on there instead of working on it over my lunch, which was a good plan because it’s taking some thought.  But I wanted to at least get on here and write about the couple at the beach while it was still a fresh memory.

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