BLOBBY'S BLOG

Family

Well - my time away didn't last very long - did it?

I kind of suspected it wouldn't. You know - routine and/or OCD. Some habits are hard to break.

In this very left-of-center effort to make connections with some of my lesser know relatives, I had lunch again with my cousin Bill. This time he invited his nephew (also my cousin), David, to tag along.

David is two years younger than I am and I think it might be 30-35 years since I've seen him last. He didn't remember ever meeting me. Normally that would have shot my already low self-esteem even lower, but really, it's been three plus decades and not everyone is blessed cursed with a memory like mine.

I say this with the utmost affection (honestly): David is one big bag of crazy.

And I immediately connected with him.

Denton always asks me if I ever have an unverbalized thought. Normally I would said, 'no, no I don't', until I (re)met David. I absolutely loved it. In a matter of minutes he was talking about mulch, his sister, bath houses, high school reunions, San Francisco, volunteering and being a germaphobe. None of (or very few of) these subjects had to do with each other.

Just to be clear on the bath house and SF comments - I guess I should note that David is not gay. Clearly gay-friendly, but not gay. At least I'm 71% sure. He is married. To a woman.

He goes on to mention how absolute nuts everyone in his family - immediate and otherwise - are, then proceeds to ask me 'so, what's wrong with you?'. Without missing a beat I said, 'where would I even start......?' Then I think he asked what my credit card limit was.

At this point I honestly couldn't tell if Bill was enjoying himself or just tolerating us. I think he is genuinely fond and close to his nephew, so I think he was good with it all. Lunch lasted a good 90 minutes, and yes, it was a work day for me.

After lunch we walked over to the Western Reserve Historical Society. Bill had taken the liberty of calling ahead and pulling some strings and had achieved history of our family pulled out and waiting for us. Apparently we have at least 40 linear feet of documents and photographs chronicling our family here. They gave us little white cloth gloves if we were to touch anything.

There were pictures of at least part of one side of the family (paternal) here. We kind of chuckled over some that were there from a family reunion from 30 odd years ago and I got to relay my house hunting werido story.

We also got a special tour of the facility and where/how they achieve stuff. For some reason, WRHS has the (or one of the) largest collections of Civil War documents. Allegedly Ken Burns spent mucho time there for research when doing his PBS series. Who knew?

I'd love to do something with David again, as he just seems like a lot of fun. That he's family is a plus - and how many times can you really say that? But since getting reacquainted, he is someone I can see hanging out with just because he's smart and funny.

So anyway, it's 04:11 and I can't sleep. ....and I'm back. Or still here, to be more precise. Insomnia is a wonderful thing - isn't it?


Song by: Dar Williams