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Finally I'm able to get in and post. I've been trying since Monday and Blogger has been giving me fits.
Also, you can now access this blog by going to my VERY OWN DOMAIN!
http://nelley.org.
Yes org. I can be an organization if I want, can't I?
A lot's happened since my last post. I'll fill you in.
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St. Patrick's Day was fun. We dressed in green, made a shamrock shaped cake,

and shepherd's pie for dinner.
At this point I came down with some uber cold virus and was sick all weekend and the following week as well. I'm still sneezing and coughing. I have my lovely husband to thank for giving me this gift of a cold. We had to impose a "no more kissing when we're sick" rule. Hard to stick to, that one...
My grandmother passed away on the 22nd of March. She had fallen and broken her hip about a month or so ago and her health had been steadily declining since then. I was not particularly close to my grandmother and had mixed feelings when she finally died. It was one of those times when death brought relief from the pain she was in from her fall and from the congestive heart failure she was suffering with and the dementia which had gotten worse and worse for the past 5 years. When I went to see her in the hospital a few days before she died, she didn't remember who I was, but she kept trying to tell me I had pretty hair. She always liked my hair and always complimented me on it. I held her hand and she tried to talk. It was hard because she had been on oxygen, which dried out her mouth and throat to the point where talking was very hard to do.
She died in the very early morning. I had been awake when the phone rang and my mom told me what had happened. I wasn't sad in a sense that I cried, but rather I was sad because I had never really had a chance to get to know my grandmother. She was incredibly shy and it was hard for her to show affection or emotion very much. She and my grandpa used to watch me when I was younger and I can remember going to their house, but it was hard to keep in touch as her health declined because I was living in Florida. So I guess the thing I was sad about was that I felt that there were things about her that I will never get to hear from her.
The funeral was on Friday. It was open casket (something that I had never experienced before). She didn't look like her at all. She had been covered with bruises from the IV's and so her hands and face were all covered with an orangey makeup that made her look like a wax figure in a museum.
All of the grandkids got up and said something they remembered about her and I knew then that I wasn't the only one struggling with not getting to know her. All of us talked about how we wished we could have known her better. It was nice to hear what everyone had to say though. When I have to go to another funeral, I hope it's like this one was.
I was able to take bereavement leave from work which, with the horrible cold I had, turned out to be a good thing. I would have had to take the days off anyway, unpaid, since I'm out of leave. I also got a chance to get some more packing and cleaning and organizing done. It was funny, my cousin's and I all compared how much bereavement leave we got from work when we went out to eat after the funeral. It's not a thing to joke about, but I guess that just shows you how my family pushes our feelings way down...just like gramma and grampa did. One of these days we're all going to have emotional breakdowns or something like that.
Easter wasn't bad this year. I made a cake (of course).

I took side dishes to my friend Tiffany's house and had dinner there. E is getting too old for egg hunts so we didn't bother with coloring eggs and all of that malarky.
Next weekend I'm going back for more sugaring. It's the 2nd in a series of 3 to get rid of...ummm everything.
The clock is ticking on my time here at work. I'm down to 3 weeks left...but who's counting.
ME! That's who. I am looking forward to getting the show on the road as far as packing and moving. I'm impatient like that.