Back to reality...which is what it was all along come to find out.

It's been a week since my grandmother passed and it feels like it was 2 minutes ago. The services were beautiful, a good part due to the music that my father pre-recorded. Karabeth, if you are interested, I'm going to make a few copies for people who know his music or are interested in listening, some of his classics that Grannie loved such as Thank You are featured. I would be glad to send you a copy if you would like. Email me your address if you want one. :)

Here's the plant that Alex's sweet family sent for the funeral. I also got a beautiful peace lilly from the girls that I work with. I'm blessed to have so many great people in my life.
Karabeth, if you notice on the wall behind the plant is a painting that was painted by Prince Charming's mother back in 1986 I believe. Grannie gave that to me about a year ago, and I absolutely love it.

So after Saturday, I was eager to feel some sort of normal again. I had a moment of closure at my grandmother's grave site which I have to say is one of the more picturesque places. Its set on a hill in the countryside of North Rutherford county right before you get to Wilson county. The last time I had been to this spot was the day my Papa was buried, so it was a sort of homecoming for me and my cousins. You're standing on the side of the hill, and you look out and feel like you can see about 15 miles. I'm eager to go back, it easily tops my favorite places list.

Sunday I felt a little back to normal. No more getting dressed everyday, no more seeing people I hadn't seen in years (literally since the days that Karabeth lived here) and definitely no more putting up with crazy funeral directors. They cease to amaze me (side note, I know there are other funerals happening, but the flowers can wait a couple of minutes to be picked up.) I enjoyed being able to go about my business, eating dinner at Lindsay's house, and not having to be accountable to my family to my immediate whereabouts at any given moment.

So my life is officially back to normal, minus the part of my Grandmother's voice on the other end when I call her house now. I called over there the other day looking for my aunt, and Grannie's familiar "Heelllloooo" was all I heard in my head. That will take some getting used to.

Have a good day people!

Its all done

Grannie passed at 9:00 this morning, right after I got there. She had been awake for a little while, and had talked up until about 4:45. We told her to go find Papa in heaven, but I believe he was standing right there with us, waiting to escort her spirit up to heaven.

Her visitation is from 4-8 on Friday evening, and the service will be on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. at Jennings and Ayers.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. It has helped us go through this hard time in our lives. Please keep my father in your prayers, my grandmother was his greatest confidant and one of his best friends.

I'm again lost for words. It's the first day of the rest of my life without my Grannie Gilbert.

I'm tired guys....

I have a feeling I have no idea what the word tired means. When I'm watching people like my grandmother in their failing health, all I can imagine them saying is "I'm tired guys, just let me be." She just wants to be left alone and she doesn't want family hovering over her. That's not passing away peacefully.

My grandfather passed away in such fashion. We had been watching him round the clock for over a week, someone always sitting by his side, listening to him just barely breathe. The moment he passed away was the first time in two weeks that someone wasn't awake to hear if he was just struggling or if it was finally over. It wasn't that our family was negligent, we were unconsciously just giving him a moment to himself, a moment to decide if it was okay to let go.

Now my grandmother is at this point. She's had a horrible day, and they're pretty sure she has only a few days, if she makes it through tonight. I wish I could just tell her to let go, that its alright just to fall asleep. She's so figgety which causes more pain. She's mad that she can't be comfortable and she fights sleep because she wants to keeping fighting, keep trying to live. She's tired, and she just wants to rest. I so badly want to help her, but there is nothing for me to do but give her the pain medication.

I'm spaced out right now with all the thoughts running through my head at any one point and I will probably continue to be this way until my grandmother's situation is over. I had to tell that to my teacher tonight after an exam because I read each answer I put and none of them made sense. I'm hoping she'll give me a little grace concerning the situation I'm in.

Til the next time I have any thoughts or news to convey,
Allyson

Perceptions

Do you ever wonder if you know everything about your friends?

It would be the furthest thing from the truth for me to claim this, but I definitely hope I at least have a good grasp on the details of at least my closest of friends. But I have recently had friends make comments that Im sure were innocent, but make me wonder if they knew that what they were talking about actually applied to my past?

Would it be right for me to call them out on it?

Wouldnt that make me seem petty just to get some sort of apology out of them?

Does it really matter where I've come from? I happen to think my upbringing has alot to do with where I am in my life, whether you can tell it or not. Sorry to be vague on the details on my encounter that sparked this brainstorming moment. Just my average internal bantering that I needed to jot down.

Hope you are all having a springy April!

The Days Go On...

I can't believe we're almost at April!

Update on my Grannie Gilbert: We're starting 24 hour care now. My shift starts on Friday morning for a few hours before I go into work. She saw her doctor on Monday and he said her disease is progressing alot faster than he would have liked and suggests bringing in Hospice soon. I'm guessing this is due to the cancer spreading to the liver. Once its there it can go about anywhere in the body.

When I was visiting with her a week ago, she was talking about an odd experience she had at her church a couple Sundays ago. The pastor had informed the church of her illness the previous Wednesday when she wasnt there, and the following Sunday she was of course almost knocked down with everyone coming up to give their sympathies. More than a few people, however, had a very important task for her when she eventually did enter Heaven. They wanted her to speak to their loved ones who had already passed on. They were very sweet messages, such as "Tell Daddy that I wrote a song about him." In her infinite knowledge, my grandmother agreed as to not upset the people, but also let them know that most likely their loved ones already knew. Still, I could not imagine the burden put on her shoulders because we truly don't know exactly how everything is going to work in Heaven. We know what the scriptures say, but its not that cut and dry when we get there.

April holds some exciting things. Alex gets to travel to Texas twice for business (Yay for having a job in the event industry in this economy!) It's my last full month of the semester and hopefully will find out if I can keep my job in the MTSU Career Development Center through the summer (Economy not helping on this one). And most importantly, the birthday of my personal little Superman, my nephew Matthew, who will turn 6. Can't believe it!

Hope you are all enjoying the erupting Springtime. It's rainy in Murfreesboro, hopefully giving good watering to my tomato plant!

In connection to yesterday's post.

For some reason I make time for my online components. Of course, I have my trusty Blogger account. I also hold accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and the newly acquired Twitter. Alex says I am rediculous with all the "connecting" I do but in reality each one serves a different purpose in my life.

I would have to name Facebook as my overall favorite of all my accounts simply because I connect with friends and family most through it. Granted, Facebook has taken a huge swing in the past 2 weeks, and I'm not fully appreciating the "new look" that everyone is protesting. But still, the fact remains that through Facebook, most everyone uses their actual name and the information of where they live or where they went to high school, college, etc. in order to facilitate finding them.

I had a conversation with someone recently who said "I have this facebook thing, but I really don't want to connect with people." I told him to simply delete his facebook because that totally goes against the purpose of having one in the first place. Facebook isn't for everyone, and I think this dude was a total goob for thinking his anti-social self would magically do a 180 and suddenly want to connect.

My second favorite (starting this morning with its inception) is Twitter. It's been highly publicized as the new "it" website, and I totally agree. This is my website to connect with those people I will probably never meet. True, I'm not really connecting with people such as John Mayer or Lance Armstrong, but instead taking a look through the peep hole at their lives. Twitter is a no frills, no complex applications website such as Facebook. All you do is simply update your status whenever you feel the need, and whoever is "following" you will see it. I'm excited to see where this website will go in the future.

MySpace is my strange side. I don't check on it much, I would say I have only around 140 friends (small number really), and to be perfectly honest, I'm tired of it. I get random friend requests from people who would be the Webster definition of creepy, half the time I find myself criticizing my background more than actually looking at people's profiles, and not alot of my people update too often. So yeah, MySpace is on the downward slope for me.

LinkedIn is simply just what it is. A professional networking site that I really don't need to have yet, but hey, networking never hurts. I won't say much about this since I haven't even logged in for about 4 months now.

Stay sure that I love my Blogger. Love is not even the right word for it. I will have to make one up for it I guess.

Are you connected?

Have I always been like this?

I need to ask my parents I guess.

Trying to be as unpolitical as I can, let me just say that I think some of the people who claim that either they or their kids have A.D.D. are pulling shenanigans. Granted, there are some cases where kids honestly have an attention problem and those problems are dealt with swiftly upon dispensing of correct medication. However, I believe we live in an over-medicated, over-simplified society where your "pains" are met with "Oh, there's a pill for that".

I dealt with this first hand with the person I dated for 5 years through high school and the first two years of college. Over-medicated and still not satisfied, he had a tough road of emotional problems and overall unhappiness that he would not attempt to solve on his own without medication, thus I chose not to put my own happiness for granted on his behalf. Now I have the wonderful Alex who lives in mental peace and is probably the most easy-going guy I've ever met.

*By the way, let me say that my former boyfriend's dependency on medication drove me crazy simply because I don't even take Ibuprofen unless I feel like my head will fall off. The fact that I have to have an antibiotic right now drives me up the wall...*

With all that said, my commitment levels to certain things are for some reason waaayyy out of whack. I find myself going the bare minimum to make the grade in classes (which has never changed since I was a child so no surprise). The problem with this is, I'M IN COLLEGE. The bare minimum doesn't work like it used to. The bare minimum in Principles of Accounting 1 worked for me last semester. Principles of Accounting 2, not surprisingly, builds on 1 so the bare minimum in this course actually doesn't work now (surprise surprise). Other classes are pretty much the same story, half the work, twice the pain on exam days.

I can't help but think that I have (and have had in the past) motivation/ attention problems. I have the end in sight, May 2010 can't come quick enough. For some reason I can't find meaning to the courses I'm taking other than the old standard "because one day you might need to know this." The only time in my "school life" that I can remember actually putting forth great effort was my senior year in high school when I was trying to get accepted at Belmont University. I felt relieved when I did get accepted, and then lost that feeling when I found out there was no way I could afford to go there. Well, take that back, I could have, but I would be in soo much debt coming out of college there would be no reason to ever try to buy a house or a car because I would giving my paychecks back to my student loans.

Karabeth, here is my blog question for you this week: Is there anywhere in the Bible that mentions motivation and how we motivate ourselves?

Hope everyone else is tying up loose ends in their life, for some reason it just doesn't happen for me.