Look at me, all jazzy-like with the comments!

I'm slow on the uptake. I know this already.

Orien Rumplestiltskin Waldegrove.

No, seriously.

Granny died, and Brent is still a few hours away. But she knew he was coming. At least she knew that.

Whenever Granny heard that anyone she knew had died, she always said 'it's a blessing!' I can't really muster up the same sentiment for her, because it's *not* a blessing. It totally sucks and I will really miss her. I never knew either of my blood grandmothers very well, but I feel like Granny was mine too.

I don't know what's going on. They said she wouldn't make it through the night. So I'm just having a little vigil for Granny from 7,000 miles away. We love you Granny, and I hope Brent gets to you in time to say goodbye.

Alex called my recent lack of blog-posting a 'dismaying dimsie dropoff'. I like alliteration.

I don't have anything to say, which is a problem when you have a blog. By tomorrow I will be husbandless for an unspecified number of weeks, which sucks. Of course, his journey (via Tahiti!) and eventual problems at the end of the journey are going to suck more. And we owe the bank *beaucoup*. Basically, we are in the house of gloom. I feel an unwise 'we're in so much debt I might as well buy clothes!' shopping spree coming on. Must quell myself.

Granny ate a spoonful of applesauce, though. Yay!

I think you know you're a grown-up when older relatives start relying on you. Granny going to hospital has really altered our priorities for this year, and it's all happened over the last few days. I wonder if our house will ever stop having a giant aura of stress and worry? I want Granny to be OK and I don't know what's best for her. Should she come here? Would she make the journey? Would immigration give her any problems? Would she be happy in such a strange place? And if she stays in Texas, how can Brent and I be responsible for her from so far away? All of this would be so much easier if we had *any* money at all, of course. I keep weighing up alternative after alternative, and all of them are so contingent upon all sorts of other developments. Poor little Granny. We have to find a way to make her content and safe.

Tangentially, it is also fairly disgusting that Brent's blood relatives are less willing to let him borrow money in this emergency situation than *my* relatives are. Yeah, sure, you complacent arseholes who actually *live in Houston and have known Granny for 30 years*, ignore her and send us a get-well e-card and let my aunt who lives on a widow's pension and my mother who has a huge mortgage, neither of whom have even *met* Granny, offer to pick up the slack with their worth-crap-all New Zealand dollars. Not, of course, that anyone should be obliged to let anyone else borrow money from them, and we'll just be going to the bank anyway rather than take money from my peeps... but the fact that my relatives are offering and his aren't lets me know that we made the right choice to move to New Zealand, even if this kind of situation makes everything so bloody difficult. In crises like this you find out who actually cares about you and who doesn't.

I'm sorry for sounding mean-spirited. They're actually all very nice, I suppose, even if they don't have the same priorities as my family when it comes to illness, and I'm clearly just a bitch. But this is *my* blog, dammit, and I'll be a bitch if I want to. I'm Lesley Fucking Gore.

I hate getting up at 6am, but the sunrise from the bus this morning was *amazing*. You know how cartoons have those big shafts of sunlight coming over a cloudbank and forming a semi-circle of yellow rays? That actually happened! *Extreme* nature!

I know I keep harping on this, but every week brings a new entry in the Freaky Library Patron Name sweepstakes. Here's the latest: Heypinkie Reynolds. I actually spoke to her and she is a middle-aged North American with pink hair, appropriately enough! (She also whined for hours and hours about her library fine, which obviously did not endear her to me. *You* returned the book late. Pay the fuck up and hush it, lady. Obviously, I didn't say that to her face. I just waived half of her fine and smiled firmly at her through my gritted teeth.)