Seventh Memorial
No matter how sweet, gentle, and kind a woman is, as I hope I've shown Grandma was over the years, she can't help but look a little disturbing brandishing a kitchen knife.
Grandma was a difficult person to buy for at Christmas; she never wanted anything, with one exception: Halvah chocolate. Dad got it for her every year...even after my parents got divorced.
Lord knows how they convinced me to get dressed before opening presents on Christmas morning...
...especially considering it's clearly ass o'clock in the morning.
Warning: DO NOT give me presents protected by Styrofoam packing peanuts. The temptation is still too strong to do this. My boss ordered a small scale from Amazon the other day that came with packing peanuts, and only by constantly reminding myself that I am 32 years old and likely to be fired stopped me from throwing them eeeveeeryyywheeereee.
Dad bought me a periscope that year, because he's been training me for the {Insert Descriptive Noun of Your Choice} Apocalypse since I was a child. Grandma had to show me how it worked.
My talking Cabbage Patch Doll! I heard they took those off the market not long after because the moving mouths "bit" kids, or accidentally ate their hair or something. Her name was Holly, and that's why she's one-half the source I have in my head for the character based on me in The Crew's television show, Holly Tannenbaum (depicted here.) The other half being Diane from Trainspotting.
...ugh my First Communion. NOT a happy memory for anyone in my family. I was in a HORRIFIC mood that morning--Mom woke me up super early to curl my hair (because when my hair was straight, she spent hours curling it, and now that it's naturally curly, she loves when I straighten it), and I was royally pissed about having to wear that stupidly ornate white dress in church (...yeah), so I was an enormous brat and tried everyone's patience to the utmost. And Grandpa is still bitter to this day, because the way HE tells the story, he "had" to buy me that aforementioned stupidly ornate dress, because my father was too cheap to...but the truth is, Dad was willing to buy me a less expensive dress, because I WAS ONLY GOING TO WEAR IT ONCE. Grandpa was the one who felt I "needed" an expensive dress, and spent more on that than he did on Mom's wedding dress.
Ugh. Now you know why I had oshidori make my wedding dress. Moving on.
To reiterate, this is where I live now. Grandma is standing in the doorway to what is now my kitchen. The doorway to the right of that leads to what is now my bedroom. Wild.