Tell you all my secrets

Since the new one is nearly here, I suppose I should report that I survived!

 

I made it through my first Jr. Roller Derby board meeting as president (and another last night.)  I'm really enjoying it and it seems like I'm doing well. We're not the greatest at staying on track, but decisions are being made, I'm delegating like a boss and I'm strong on follow-up/reiterating what needs to be done.  I feel like I'm my best self.

 

lonelydumptruck and I survived Chuck E. Cheese for the nephew's birthday.  It was actually really fun.  Jenny and Kevin had a million-jillion tokens for the games so everyone got to play games.  It turns out I'm still damn good at skee ball!  Boo got all the tickets, of course, and had enough to get a cool robot toy.

 

VivaVoom Brr-lesque is screening the movie Burlesque Assassins and hosting one of the ladies who performs in the film, so we went to that Saturday night.  The movie was great, stupid, cheesy fun, we had an awesome time.  It's showing again tonight and tomorrow if you are in Anchorage and looking for something to do.  I highly recommend it.

 

Sunday was first tech for the brr-lesque show and then family dinner at Mommie and Eddie's.  Lori-O brought her new dog, Bernie. He's a rescue from the Bush, someone stepped on one of his legs and it had to be amputated.  He's skittish but really adorable and we spent the whole night speculating on what kind of mutt he might be and feeding him treats.

 

July has, arrived with rain, rain rain.  I am probably the only person in town not happy to see it.

 

It was a pretty quiet weekend for us.  Gumbo class went great!  It was just Randi, her Little Miss and one of Little Miss' friends.  Both girls were very well-behaved and had a ball.  Little Miss decided she wants our five-disc DVD player for Christmas.  Rodney stopped by after because it was just starting to get cloudy and he wanted to go on one more ride with the top off his jeep before the rains set in, so I babysat the gumbo while the boys hit the road.

 

Randi's party on Friday was really low-key and fun.  We got to hang out with Dad for a good part of it, and Rodney and Hilary came.  Jay has a tandem bike attachment and Little Miss insisted I follow them around the block, so I wore myself out pretending to chase them and doing Ministry of Silly Walks.

 

Saturday I helped Geolinguist with the chickens and a few other projects, then I took a much needed nap.  We went to The Big Lebowski with Rodney and Hilary, which is always a good time. The Beartooth was actually serving caucasians.

 

 

Sunday I had a tech meeting to go through the rehearsal schedule and show dates for Brr-lesque.  LonelyDumptruck sat in, then we walked around the Market to kill time until my Aurora shift.  It was the busiest night I've seen this season, which was a really welcome change!

All of the people posting about Patrick Swayze's death got me thinking about how I saw Ghost.

I worked for a Cineplex Odeon the summer of 1990. Our theatre was kind of the red-headed step-child of the chain. We were grandfathered to always get the Back to the Future and Star Trek movies opening weekend but the rest of the time our fare was hit and miss. If we got a blockbuster it seemed to be a fluke more than scheduling. One week our triplex was showing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Boomerang and How My Parents Saved the World. The upside was that we were always able to get opening night passes.

I don't remember why I got it in my head that I wanted to see Ghost. I wasn't much of a Swayze fan and I still hate Demi Moore. I can't tell you why, but I decided that I wanted to see it opening night with my Grandma Dirty.

Dorothy was my god-mother and adopted grandma. Both of my grandmothers lived too far away to come to school events like 'bring your grandparent to class day' but Dorothy was right across the alley so she came to all of them with me. My mom likes to tell the story about the first time she left me at home with dad while she went to the store. She came in the house just in time to catch dad carrying me through the back gate. Mom went running out to ask what was wrong and dad replied 'Oh, she needed her diaper changed so I took her to Dorothy.' I think mom and dad meant for me to call her Grandma Dordie, thinking that would be easier to say than Dorothy, but it still came out Grandma Dirty when I tried.

Anyway, I took Dorothy to see Ghost and about the time that Patrick Swayze was killed I was suddenly hit by a huge, horrible realization - Dorothy's husband, Bud, had passed away earlier that year. I brought my widowed Grandma to a movie about a ghost and a woman coping with the death of her boyfriend.

I was the worst grand-kid on the face of the Earth.

All through the movie and all the way home I was silently freaking out. As soon as Dorothy pulled into her driveway, I bolted home to confess all of this to my mom. I think I got about as far as telling her how badly I'd upset poor Grandma Dirty and how much she must have hated the movie when the phone rang. It was Dorothy.

"I just wanted to thank ghost_light again for taking me to that movie," mom relayed to me. "But I'm worried about her, she didn't seem to like the movie very much, is she okay??"

For the rest of the summer, Dorothy was a celebrity with her friends. She would meet the girls for coffee or whatever and someone would always mention Ghost. While all of them talked about what great things they'd heard about the movie, Dorothy would smile smugly and say "MY granddaughter took me to see it opening night."

Woza, Patrick. Grandma Dirty, I miss you.