Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Thurs 11.18.09 - While walking Scruffy in the late afternoon, early evening, aka around 5pm, I spied this lovely crescent moon through the boughs of a eucalyptus tree while waiting for Scruffy to make a deposit.

When we returned home from the walk it was fully dark and I found myself slightly sad. I love this time of year and am not normally affected by SAD, but tonight a weight of the last few weeks piled up on me - Grandpa Bill Hanen's passing, the resulting family stuff, all the activity of the L&D wedding, work projects, and loneliness.

Most of all, what looms like a big 'ole hawk watching a small industrious rodent's hole waiting, just waiting, is The Holidays. If you come from a many times divorced family and further fractured by the years & infighting like both of my family sides, The Holidays get Stressful Fast™. This year doesn't even have to be bad, but all the years of fracture, pressure, and atomization build up and continue to reverberate.

To me, multi-generational intact families are a like a lovely, rare artifact at a museum, and I just spent 3.5 days at a lovely museum watching Families that Actually Like Each Other, Laugh Together, and Do Stuff Together. It was amazing, but even more poignant given the passing of the 10 Second Grandpa™.

Last Wednesday night, the night before leaving for the wedding and the night before Grandpa Bill Hanen died, my Dad called me as I was driving home from an errand to discuss that what the plans would be when Grandpa died. Since the Hanens have all the family togetherness of 3 billion year old Quarks moving away from the Universe and each other at the speed of light or faster, I made sure that my Dad knew that I wanted to make sure if Grandpa passed before I got home from the wedding that they were to make sure that all the family got invited to a memorial and not tell me about it after it happened.

My Dad assured me that after Grandpa was cremated that he would have the funeral folks put some ashes in a small vial to give to me so that I could have my Grandpa stick around for longer than 10 seconds. How did we go from 'Don't forget to invite me to the memorial service' to 'Cool, I get a my very own vial of ashes'?

Six days later, I am tired and sad. Sad for reasons that can't be listed here. Tired for way too many activities packed into too few days. I am going to log off now and read a book for the rest of the evening.

In the meantime, can someone loan me a rifle or bb gun so I can shoot or shoo that evil Holiday Hawk away from the entrance to my lair?