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It's not every day that
someone turns 90, so my Mom planned a luncheon party for the family
to celebrate my GrandMother's (Peggy Snavely aka Nana) birthday. Since I haven't been back
home for two and a half years (when Jim and I visited for
Christmas), Nana's bday was a good excuse for a trip.
Unfortunately, Jim couldn't afford to take time off from his job
right now, so I left him in charge of the house and the puppies, and
headed down South. |
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| My Mom and I worked out details for my plane flight that coincided nicely with Jim's day off (for taking me to the airport) and his longest work day (returning late Monday night). I thought our plans might get derailed though as it came to the day of my flight. | ||||
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In the morning, as I made a stop by the bank before leaving town, a
huge thunderstorm stuck town. Jim and I pulled the car under the
tree in the bank's parking lot to avoid some of the hail. When the
downpour slacked off, I made a wild dash to the door of the bank. So
much rain had fallen so quickly that the road and sidewalk were
flooded right up to the doorway! Safely back home, I had to toss my
sneakers into the dryer so that I had something to wear on my feet
on the plane (I should have just gone barefoot since airport
security still requires you to remove your shoes.
 ) Listening to
the weather reports, we heard that a small tornado had gone through
the southwest end of town.
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After the heat wave we had been having for the last week, the temp dropping from the mid 90's to the low 70's after the storm was a welcome relief; albeit only a short respite. By the time Jim had driven me to the Canton-Akron airport (about 10 minutes from home), the heat and humidity had returned along with more ominous looking clouds. As we stood outside the terminal and smoked one last cigarette before my flight, the tornado sirens at the airport began to wail. Jim quickly left before the storm, as I went inside to wait for my flight. On his way home, Jim got the picture of the front wall of the mesocyclone bearing down. | |||
| As I approached my gate at
the end of terminal, I could see a wall of wind and rain sweeping
across the airfield as the storm blew into town. Within minutes, the
power in the terminal went off before their
generator kicked in. Everyone gasped and quickly backed after from
the windows as the storm unleashed it's fury.
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| Luckily, the tornado spawned from this
second storm of the day was a few miles north of the airport, only
delaying my flight by about 15 minutes. The first 15 minutes of my
flight were quite bumpy and exciting. (actually, it was almost as much fun as one of the roller coasters we rode earlier this Summer.  ) |
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Soon we were flying past southern Ohio
and over West Virginia as the weather began to slowly clear and we
emerged from the clouds. By the time we landed (only 5 minutes
behind schedule thanks to the storm blowing us along) the weather
was clear and very hot. Mom and Dennis were there to greet me when I arrived. On the way to their house, we stopped at "Backyard Burgers" and I had a very yummy chili cheeseburger for dinner. |
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| A satellite view of Mom's house from Google maps |
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| After helping Mom get some decorations ready for GrandMother's party to be held in a few days, we met up with my sister-in-law Angie and her daughters Kayla and Allyson. The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with their dog Belle, and watching the girls play on their trampoline. When Donny got home from work, he grilled up some burgers for dinner, topped off with Angie's homemade peach ice cream for dessert. | ||||
| Donny, Angie, Kayla, and Allyson live
here as seen on Google maps (all these pictures seem to be from early in 2007. You can tell be all the naked trees in the Winter) |
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Having spent many, many Winter months
doing puzzles, it didn't take me long to help the girls tackle this
1000 piece puzzle that Allyson got for her birthday. After sorting
by colors (Kayla took pink, Allyson took blue, and I had yellow), we
began to make good progress. MouseOver this picture for a CloseUp of
the beautiful butterflies. After watching a little TV with the family, we all headed to bed. Thanks again for letting me use your bedroom for the night, Allyson.  |
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| The following day, I went
with my middle brother's family to visit their store, Cartridge
World, where they refill printer ink cartridges. Stupid me
should have remembered to see what printers I had, since mine seem
to always need ink. (in case you're reading this,
Donny, we have a Compaq IJ300 that needs a color 337710-001 and a
black 3377096-001 and the HP Officejet T45 takes HP-23 for color and
HP-45 for black
Keep that in mind for Christmas.
) On Saturdays,
Donny spends time pre-filling cartridges so his customers don't even
have to wait; Angie cleans up the place; and the girls are learning
to run the front counter and wait on customers. |
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| Allyson spent most of her time actually playing Webkins online; but Kayla rang up a few customers and learned about making change. | ||||
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Behind the counter, in the workroom,
are plenty of broken and repaired printers, along with various other
computer parts, as Donny still works during the week as a network
specialist. MouseOver for the first GBS! |
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| Although it was 107
degrees outside, I spent over half an hour in the back parking lot
talking on the phone. My GrandMother didn't think I was going to be
able to get down for her party and I had to keep up the pretense.
Not only did I wish her a happy bday; but I told her how very sorry
I was that I wouldn't be able to see her this Summer. We chatted for
quite a while and even began to make plans so I could "finally" come
visit at Christmas time.
Yes, I lied to her a little bit; but I
lied to my Mom much more with the Amish Buggy story a few years ago. |
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My youngest brother, Jon, met us back
at Donny's house After puzzling for a while, and eating some more of
that yummy peach ice cream, I packed up my bag and headed over to
visit the rest of the nieces and nephews. From Google Maps, you can see Jon's new work truck in the driveway! |
| We had to take a slight detour around this accident on the way over to Jon's. The following day we found out that the fireman driving this engine was killed when he lost control in the curve and the truck flipped over on it's side. MouseOver this picture for a CloseUp similar to the one published in the newspaper the next day. |
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| The biggest change at Donny's house was that both girls had had their bedrooms repainted, and the little puppy they had at my last visit had turned into a BIG loveable dog (Belle). However, at Jon's, there were even more changes. They have three newer dogs - Riley, a big, beige loving German Shepherd; Sophie, a sweet black poodle and her new sister, Lily, who Jackson recently got as his birthday present. They had remodeled a whole room too. The playroom with the fold-out couch where we celebrated several Christmases together . . . | |
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| . . . has really been turned into a playroom now with a bar, pool table, hi-def TV, and a projection TV. Over a couple of beers, I chatted with Jon, Lisa, and their close friend Doreen (who is a really cool gal!) and caught up on that latest happenings in our lives. | |
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| After a dinner of steaks
and baked sweet potatoes, the kids and I watched Lord of the
Rings 3 before they went to bed. I didn't go to bed for quite a
while, as Lisa (Jon's wife) and I sat out on the back deck chatting
until nearly 2 o'clock in the morning.
I was given a choice of bedrooms; but took Jackson's advice and kept
everyone happy. Jenny stayed in her "girly room" with Doreen's
daughter that stayed over, the two boys (Jonathan and Jackson)
bunked up together in Jonathan's "boy room", and I crashed out in
Jackson's room at the end of the hall. Thanks for letting me use
your bed, Jackson!
I don't feel guilty for staying up so late and talking though. Not only are both Lisa and I talkative; but we really did have a lot to talk about. We chatted about the kids, my memories of our childhood with my family, and my health. Jim's ears were probably burning up in Ohio, as I told her about our relationship and how much he means to me. We also talked more seriously too about politics, religion, and death. Not long ago, Lisa's brother died and, of course, she's still quite affected by that. Having lost Randy, I hope that some of my perspective helped her some. Losing someone you love is very hard and always takes time to come to grips with. Even though Lisa and I had did some serious talking about subjects most of us would rather avoid, I must say that I really enjoyed my time with her. On this trip, I spent more time with my sister-in-laws and their kids, than I did with my brothers and really enjoyed it. Although my brothers are all grown up and different than they were as kids, I've known them for as they as they've been alive. I've only really had contact with their wives maybe a dozen times or so and am still getting to know them better. I can totally understand why my brothers married these two ladies. Both are quite nice, intelligent, good moms, and loving, caring people. I'm sure they are good influences on my brothers. |
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| I had a great night's sleep and woke in the morning to a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, bacon and hash browns. Afterwards, Lisa, Jenny and I headed over to help Mom decorate the dining room at the restaurant for GrandMother's party. | ||||
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MouseOver to see a street-level view of Beantown, the restaurant. |
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| The restaurant had a very nice party room and Mom made it quite a festive party room with streamers, a "Happy Birthday" banner, helium balloons, colorful table centerpieces, and little party favors filled with mints. | ||||
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| Along with huge bowls of mixed nuts and jellybeans, we had this great cake for dessert. Underneath the icing was white cake filled with a layer of chocolate mousse. |
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They aren't much to look at (just kidding guys!), but they're my brothers. Click this pix for a large version |
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In all seriousness, I
really do miss these guys.
They were my little brothers for all those years. Sure, they were a
pain in the ass at times; but, as the older brother, I always had
the upper hand and was an ass at times too.
But I'm really impressed by what they've accomplished now that they
are men. Good jobs, hard workers, with awesome wives and smart,
well-behaved kids. Being around them always makes me nostalgic.
Donny looks similar to and has similar good characteristics of our
Dad; and Jon has the same great humor that our GrandFather (Nana's
husband Alex) always had. Staying with Jon and his three kids in
their hectic life is sooo much like how I remember the three of us
growing up. It's great to see! |
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| That's my Aunt Beth on the right, and her partner, Chris, chatting with my Mom, on the left. | Not the best picture of Chris, but at
least you can see her face in this picture.
Mom's hubby, Dennis,
is there in the background. |
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| My nieces Allyson, Jenny, and Kayla |
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As guests continued to
arrive, we were all waiting for the guest of honor to finally
appear. On the far side of the room, I tried not to look and make
eye contact with Nana as she first greeted my Mom and some of the
out-of-town family members. Ah, but Nana is still a sharp one, and
within seconds she has spotted me! I tell you, seeing
those looks of surprise
and then happiness
on her face as she realized it was me, was worth all the guilt and
sin of that little white lie I had told her the day before on the
phone.
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| MouseOver CloseUp | MouseOver CloseUp | |||
| My Mom planned all sorts of little things to help the party really be special. Along with some booklets filled with interesting facts from 1917 (the year Nana was born), she pinned a beautiful corsage on the birthday girl. | ||||
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| With everyone having cameras, in the same room and dressed nicely for the occasion, we all had to pose for some family pictures. | ||||
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Donald Mark, Michael Charles, Jonathan Lee Bivens  Click this pix for a larger version |
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| Actually, we're pretty lucky to have gotten a decent picture of the three of us. Most of the time while we were "forced" to stand there, we were busy elbowing, thumping, and kicking each other. Although we look older, we're still just little boys at heart. | ||||
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| Celia, Peggy, Beth | ||||
 Click this pix for a larger version |
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| Not a bad looking gal for 90, is she?
Plus she's smart, happy, and loving. What more could a guy want in a
GrandMother?
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| Everyone mingled and chatted before dinner. I only knew about half the crowd (about 26 in total). At one point, while Nana and I were chatting, trying to decide who was who and how we were all related, the easy solution dawned on me - we were all related to Nana! | ||||
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The restaurant fixed a
lovely special luncheon for us. There was a very creamy, smooth
potato salad; a broccoli casserole that was incredible (it must have
have eggs in the mixture because it was light and fluffy just like a
soufflé); croissants (as big as my hand!) for the chicken salad,
with lettuce and tomato for the fixin's. Of course, being down
South, sweetened ice tea was the drink of choice.
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Nana and Jenny watch as Jon lights the
three candles for "past, present and future". I told Nana that if we
had just poured the cake batter into a pan, we could have cooked the
cake while we ate with 90 candles for each of her years.
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| Whether down South or up North, Uncle mIkIE loves his nieces and nephews |
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| There's never enough time for me to spend with my Mom on my short trips home; but I make sure to squeeze in as many hugs as I can while she's around. | ||||
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My Mommy and Me
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MouseOver Silliness
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| Celia and Beth (Can't you tell that they are sisters?) |
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Another GBS (Sorry Mom. ) |
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Ally came over to ask why I looked so
glum. What no one knew was that the lunch didn't go so well for me.
I would bet it was a combination of all the running around I had been
doing, the heat and my meds; but after I finished the last bite of
my chicken salad croissant, I had to make a bee-line to the
restroom.
(Have I mentioned before, how much I despise barfing?? At least, I didn't throw up much, because that food sure was
good.) |
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| After the luncheon and the birthday
cake, everyone began to pick up. The kids "helped" by collecting all
the balloons. It looks like if Nana would just jump up, she might be
able to catch that balloon for Jenny.
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| While everyone was eating
cake, I had gone outside (in that blazing heat
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to have a cigarette and try to recuperate from my sudden sickness.
Actually I very nearly called Jim crying about then. I was very
distressed by getting ill at, of all places, the party that was the
purpose of my trip. But I bucked up and chatted for a while with one
of barely-related guests from the party, who had come out for
a cigarette break too. After a while it just got too hot, so I put
on a "happy face" and headed back inside, feeling a tiny bit
better. |
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| Inside, the kids were
having some problems with the balloons. The balloons had drifted
away from the kids and were sucked up against an air vent. Luckily,
most the the string had been tied together by now; but a few strays
were just impossible to get because their strings were up in the
duct work. Jon lifted Jackson up; but was only able to retrieve one
of them leaving the others for the restaurant staff to deal with
later in the evening.
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| Before the party totally
broke up, we had to get a few more family group shots. Don, Celia, Michael, and Jon |
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| Peggy Snavely (aka Nana) and her GREAT-grandchildren Jackson, Jenny, Kayla, Allyson, and Jonathan |
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Mom and I taking pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. MouseOver CloseUp |
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| Happy Birthday GrandMother and many more! | ||||
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| Click either pix for a larger version | ||||
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| Click either pix for a larger version | ||||
If I had to pick my
favorite picture from the party, it would definitely be this one,
because it best represents who my GrandMother is to me. Look at
that smile!
Can't you just hear her laughter? Even though she's 90 now and is
the only one still alive from her family, with an attitude like
this, I expect to hang in there a lot longer. Her mom (my
great-grandmother) lived nearly another decade past this point, and
I'm expecting Nana to break that record!
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Rather than going home with GrandMother
after the party, I tagged along with Lisa and the kids as they went
swimming at their club (I was a smart boy and had packed my swimsuit
too
).
Still not feeling the greatest, I figured a dip in the water, and
resting on a lounge chair by the pool, soaking up some sun, would
help me re-charge just a bit so I didn't go to Nana's feeling so
sickly. |
| I was feeling refreshed and much better,
and after a quick stop at Subway for dinner, Lisa and Jenny dropped me
off at Nana's for the evening. If you look closely at this Google map, you'll see Nana's car parked outside her condo. |
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| It was another late night
session for mIkIE!
Nana (another one of us that can really chat up a storm) and I
stayed up until nearly 2 AM, talking about everything. Once again,
the topics of politics, religion, family, and health were discussed.
Ever since we both lost our partners (Randy for me, and GrandDaddy
for her) and both have been facing up to our own mortalities (me due
to the HIV, and her from growing older), we've had a lot in common
to talk about and have grown much closer. To prove that point, and
to point out that she really is still quite "with it", after asking
me how I was doing now on my meds, she butted in when I was
answering about the side effects that still occasionally get me.
Slightly cocking her head, with a small concerned smile touching her
lips, she leaned over and said, "Oh, like the way the meds made you
sick at lunch today?"
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Since I "wasn't going to be able to
visit until Christmas" (oh, how Nana picked on me the rest of my
trip about that little itty bitty lie.
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she gave me,(rather than mailed me) probably a hundred "Belvedere"
cartoons that she regularly clips out for me. Since I was a kid,
I've always enjoyed the antics of this little dog.
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| You'd think after staying up so late
talking, that GrandMother and I wouldn't have much left to say; but
then you wouldn't know my family too well.
The next morning we chatted some more and she took me on a tour
through her condo, showing off the latest thimbles she had been
given (she has several shadowboxes full of thimble collection on her
living room wall) and several new Hummel cross-stitch pictures that
she had finished up this year. Her cross-stitching is just one of
the amazing things my GrandMother still does at 90. Every Christmas,
she makes ornaments for the family and her church group. Every
morning she completes the crossword puzzles and jumble in the
newspaper by 8:30am. After going out for lunch and some shopping, I
can testify that she still even drives quite well!
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Too soon, my time was up with Nana,
and Mom picked me up so we could make it to the airport later that
evening. We stopped back at Mom's for a while, got their DVD/VHS
player working and packed the leftover jelly beans into my suitcase.
Before going to the airport, I had one last dinner down South. Mmmm.
This time I had a blue cheese/grilled red onion burger and baked
sweet potato fries. Yum-mey! But it wasn't until my plane was
leaving the red clay soil of NC that I realized I had been down
South all those days and didn't eat ANY barbeque at all!!
OMIGOSH! I really must be turning into a Yankee after all these
years in Ohio.
I'm going to have to swing over to "Old Carolina BBQ" back home to
get my fix.
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| So next time I visit home, folks,
we've got two remember two things: Cheerwine AND barbeque!
See my family is very good to me. Not only do they all happily put
me up for an evening; but they ALL helped me get my Cheerwine fix.
Cheerwine is a cherry coke that's much better than Cherry Coke; but
it's only sold in the South. On this trip home, Mom had a 6-pack of
bottles waiting; Don and Angie had a 2-liter for me; and Jon and
Lisa had a 6-pack of cans. My family is just the best!
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At the end of my trip I still had two
plastic bottles of Cheerwine left, so I packed them into my
suitcase. Yes, I know all about the 3-oz liquid rule for airport
security; but a guy can hope. However, at the scanner, my bag was
sent through twice and then pulled aside to be hand-searched. The
nice security lady asked me if I had any liquids in my bag, to
which I replied, "No, I don't think so." Snapping on latex gloves,
she instructed me to step back; but watch as she opened and searched
through my bag. At no time, I was to approach her, the bag, or try
to disturb the contents of the bag. Of course, after unzipping the
bag, we could both see the two bottles of Cheerwine lying there on
top still attached together with plastic. "Oops!" I said.
I was told that I could return and check them in with my luggage;
but I only had this carry-on with me this trip (Summer clothes are
smaller and weigh less than Winter clothing
).
I explained that my family had amply supplied with me Cheerwine
through the weekend and that not having those two bottles would not
be a tragedy. Since she realized that I wasn't a terrorist (
"But the Yankees don't sell it up in Ohio."
)
and continued being quite nice and sympathetic towards me, I did
offer them to her, if security rules allowed that. She thanked me
and set them aside. |
| Going Back Home |
| After the half mile hike through the airport, I finally sat down near my gate for the hour wait before take-off. The area was quite crowded as all the last departing planes were fully booked. I had actually been assigned the last seat on my flight. During the wait and after boarding, I continued reading "Assault on Reason", a very interesting book by Al Gore. He only mentioned global warming just a small bit in this new book; as most of it was an intellectual, political, sociology discussion of politics, media, and reasoning in our Democracy. This excellent book made me worry more about mass media; and less about the internet or our government. |
| Being at the back of the plane, I was
nearly the last one to debark. As I passed the CAK security station,
I saw Jim waiting for me. Boy, what a sight for sore eyes. Although
I love my family, I was missing my Jim - even more than I was
missing my doggies.
Although I was worn out, and you would think talked off, I had tons
of stories to tell Jim on the trip home.
Of course, we weren't home long, before I had these pictures
downloaded. (But it took another five days to get them ready for the
web and all these stories typed up! LOL I hope I didn't bore you too
much. I'm just so lucky to have all these people (family from NC/SC,
Jim, "family" from OH) that love me, that I just have to share them
with you!) |