An Insane Easter 2025, My Grandma's Last Month

Hey everyone, so 2025 has been a crazy Easter season for me. It all started with March 20th weekend when my grandma went to the hospital with sepsis from her bed sores. Yeah, that's very concerning, she's 90 years old and not in great heath, and has dementia and is on a puree diet because she's having trouble eating. We had many goodbyes and it was very touch and go, but she managed to pull through, making it the 7th time she beat death. I went to the hospital after work when she was in emergency and told her the story of when I didn't shut up the entire way to Pennsylvania for a family reunion, and she said "and he [me] just kept going and going and going," which was very good for me because it meant she remembered the story. When she got to her room her ring hand started to swell so we took off her ring and necklace, and I wore her ring and necklace Frodo style until she passed (keeping her ring and necklace safe). During her time in the hospital I texted her other grandson (the one who lives in Texas) and my oldest friends who she considered grandkids (she was at like all our major events since we had a lot of events, and went to many of their sports games) to call her because we don't know how much longer she has. They all called her that day and everyone was really happy that they did. The hard thing with the dementia is that we couldn't have "real conversations" and haven't been able to for over a year, so even with all the goodbyes and such it was uncertain how much she really got and if we really had closure. Well about a week later I had a vision where she came to me in a dream as her younger self and we had one more conversation, a real conversation where we went over things that haven't been said had real REAL closure. After all this she made it back to her memory care facility where my mom and mskate spent basically every day with her just in case "it was the end." I brought over our extra roku, set it up on her TV, and they were able to watch more than just MeTV Toons and PBS Kids (specifically Out of the Box on Disney Plus, because she loved kids and watching them play, and that's basically all Out of the Box is). A kind of funny thing with the hospital, my boss was very understanding and told me to do anything that I needed to, and one time I told him "this might be the end and I might not come to work tomorrow" but then she pulled through, I went to work, and he said "I thought you weren't going to be here today" to which I responded "I didn't think so either, but my grandma's a fighter and a trickster, so I don't know when."

Palm Saturday is when we had a big final event. Our family is about family celebrations and holiday parties, and we had been planning a party for my grandma at her memory care facility basically since we realized she isn't going to be able to make it to Easter at my mom's house. The plan was that on the Saturday before Palm Sunday we would take her down to one of the activity rooms and all of her family and friends would go there and we'd sing sing alongs and have pizza. Well she got even worse and couldn't get up and leave the bed, so we got all her family and friends in her studio apartment where we sang songs and had pizza. At the party we had my parents, brother, mskate and myself, her best friends, my mom's best friend, the mom of "figurative grandkids," and some of the old neighbors she was very close with. Here's the big thing, she had become semi-non-verbal while in the hospital; before then she didn't say much but would respond in a semi-appropriate way to what we were saying, but after the hospital she wouldn't really respond to much. When her best friend and accordion player came in and said "I'm here to play music for you" she said "thank-you," and that was like "the last real thing she actually said" (she mouthed words and "talked to visions," but saying "thank-you [for coming and playing music]" was the last thing she said). Throughout the entire sing-along mskate held my grandma's hand, and at some songs she squeezed her hand using what little strength she had, and during other songs she held her head up "looking at us" during the music instead of just having her head lay on the side. It was really something. Pizza went well, mom was worried that it would be too much of a smell and cause problems, but it was fine. Everyone said goodbye after the party and let her rest now.

After the party mskate and I went to the mall just because we were kind of in the area (not really, but there was "a need to go there"). When we were there we made her one last build a bear. My grandma really liked build a bear, she loved the cute outfits and the personalized messages. For her 80th birthday her grandkids and great nieces made her a bear. Mskate and I decided we'd make her one last bear, one she'll take with her in her casket to hold onto for eternity, and we'd make a shirt similar to all the "this grandma belongs to [each grandkid's name]" shirts that she would wear when we we were little. We also recorded a voice clip about how much we love her using the same words I said in her first bear. It was pretty emotional (because she was dying and this was "the end"), but I pulled through. It was a very cute cub bear, the smallest they had, and since we didn't know how much longer she'd have mskate played the recording for her over the phone as my mom held it up to her, and she perked up with it. We also got our picture with the mall Easter Bunny since mskate worked with them for Santa and we got little bunny stuffed animals and coupons for either ice cream or gourmet cookies. I got the cookie, mskate got the ice cream. It was good.

Now it's time for my favorite Sunday of the year, Palm Sunday. Why is it my favorite? Because I get "a toy" for mass (a palm branch). This was kind of extra, because it was also our week to do coffee and donuts (there are 4 groups that do coffee and donuts; the Knights of Columbus, The Women's Group, The Ushers, and then Pokematic and Mskate with 1 other lady). It wasn't a big deal, it's just that this was why we had to have the party on Saturday and not Sunday. After mass I told our priest why Palm Sunday was my favorite mass as a child ("I got a toy" as I wave my palm), he chuckled and said "there you go." Hey, it got me involved in mass and that's a big thing for kids. Some time after mass we went to Meijer with our build a bear and tried to find a shirt we could put cricut letters on (because mskate has a cricut); it wasn't going to be "the most sticky and secure" because it would be adhesive vinyl on fabric, but it "just had to last until the burial" and "wasn't going to be played with much." We settled on a yellow toddler swim shirt since it was about the right size for the bear and could get all that we wanted on it. Mskate made 2 sides, the front said "this [grandma's nick name] belongs to" with hearts on both sides of the words, and on the back it listed the grandsons and their wives, "just like the shirts she wore when I was a kid." The funny thing about "it doesn't have to last that long," she lived 1 more week, was able to listen to it multiple times, and everyone's name except for mskate's started to peel and loose letters. It was good though, because that meant she was able to enjoy her last gift.

Fast forward and it's now Easter weekend, specifically Good Friday. Because there was so much going on this weekend with Easter we were already planning on spending the weekend at her parents. The plans were Good Friday liturgy (because "Catholic's don't technically celebrate mass on Good Friday") up by my parents, pretzel making with my parents, and then dying eggs at my grandma's. There were 2 traditions there, we'd dye eggs with my maternal grandparents and we'd make pretzels with my paternal grandparents. The pretzels this year didn't turn out very well, I put too much baking soda in the boiling pot and I think they were a little under cooked, making them turn out VERY bitter, but I later found that if I squirt some lemon juice with every bite I get a good fizzy feeling and neutralize the excess baking soda. Then at my grandma's apartment we dyed eggs while playing out of the box and reminiscing about all the times we dyed eggs at her house. I don't know how much she actually remembered, but it was good for us. We told her "we aren't taking our shirts off and climbing on the table like we did when we were little." We also used some egg dying kits that were pretty old and some of them didn't work well (specifically red, for some reason red/pink is always tricky). The nursing home was also doing breakfast with the Easter Bunny that day and the plan was to have her go down and see him, but because she couldn't leave the bed the Easter Bunny came up and saw her in her apartment. She liked it.

After egg dying I did balloon animals. A little backstory here. When I was about 8 years old I said "I want to learn how to make balloon animals," and my grandma bought me a pump (because balloon animal balloons are very difficult to blow up by mouth) and a bag of balloon animal balloons, and I picked up on how to do it pretty quickly, especially after reading some how to books and experimenting. I'd do it for myself, and as a teenager I did it for people that needed someone to do balloon animals for birthday parties and carnivals. My late uncle had special needs and lived in a group home, and I would make balloon animals for him and the residents of his house all through my years of him being alive, and now that my grandma is in a home I started making balloons for her and residents once she got back from the hospital. Most of the time I just made balloons in her room and then brought them out to the activity room, but this time they were all sitting in a circle without much to do and so I went into the circle and made everyone balloons. I mostly made dogs and swords, and for one resident who didn't have much hand motor abilities I made her a giraffe hat. One of the residents asked if I could make him a gun; I actually kind of can (I once made a tommy gun similar to the one in The Mask), but that's a 2 balloon creation and I didn't want to make something that could be "extra mean" ("I'm going to shoot you" kind of thing), so I made him a sword instead. He then got creative by taking the bunny rabbit I made for his wife, sticking the sword through the ear loop, and he said "look it's a gun, bang bang bang bang bang." The funny thing is he used to work in the same department at the same company I work for now. When I found this out I asked the oldest employees that still work with me if they knew him, but they unfortunately didn't. When I talked to the resident I asked if he knew [this one guy] since he was the oldest guy I worked with and he retired like 1 year after I started, and he said "yes, I think I did," and it was in a way that suggests "I reminded him of something real" and not "I'm confused and just agreeing." Now for "the loud resident." Her big thing is to ask "are you my baby," and other things, and one time when she asked me that I said "no I'm [my grandma's] baby," and that threw off her script and gave her some lucidity where she said "no you're not a baby, you're too big." I asked her what she would like and she said "I want a man, can you make me a short man I can pick up." I said "no, I can make you a dog, a cat, a giraffe, a wiener dog, a poodle, a rabbit, or a sword." Her friend that was sitting next to her said "she can't be trusted with a sword, make her a poodle." She liked her poodle, which became her baby.

Here's where things get crazy. Mskate is doing a fund raiser of "egg my yard," where we set-up egg hunts for people who donate to the diabetes charity she really likes. Last year I bought a bunch of plastic eggs on sale the weekend after Easter and the plan was that we would do them on Holy Saturday, but one family had something going on and requested us to do it on Friday. We said we would, but then mom got "the hard call" that my grandma was on her end and we had to get over there now. Mskate and I, my mom and dad, my brother, mom's best friend, and grandson figure's mom all drive over separately. She was on oxygen and holding on by a thread. Since it's Easter and were going to be spending a lot of time there as we wait for her to go home to Jesus, I found the Ranken Bass Peter Cotton Tail specials on youtube and put them on the TV. She seemed stable enough, so around 7PM mskate and I went to do the house that requested we do it on Friday. We hid the eggs all over their yard and porch, hiding eggs in bushes, seat cushions, sports equipment, and everywhere. We asked if anyone needed anything while we were out and all that was asked was water. We picked up a case at Walgreens and were like 10 minutes from her apartment. When we were maybe 5 minutes away my brother texted us saying "forget the water, come back now, it's happening" (we already bought the water so that wasn't an issue). Apparently my mom called my great aunt and after she said her goodbyes my mom noticed the color draining from her face and she was like "no mom, you need to hang in there a little longer for [pokematic and mskate] to make it back." This is like 8:45 PM long past visiting hours so we were kind of locked out but vikingpolak was able to let us in. We all gathered around, said an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, and around 9:15 PM she passed. We called hospice and it took about 1 hour and 15 minutes for them to come and pronounce her. During this time the other residents were asleep so we were able to go into the activity room and just come to grips with what happened. One of the insomniac residents was walking around and sat with us as we were processing the passing of my grandma. She was showing us her stuffed animal dog she was carrying around, and it was comforting to have someone that "wasn't there" to be a little distraction. After about 15 minutes we went back in the room and waited for hospice. They came, pronounced her, and then we just had to wait for the coroner at the funeral home to take her away. While we waited we packed up her apartment, just packing up everything in the bins that we brought knowing it was a matter of when and not if. We wrapped up all her pictures, took down her command hooks, packed up her dishes, identified things we'd donate to "trash for treasures" (a thing the nursing home does so residents can get rid of things and pass them onto residents who could use them), put the things that would be going to the funeral home in a specific bin, and basically got the place ready to move out. It was kind of weird doing that while my grandma's body just laid there deceased, but that's what we did. Mskate and I left before the coroner got there because it was like 11 PM and mskate was REALLY tired and just wanted to go to bed. While we were taking things down I made a big deal that we had to be careful with the oil painting of the wedding dresses (grandma, mom, and aunt all in their wedding dresses), because I remember my grandpa always telling us "you boys be careful when playing in the house, that painting is very expensive and can't be replaced, and we can't put glass over it because of how it is." Some people were being less than careful with it and I had to be my grandpa and said "this isn't me, grandpa just REALLY beat into my brain that we need to be careful with this painting." We also wrote a note for her resident friend that would come in her room, say hello, and tell her the church is praying for her (didn't want her to try to go in the next day and get all confused why the door was locked).

Now it's Holy Saturday, a day that was supposed to be a rest day. However, with the whole "grandma died the day before" thing it ended up being our "meet with the funeral home and plan arrangements" day and "move everything out for final" day. I don't have a lot to really say about making the arrangements; we picked out a nice rose casket with rose accents on the corners (not like she was a big flower person but it would match her style), we picked out prayer memory cards, got the link to upload pictures to, and gave the funeral home her burial outfit, specific lipstick, and some things to send with her (the artificial corsage from her 60th wedding party and 90th birthday party, her "grandma's little angels" pin with our birth stones that she had in her jewelry box, and pendants of our pictures from when I was 4 and vikingpolak and tanman were 2 that we found in her purse the night before). We said "we don't have any specific requests, just make it look good." After the funeral home, we went to her apartment and cleaned out everything. She didn't have a whole lot left; 2 bins of photos and assorted things, a floor lamp, 2 end tables, a minifridge, and 2 standing lift chairs. Vikingpolak rented a utility van from home depot because of the standing lift chairs. One of the chairs was going to my parents house and one was being donated to a "pay it forward accessibility" charity. We moved the chairs in order of when they would be taken out (first the chair going to my parents, then the chair to be donated), and had our "rush out the door of memory care" sprint since they kind of lock the residents in so they don't wander out and get lost. Since we were moving we were able to use the employees only hallway and delivery doors. Here's where things got really lucky, apparently right after we loaded up the van and got on our way the power went out and they went on emergency generators for essential functions, and the elevator is not considered essential and therefore wasn't working. A tiny miracle if you ask me.

Vikingpolak and I drive to the place where we were donating the one chair and her 4 prong cane. It was kind of out of the way of everything, and since it was a holiday weekend no one was normally there so we had to have someone come in special to receive the chair. It didn't seem like it was that big an inconvenience though, he was just happy to get a stand-up chair since they seemed to primarily get power wheelchairs and walkers (at least from what I saw when we brought it in). Since we were kind of in mom's best friend's neighborhood, we stopped by and said hello. We went to McDonald's for lunch and had an extra diet coke (we each got a meal but vikingpolak didn't want his drink), so we gave it to her. She then gave us red and green M&Ms to give to my mom for her baking. It was a quick "hello, hug, exchange, bye" since she had work to do. After that we went to my parents and swapped out the chairs. I don't know if the chair we replaced was a stand-up chair or just a powered recliner, but the motor burned out and it was "just an upright chair" now. I tried to take the back off but that wasn't happening, but in the process of trying I found my brother's old keys he lost 5 years ago. We put it on the curb and my dad listed it on freecycle (a local "you want it, just take it" group), and then we moved the new to them hand-me-down chair in. Getting the old chair out and the new chair in was not easy, both had very heavy steel mechanisms and my parents have a vestibule that does not make moving furniture easy. We made it though, and now they have a good powered recliner with stand-up functionality.

Later that night it was time to "egg the yards." We had 14 houses to do, Mskate and her dad did one half and her mom and I did the other half (with 4 of them all being on the same block, 2 of them close to that block, and then 1 close to their house). For the 4 on the same street with each did 2 houses. As I was doing it when I saw a ring doorbell I held up some eggs and waved; not like I had to prove we were friendly, but just a nice gesture to say "we're here and this is what we're doing" and maybe give them some social media fodder. One dad said "thank-you" over the smart doorbell and I responded "you're welcome." It took us about an hour to do all 7 houses, and I want to say it took mskate and her dad about an hour and 15 minutes to do their houses. It was a lot of work but it was worth it and everyone gave us very positive feedback the following day. We'll definitely do it again next year and probably take on additional houses, but next year we'll enlist the boyscouts, girlscouts, highschool national honors society, and anyone that want to/needs to volunteer to stuff eggs and distribute them. It's funny, we originally said "just the cities our parents are in" but then we expanded to another neighboring city by popular demand; mskate was worried that we would get in trouble for breaking the rules and I reminded her "who would we get in trouble with, you're the one who made the rules and can change them if you want to" and she was like "oh yeah, I guess you're right." Then when I brought up enlisting people that need service hours she said "but who would we get to sign the sheets, the people who are in charge of the charity live out of state," and I said "honey, this is YOUR non-profit fund raiser, YOU would be the one signing the service hour sheet" and she said "I guess you're right, it's just such a weird thought of being the one in charge and signing the sheet instead of having to get the sheet signed."

It's now Easter Sunday. Things were a bit odd since we were planning on going to my grandma's apartment and just spending some time with her, but without her anymore we kind of didn't have plans. We went to mass with my parents and exchanged Easter eggs with people during communion. One of the people gave us a real dyed egg that had the egg stuff taken out and was just a shell with confetti inside it. After mass at my in-laws we smashed the egg outside and made a fun confetti cloud. At mskate's parents we got Easter baskets, candy and some presents; mskate got a region free bluray player (because last Christmas we got a region 2 DVD set of Disney movies but nothing to play them on), and I got a collection Godzilla movies. We also had Easter brunch. After that we went to my parents and had some Easter baskets with candy and ate some of the honeybaked ham dinner that one of grandma's neighbors got us for dinner. Nothing super special, just a nice calm day.

The Monday after was pretty calm. "I got the day off because Easter falls on a Sunday this year" (it's just a joke I tell), and we spent the day buying day after Easter Eggs and prizes. We bought about 600 eggs and many prizes. Since a lot were prefilled I spent an hour or 2 emptying them. We then packed up and went home. Then when I got home I uploaded all the pictures I had of my grandma for the different videos. On Tuesday I went to work for 1 day, and then took bereavement the rest of the week. Mskate had to help mom get different arrangements set up, and then I spent my time getting the live stream set-up. I used my new laptop to get that done, so that was getting OBS working with the elgato and making sure the camera could pick up audio, and deciding if I would do a facebook live stream like I did for my grandpa or if I would do it through youtube like I did for my wedding (or both since I have a restream account). Since it would be easier to share and access an unlisted youtube link instead of making sure everyone was friends with my mom (especially for people that weren't on facebook like various old people who couldn't make it to the funeral, because they're all really old like my grandma), we went with youtube. I did my tests through facebook live though and a lot of my facebook friends were like "I can hear you" since my test was "can you hear me."

Now it's time for Friday, the day of the visitation, and testing the live stream at the church. We went to the church around 11AM and brought in all our stuff. The decan said he knew people were coming to test but didn't know who, then after he got close to us he recognized who we were since we regularly took my grandma to mass and she was really close to the decan (he'd come and visit her at her house, and some times at the memory care). We asked him to turn on the microphone at the pulpit so we could test the sound. I asked mskate to get up on the pulpit and do a sound check while vikingpolak stepped outside and listened to the live stream. Mskate wasn't very good at doing a sound check, he sheepishly said "hello," and after some coaxing "Marry had a little lamb," and some other things after long periods of nothing. Then I told her to get out of the way and then rambled for like 20 seconds until my brother came in and said "yes it's good." After that we went to accordion friend's house and watched Dumbo with the husband while we waited until it was time to go to the visitation. Whenever we watch something Disney with him he always says "the first movie I ever saw was Dumbo, I was 6 years old on the army base and had to take my little brother with me, I haven't seen the movie since and don't know what happened to it," so we said "let's watch Dumbo with him" and he really liked it.

The visitation was really good. Mskate and my mom worked on making the photo boards and they turned out really good (3 different eras). My grandma was really into ear rings, every holiday and outfit had a pair of costume ear rings, in total 78 pairs that she still had. What do we do with 78 pairs of costume ear rings? We decided to give them away to anyone who wanted them; came to her visitation, take a pair of ear rings. She was also very generous, always making sure people had food and money, so my mom had the idea of making goodie bags for everyone who came; m&ms, lint chocolate, meiji pandas, rice krispy treats, and/or biscof cookies, and an envelope with a $5 bill to do with as the recipient saw fit. Afterwards a lot of people texted my mom a photo saying "got my favorite snacks on [grandma]," and that was really happy for her. The funeral home did a really good job making her look good; her hair was great, her lipstick was good, her nails were done well, and mom said she would have been happy with how she turned out. Since she liked balloons and we couldn't have real flowers due to my allergies, we had balloon flowers. They put the balloons behind the casket all together, but we wanted to spread them out (1 at each photo board, 1 at the ear ring table). We had to climb behind the casket, which was a little comedic (as it should be). We also put the bear in the corner of her casket and her little Minnie Mouse that we got her on our honeymoon. I spent a lot of time visiting with people, making sure people took a pair of her ear rings (a lot of people were like "where did these come from, did someone make them" and I said "no these were all her ear rings") and telling them the significance of the stuffed animals and some of the pictures (particularly how the one chuck e cheese photo was from her last outing with us and how she liked the wheel of fortune games at the arcade). At the end of the night we had given away 73 pairs of ear rings. It was really great, I saw a lot of people I don't get to see very often and it felt good seeing all the people that she touched. She was a kindergarten teacher and 3 of her students paid their respects, one even said that she inspired him to go into teaching. It was kind of funny because the students were "around my age" and after I thought about it a little I'm like "that checks out, they would have been 5 and were from like 3 or 4 years before I was born." A lot of employees from her memory care came and paid respects as well, which was really good. In the final hour we had a prayer service and then my brother gave a eulogy. A really perfect coincidence, when he was talking about how she got a college degree while raising a family his college graduation picture with her popped up on the screen. At the end of the night we packed up all the family snacks into our folding wagon and packed them into our cars. We packed up the stuffed animals and let her have the Cinderella doll for the night (one of her other stuffed animals from a Disney vacation). I told the funeral home people "she's sleeping with Cinderella tonight, keep an eye on her" (and they did, we got Cinderella back the following day).

Now it's Saturday, the big funeral day. Mskate and I got there about an hour beforehand and got the streaming set-up, after buying a roll of wide masking tape to tape down the extension chord. PepperBC asked if there was anything she could help with and I said "yes, you can tape down the extension chord so no one trips," and she did and did a good job. Once we got everything set up, my laptop decided it wanted to do a BIOS firmware update. This couldn't have happened 2 hours prior when I was just surfing the web? Oh well, while it updated I went and said hello to the people that were there and paid some respects, telling my grandma "I'm doing a thing on my computer that you don't understand so your family that can't make it can watch" (because whenever I'd do something with my computer she and my grandpa would be like "I just don't understand that"). I went and checked on my computer and the update was done, so I started the stream. I did my sound check and said hello to all the family that I knew would be watching. Sound came back good so then I just went and saw everyone. Zeldamaster93 made it even though he didn't know my grandma all that well. I offered him one of the last pairs of ear rings for someone in his family. He got the speech of how to be a pallbearer even though he wasn't planned on being one, but at the cemetery we didn't know for sure who would still be there so he might have to fill in (the people who were scheduled to be pallbearers were myself, brother, her 2 grandson figures, nephew, and my brother in law at the church with the accordion friend's son doing it at the cemetery). My godfather and his family made it and I offered them the last 2 pairs of ear rings and they took them. I also had my god-brother do the pack-up of the streaming stuff once we were done. I went over what he had to do and he said he would do it. We said our final goodbyes and took Minnie out, and I asked the funeral director to have her holding the bear when they closed the casket. I kind of wanted her to be holding the bear facing down so she would be hugging the bear like she would hug us, but the director did it with the bear facing up but then that meant that the grandkid names were over her heart. We walked her down the aisle and it was a good funeral. After receiving communion and praying, I saw her in heaven waving at me, and then I saw her with my uncle, and then my grandpa, and then some people I think were my great grandparents, and then my other grandparents, and my older sibling that miscarried, and other people. It was a very "satisfying" vision. At the end we loaded her into the hearse and all went well. After that I went and helped my god-brother pack up the streaming stuff and then we loaded it into our car and drove to the cemetery in procession.

As we were driving to the cemetery I noticed we were close to where my uncle's group home used to be. This will come back later. We lined up at the mausoleum by the final chapel and all us pallbearers lined up by the hearse. It was good zeldamaster93 was there because the accordion son wasn't there. Then since we were carrying her a fair distance my mom pulled my god-brother over and told him to help carry the casket (afterwards I said he was like Simon being called to help carry Jesus's cross). In total 7 people carried her. We all lined up by the casket in the cemetery chapel, said a final prayer, and said our final goodbyes. We pulled out the stuffed animals (Minnie, Micky, and Cinderella) and had them kiss the casket (my god-family thought that was funny). We all followed her to the mausoleum and watched her get put in the wall. After we watched her get put in the wall we went over to where her walker made tire tracks in the wet cement when we "buried" my grandpa 5 years earlier. It was kind of funny.

After the cemetery we went to the luncheon at the country club that was right by the cemetery. I'll give the food details because that's what she would have wanted. We had salad, chicken cutlets, roast beef, mostacholi (or however that small tube pasta is spelled), and roasted potatoes. All of it was really good, and she would have approved. We didn't have a bar, just soda pop and water, but since hers and my grandpa's drink of choice was a Perfect Manhattan, I asked if I could buy a single drink and was told I had to go to the bar that was attached but not connected. I got one and we passed it around to whoever would partake (mostly just my family and the grandkid figures). It was very high octane, and no one was particularly happy with it. We ended up drinking about 2/3 of it, it was more for the symbol than enjoyment. Afterwards we paid off the bill and it was the end (my mom did her "stick the landing" gesture). After the luncheon mskate and I drove by the rout to my uncle's old house. We went by the McDonald's that we always went to beforehand where we would get lunch for ourselves and take to him, and play in the play structure (we had a lot of adventures in the play place using the paper ketchup cups and whatever the happy meal toy was at the time). The McDonald's play place was really simplified, now it's just a small slide. A far fall from 2 stories of tubing with a videogame thing and later TV with mirrors that was sometimes turned on where the ball pit used to be. We then drove by his group home, and it was still there. Afterwards we drove home using the same rout that we used to take to see him, pointing out all the different sights from when we would drive there. It was a good trip down memory lane. Nothing else after that for Saturday.

Now it's Sunday, (my brother-in-law) IRA's birthday celebration. He and I started the celebration by going to see A Minecraft Movie. Neither of us were super interested in seeing it initially, but then there were all the memes and rowdy crowds and we wanted to experience it. The funny thing about that, there was now a warning before the movie that said "if you are causing a disturbance you will be forced to leave without a refund" using official movie art, so that's kind of funny that it got official. I can see where the rowdy audience like The Room would work, a lot of things would lend itself to that. After the movie we went to PF Changs since that's kind of how the family celebrates, and cousin M joined us. After that we went back to their house and gave IRA his birthday presents. We got him a mystery box ornament for Nightmare Before Christmas (it was Zero the ghost dog), a mystery plushy for Nightmare Before Christmas (it was Sally), All in the Family the complete 9th season, and a Power Rangers model car. After that we packed up the cars and went home. And now I'm writing the blog as I sort through all our Easter and funeral stuff. It was one crazy month for me, lots of ups and downs, lots of emotions. But now I know she's whole and we no longer have to worry. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's Christmas 2022 Blog

Hey everyone, it's that jingle jangle time again. Before I get to real Christmas, I need to tell a little story about the last day of work for the year. My one co-worker retired at the end of the year and the 23rd was his last day. I wore my Pikachu shirt for him like I do whenever a coworker leaves the company, and it was a pretty slow day. I basically worked on paperwork all day while I watched Christmas specials (Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Shortsmas with Big City Greens, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Click Clack Moo Christmas at the Farm, A Garfield Christmas, Santa and the Three Bears, Ernest Saves Christmas, and The Night Before Christmas). Mskate and I also had to get the car ready for the big trip to our parents house. So the midwest was expected to have a giant winter storm over Christmas, and we had to make sure we made the 40 mile trip all OK. We packed up a case of water, a bunch of snack foods, some blankets, candles, the power brick, and hand warmers. We ended up not needing them, but better to have and not need than need and not have. Mskate packed up the car (or as I say at this time, sleigh) while I was at work and we were ready for our trip. It was pretty packed. She had to work 5-9PM at her retail job and with the bad weather I dropped her off and picked her up. The snow wasn't all that bad (primarily super cold and windy), but I still decided to take a trial run on the free way to pick-up a game at Best Buy (in-store pick-up) to make sure it was going to be OK tomorrow (and it was safe, and the game was Oddworld Soulstorm on XBOX by the way).

The 24th was the big start of the festivities, gift exchange with my grandma. Before we went there we unloaded our overnight stuff at Mskate's parents house since we wouldn't need it at grandma's house. We had to make sure IRA didn't see the bag we got him since that was his big surprise (I'll get to that later). We met the family at grandma's house to unload her presents and start setting up the piles. Mskate and I were there first so we did the bulk of the setting-up, and then everyone else showed up soon after. We got everyone packed-up so we could go to McDonalds like we've done for nearly 30 years, and I forgot my phone at her house, which meant I wasn't going to get my rewards points on the order. Mskate told me "well I guess you're out of luck on this one," but it was going to be like a $30-40 order and that isn't insignificant, plus she forgot some stuff as well so I walked the 1 block distance back to grandma's house and got my phone and her hat and gloves. Once I got back everyone had their order figured out so we went to the self serve kiosk, put in my reward number, made our order, and I got enough points for a free large fry off the order. It was a fun little thing remembering the fun times.

Now it's time for the gift exchanges. Let's see if I remember everything. The funny thing is grandma got 4 bags of Lindor chocolate balls, all the same flavor. She likes them, but it was just kind of funny. Mskate and I also got her a 50th anniversary Micky Mouse wishimal since she liked the Minnie Mouse we got her last year so much, and puzzles she can do (large piece children's puzzles) since that's something she enjoys doing. I got Morbius, Spiderman No Way Home, Death Stranding, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, Used Cars, Pokemon Johto League Champions, and candy. Mskate got me Disney nutcracker socks, and the funny thing is it was 6 different socks (not pairs), so I have to mix and match when I wear them. Mskate got a Welly Wisher doll, Courtney slumber party accessories, Micky and Minnie plushies, candy, film for her instaflix camera, and candy. It was a fun time. After the gift exchange it was about time for church, so we got everyone together and we went to grandma's church (we normally go to my parent's church, but it's gotten too hard to do that now). After mass we had dinner at her house (ham), and watched Pluto's Christmas Tree and Santa's Workshop Silly Symphony on Disney plus.

After all that fun we went back to mskate's parents house and did some Christmas Eve presents (because that's a thing her family does). I got a Buckees mug and tumbler, and I think mskate got some ornaments. We gave IRA his "only presents from us," a Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle and a Micky plushy. I also started watching 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TBS, my Christmas tradition for at least the last 10 years. I watched most of the movie on the first airing, but I missed triple dog dare you and Chinese restaurant, so I had to catch that on later airings. After that I fell asleep and was ready for bed. 

OK it's Christmas Morning. Mskate and I woke up a little earlier than everyone else, so I ate a bagel before all the festivities. I like to put peanut butter on my bagels, and apparently only the dogs at the in-laws eat peanut butter, so little Delilah was like "hey, that's my peanut butter, let me have my peanut butter." Unlike my in-laws I don't feed the dogs off my plate (because I know that's bad for dogs), but since I was eating their food I let her lick the butter knife, and mskate got some off my bagel to feed to Duke. It was a good little bagel.

OK, now that IRA is awake it's time for Christmas morning. The in-laws got me a Dreamworks 42 movie collection (which is crazy because I remember the first Dreamworks movie when it released, and have seen 29 of the 42), a Bowser plushie, Super Mario Legos, pokemon megablocks, cells at work issue one, 2 cars toys, a set of ankle weights from mskate, and candy. Mskate got some clothes, Harry Potter Legos, candy, and some other things. IRA was really surprised to find the giant bag of presents mskate and I got him. Here's a really funny thing, we bought him a Santa baby Yoda but couldn't find it (I tore apart the room we kept the gifts in and it wasn't there), so we gave him the Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle instead. Well it turns out that I put it in the Nightmare Before Christmas lunch box we got him, and when he opened it he was super happy. One thing I got my father in law was media remote for his xbox series x that he primarily uses as a streaming box. Well unfortunately Amazon sent me a replacement roku remote instead so I had to make a return. That's annoying, but oh well.

After gift time mskate and I picked up her aunt from 2 blocks away for Christmas breakfast. It was pretty easy getting her to the house, and it was a good breakfast. I had eggs and bacon, and everyone else had an egg and bacon casserole thing. After breakfast mskate and I booked our hotel and flight to see her aunt over New Years. Her aunt isn't doing too well so we're going to see her over New Years for an emergency trip (and she lives in New Mexico, so look out for a blog on that at some point).

In the afternoon mskate and I went over to my parents for Christmas day fun. We didn't do gift exchange with them yet (that's for the day after), this was the Christmas party with all the family where my parents make dinner and we sing accordion songs. PepperBC and her family came to visit as did TanMan's grandparents and uncle. He called us shortly after they arrived just by coincidence so they were able to have a nice conversation. Cousin M and my in-laws showed up about an hour after Mskate and I arrived. IRA gave grandma and mom a gift of hand soap and lotion from Bath and Bodyworks (we got it from our black friday trip).

Next it was time for dinner. My parents made a pot roast and ham, and my dad borrowed my cast iron Dutch oven to make more food for everyone. There was a kids table and adults table since my parent's dining room table isn't large enough for everyone. We all did Oplatki (a Polish Christmas tradition) with our tables, though I think the kid's table might have been the only one to do it since I was into it. It was really good. After dinner we sang accordion songs. It was a lot of Christmas songs, and was fun. I'm glad my in-laws enjoy Christmas with my family. After that we had desert, lemon meringue pie, chocolate cake, and ice cream. I had both, and it was yummy. My mom gave IRA a little present, and it was a Tamagotchi. I got it set-up for him, and he wasn't really into it but I was so it kind of became mine.

After the Christmas party mskate and I went back to her parent's house. I watched some more A Christmas Story since I love watching that movie at Christmas (and at some point throughout the day I watched the parts I missed and this was just some fun), and after finishing the final airing IRA and I watched Used Cars. He thought it was hilarious and I have a feeling he's going to want a copy as well. Time for bed.

Now it's the 26th, and it's time for after Christmas sales and gift exchanges with my parents. I had another bagel with peanut butter for breakfast (and gave the dogs some thank-you licks for sharing their food with me). Mskate, her family, and I went to the mall to have a look for things. We got some Sees  (Ceese, Seeces, I don't know how it's spelled) gourmet candy from the pop-up store. After that we went to the other side of the mall to go to the basic candy store to get a spongebob surprise egg for me (if they had one that wasn't squidward according to the product number on the bottom), and some harry potter candy for IRA. I was able to get a chocolate egg and it ended up being Patrick, yay. After the candy store we went to the lego store and IRA and Mskate made a custom mini-figure. Mskate made one that looked like me and gave it a safety vest with a beard head, legs with pockets in the pants, a cowboy hat (because that was the closest to a fedora), and a pizza box. IRA made one that kind of looked like him. After the lego store we went back to the other side of the mall for Lulu Lemon for Mskate and an outdoor store for me to look for a new winter jacket. Now, I think both of my winter coats are perfectly fine, as does mskate, but all season my mom has been making a big deal about how old my coats are, so we found one that would work for me we would get it just to make her stop bringing it up every time we saw her. Unfortunately they didn't have one I liked, so I said "I'll just have to continue wearing my perfectly good coats that are just as old as can be" (that's a thing my grandma would say about old stuff). Lulu lemon was too crowded so mskate didn't get anything.

After our mall trip we packed up my parent's stuff and went to do gift exchange with them. When we got there I told mom "mom, I wasn't able to find a new jacket, so I'm just going to have to continue wearing my perfectly good jackets that are just as old as can be." She got defensive and denial about how she doesn't care that my coats are old and mskate and I countered with "you are literally the only person that says anything about my coats, and it's every single time we see you." Hopefully this gets through to her about how no one has any desire to replace my coats. We set-up all the presents and now it's time to exchange. I got candy, star bills, a set of family games my mom thought were more mature but they're really children's matching games, Sonic frontier, a mini inflatable dancing man (because my parents have the full size one at their house for now), a movie trivia game, lottery scratch offs (which won $57 on), and some other things I'm forgetting. My brother got socks, beer, Letterkenny DVDs, and money. We gave my parents gift cards, soaps, touch screen winter gloves with a matching hat and scarf, and gaffer's tape. Mskate got a popcorn popper (she really likes popcorn, so single serving popcorn popper is great for her), Friends the complete series blu-ray, a Minnie Mouse necklace (also a black Friday find), and heavy socks. The big thing mskate and I got were German headwear for when we have Octoberfest at church since we didn't have much this year's event, and my Grandma being German she had a hat with real German pins on it, we got that as a present. I also got a men's version of my grandma's hat to put the pins on, and mskate got an artificial flower crown with a ribbon. We'll be very German next year. We also got picture ornaments from our major accomplishments this year. Mine was going to Sault Saint Marie to find an analog Canadian TV channel (of which I have a blog about, that hopefully will get up soon), and mskate with getting her book out. I also have a framed picture of me with the TV with channel 2 on it; I'm going to put it on my desk at work as a conversation starter ("Pokematic, why do you have a framed picture of you with an old TV?" and then I can explain how Canada has 12 channels still broadcasting in analog at the time of this picture, and this was when I found it in November of 2022).

Shortly after that mskate and I packed up all our stuff from both of our parent's houses and went home. It wasn't any problem getting home, and then I unloaded the car to the house. It wasn't any trouble, just a lot of stuff. One funny thing is I tried opening the bed gate on my truck to put some junk in it before we left but it was so cold that it wouldn't open, but then when we got back the bed was open because it got warm enough to melt the gate so we were greeted to an open lift gate on the truck. Now I'm in the process of trying to pack for the New Mexico trip while sorting through all our new stuff. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Oh wow, I never hit publish. Guess I should do that now a year later.

Pokematic's Easter 2023 Fun

Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, where we recognize the death and resurrection of Jesus. I'll start this little blog off with Palm Sunday, aka, my favorite mass; not Holiday, but my favorite mass of the year. It always has been, and for 1 reason, palms. Everyone gets a palm leaf, and we wave it singing hosanna; it's the one mass where we get something to interact with, and even as a 29 year old man it still gets me excited. When everyone else had set their palm down, I kept holding mine. I might as well fast forward to Thursday (since nothing of note happened in the week) where mskate and I got our feet washed for Holy Thursday's mass. This is the 2nd time I've had my feet washed, the first being when I was a confirmation student when I was in highschool. It is kind of interesting being a stand-in for one of the 12, and I'm glad I was able to share this experience with my wife.

Now it is time for Good Friday. Morning was pretty basic, just mskate and I getting ready for the day. I made pasta for lunch (no meat) and we ate it on our way up to our parents. I got my allergy shot when we got up there and after that we went to the Hallmark Store where we got IRA a green ranger plushy toy thing. After shopping we went to Good Friday service with my dad where we got the last 5 stations of the cross. It was good doing that with him, especially since we did it at his home perish and they have a good perish. After mass we went to mskate's parents to pick up IRA and some other things. Mskate had gotten an Easter gift from one of her coworkers which was angel wings (or "chrusciki" if you prefer the original Polish) and a bunny made out of a wash cloth with some chocolates in it. We decided to give the wash cloth bunny to IRA and share the angel wings with my family (because we're Polish). This was funny, when we got there Duke was sleeping in his bed put in front of the glass storm door just enjoying the sunlight, and when mskate pet him he just stretched and enjoyed the touch. Then when I pet him he got alert and excited because for some reason I'm his favorite human to play with and he always gets a ton of excitement when he sees me; and it's not like I'm even much of a dog person that gets excited to see him and insists on playing with him or just has a sense of "I'm a dog person, I want all dogs to play with me" or something, a lot of times I don't even try to play with him and just want to see the family, but he always is like "oh cool, the playful human is here, come on let's wrestle, now chase me" whenever I see him ever since I first met him. He definitely doesn't see me as an enemy since he's always clearly playing and I've been around long enough and have done enough with him where he definitely trusts me, so I'm not "misinterpreting his aggression as joy" or something like that, he just has some kind of attraction to me.

Now it was time for us to have fun with my parents. We got to their house and started the fun. First we prepped the egg dying kit. Every year I forget to bring my kit and every year we screw up something. This time it was we didn't dissolve the tablets in vinegar before adding the water, so the colors didn't turn out as good as they probably could have been, especially the red one (which for some reason the red/pink color always seems to have a problem, I don't know why but it does). We let them sit for half an hour or so as we did mskate's allergen free pretzels. That was pretty interesting since the dough didn't want to stick together as most allergen free dough is known to be, but we made it work and got the pretzels good for her. I tasted a piece and it tasted like a pretzel, which is good since gluten free bread can be weird. With the allergen free pretzels done, we dyed the eggs and did the cookie craft. IRA found these coloring cookies at a grocery store where it's a cookie with a line art drawing on the frosting, and there are markers with edible ink to color them. Grandma, IRA, and I all made one, and I think mskate made the last of the 4 after we finished ours. It was a pretty fun activity, especially since I only had 3 colors to chose from so I had to think "what kind of contrast can I use while also making it look good?" I think it turned out OK.

Since grandma has lost basically all fine motor capabilities due to arthritis we were concerned she wouldn't be able to do it, but since the arthritis has also hit her rough motor capabilities she had the small movements necessary to color by moving her whole arm, so that was great. Later she ate the whole cookie and rather quickly, which is not really like her (she used to not care much for sweets, and always ate very slowly). Mskate looked up the company and they do other holidays, so we're going to do this at Christmas too, and save the markers so we have more colors to choose from. While we did this the eggs were sitting in the dye building up color, and since we are adults now we had the patience of letting them sit and get a deep color. This brought back a lot of memories of how we would dye eggs at grandma's house, and joked that we should all climb on the dining room table like the old days. Oh fun times. At some point during this we watched a "how do they do it" clip on discovery plus about pretzel making, which was fun.

Now for the food fun. My parents made Easter baskets for everyone; I got Reece's peanut butter eggs, peeps, a Lowe's gift card, a lottery ticket (with a dollar coin), and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup" toy, mskate got peeps, jelly beans, a Disney gift card, a lottery ticket, and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup toy," IRA got Reece's peanut butter eggs, jelly beans, a Target gift card, a lottery ticket, and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup toy," and vikingpolak got a 6 pack of beer, cash, a lottery ticket, and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup toy." IRA and I really enjoyed the toy, and I got good enough where I would win. Vikingpolak and I won on our lottery tickets while mskate and IRA didn't win, even on the "loser's 2nd try" tickets my mom got as a back-up since grandpa Pop would do that when us grandkids would get lottery tickets as gifts. Now time for dinner. The family was going to have French toast and omelets cooked with butter, but since that is the 3 things mskate can't eat vikingpolak got a salmon fillet for mskate and whoever else wanted it. Mom took care of the French toast and enlisted me to take care of the hash browns. I made 2 pans of about half the potatoes that they prepaired and that was enough for half the family, then the other half were cooked and the rest of the family got enough. It was a good good Friday family dinner. This was also the time when everyone that wanted one got an angel wing, and we had enough left to share with my grandpa and aunt when my dad and vikingpolak see them on Easter.

With dinner over it was time to make the pretzels. This has been something we've done since I was really little, and very fun. IRA struggled a little bit but I showed him how to do it (he was doing the crossing too low down by the middle giving the pretzels long arms, and I demonstrated he had to do it pretty close to the top). For 3 or 4 pretzels I did the Mennonite method of "flick twisting" and I was successful after some "and then they came undone" failures. I also burnt my thumb taking one of the trays out, but oh well. We visited for a little while after the pretzels just to let them cool, and then we said our goodbyes, took IRA back to his parent's house, and went home.

Saturday was a simple relaxation day. I worked on writing the blog and mskate and I went on a walk in the park by us. I thawed the freezer so I could clean it and get the ice maker working again (I think the line completely froze or something, and I want to see if I can get it working again). Unfortunately that didn't work, but since I emptied the freezer I took the opportunity to clean out all the crumbs that have happened over the years. I also found that Tubi had The Passion of Christ streaming on it, and since our decan said it was a good movie to watch to really get a sense of what a Roman crucifixion was like since the 4 Evangelists didn't deem it important to go into detail of what a crucifixion was like, and it was quite good, though I have to say, it is a VERY difficult movie to watch. Like, I watch R-rated movies every so often so it's not like I haven't seen violence before, but this was super intense. I think I will have to do a review of it, but I will just say that it really helped me understand what our Lord and Savior went through, and I was happy I watched it on Tubi with ad breaks because I needed them to catch my breath. That night we went to the Easter Vigil, and there was just 1 very interesting thing that happened. Typically with the Easter Vigil the church is dark and everyone receives a candle to light when it's time, and those candles have wax shields because wax is going to drip, and our church uses paper wax shields. One lady's wax shield caught on fire when she lit her candle and fell to the ground, and mskate and I sitting on the end were ready to jump over and help, but she was able to step on it before anything happened. This left her without a wax shield though, so mskate went out and got one for her. So yeah, that was a little exciting.

OK, it's Easter Sunday, Jesus is risen. I had one of the pretzels we made on Friday for a breakfast snack before heading over to my in-laws for their festivities. Before I get to the fun, we were greeted by the dogs. Since around this time last year their dog Duke had a seizure and is getting very old mskate and I try to go in through the side door to not excite him (because for some reason he thinks I am the most entertaining person in the world and gets super excited whenever he sees me, but we can minimize the excitement by just "appearing in the house" by using the side door instead of going in through the front door), but this time he already saw us and was barking so we just went in the front. He tried jumping but wasn't able to, so we were able to bring our things in before getting to the big presents. My father-in-law goes all out for holidays, and he had this elaborate spread on the dining room table for everyone. He said "the Easter Bunny came" and I said "no, the Easter Bunny just leaves a basket of candy, this was Easter Santa," and he agreed that it was "Easter Santa." The thing I enjoy the most they get me every year since we got married are these milk chocolate eggs with white chocolate chicks in them. There's nothing super special about them, but the fact that it's a hollow egg with 2 halves joined together (and not some chocolate egg with a peanut butter or caramel filling), and that hollow egg has something in it and not just air, I'm just kind of fascinated by them. I got some other chocolates and gift cards, but the chocolate eggs with a chocolate chick inside are my favorite (maybe I'll do a food review one day). Mskate got a lot of peeps and gummy candy, and a Lego Disney parade train (not for use on a track). We ended up making it while we were at her parents house and now it sits proudly on the stair landing shelf with the rest of our Lego displays.

After the fun we picked up a close friend of the family that they call "Aunt" (we'll call her "aunt C" in the blog). As we were driving up mskate said "we could pick up aunt C on our way to my parents," and since we were driving the pickup truck that's pretty high up I asked "could we though," which made her realize we would need to wait until we got to her parents and could borrow a car. We picked her up no problem and she enjoyed spending time with the family and visiting with the dogs. Delilah jumped up next to her multiple times and just let her pet her, and Duke managed to jump onto the couch to see her. Mskate initially put him on the other couch with me because she thought he wanted to see me, but he very quickly made it known he wanted to get down, and once he was down he ran over to the other couch and jumped up on it (something he doesn't do anymore, because he's old, but regularly forgets he's old). We had eggs, bacon, fruit, hash brown patties, and chocolate croissants. I'm going to have some breakfast for a few days. Mskate also paid for her old skating club to set-up an egg hunt in the front yard, and IRA and I were told to do it. We completed it in probably 1 minute, and I won by 2 eggs. In the eggs were bouncy balls, stickers, yoyos, finger puppets, and sticky hands. It was fun not having a parent say "now you need to give some eggs to your brother so it's even" for once, considering we're both adults and can handle winners and losers.

It's now about the time we went to my parents for their festivities. My dad and brother were at my aunt and grandpa's, and pepperBC's family was doing something else, so the group was a little smaller this time. We gave grandma her Easter basket and she was really happy with it. We got her a fuzzy bunny card, magic water coloring book, and some chocolates. She really enjoyed it. We visited with everyone for a while, then it was dinner time. We had ham, chicken, potatoes, rolls, carrots, corn, and asparagus. Given that everyone from the asparagus story was there (J and P, and Grandma), we reminded everyone of the asparagus story. It was a fun time. After dinner the in-laws came over for desert and accordion time. They also brought over aunt C, and she and grandma really hit it off. We sang some songs like Peter Cottontail and A Tisket a Tasket, and some others. For desert I had some chocolate pie and ice cream, and then spilled some on my pants so I had to wash them and then spend 10 minutes in front of a space heater drying them. No stains though, so I'm good. It was quite a fun day, and at about 7PM we packed up our stuff and went home.

Monday was pretty simple. I did a bunch of grocery shopping and sorted all our food from the festivities, filled up the gas tank, and shipped a package for ebay. I also started out the day wearing long pants but then changed into short pants after lunch time and getting hot unloading the car, so I guess it's officially spring. I wanted to do more work on running inventory on the ebay inventory and shipping material, but I just did that and watched some comedy specials on my free trial of showtime. This was a great mini-vacation, and I'm quite happy with it. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Christmas and New Years 2021 Blog

 Hey everyone, it's Christmas time again. Mskate and I got our Christmas tree up and all our decorations. We also had to take down our usual decorations, but couldn't find a good place for the American Girl Doll bike, so I used our left over wrapping paper scraps to wrap it up and make a Christmas scene.

Before I get into the big festivities, I have to tell a pre-festivities story that will pan out later. I don't know exactly how IRA found out about this, but he learned that my grandma didn't have a timer for her Christmas lights and bought her one. Since my grandma is his grandma-in-law, he didn't know where she lived and needed me to go with him. We stopped at the McDonalds by her for lunch and to maybe get Encanto Happy Meal Toys since mskate wanted them. We didn't want to deal with the drive through and thankfully the lobby was open for carryout. Unfortunately they didn't have Encanto anymore, and we ended up getting a Micky's Runaway Railway and Luca toy. I'll just try to sell those on ebay later. We setup the timer and watched the Rugrats 2021 Holiday special. It was cool, we learned about Las Posadas (because as my mom likes to say, "everything I learned about other religions and cultures I learned from the Rugrats"). It was fun.

OK, so it's Christmas Eve, and it's time for us to exchange gifts with my maternal grandma. We always exchange gifts on Christmas Eve with her ever since I was little, and part of the tradition was we would go to McDonalds while Santa delivered the presents. We didn't do it last year because everything was closed, and we almost didn't this year because Mom called and asked if dining area was open and when she heard "no," she thought that meant it was drive through only and we did frozen oven pizza. Because IRA and I went a week or 2 earlier we knew that the lobby was open, and I had to keep the tradition alive, I walked there and got grandma a McDouble and a large fry to share with everyone. We still had frozen pizza, but we also had some McDonalds When I got back I yelled "Santa Came!" like I would have when I was little.

Time for presents. I got some PS4 games that I got on black friday and amazon prime day that my mom and grandma bought off me, some gift cards, candy, hand cream, and some puzzles. Mskate got me a present she was VERY proud of, Recess Miracle on 3rd Street on DVD, because it wasn't available on disney plus. Unfortunately for her I already had it on VHS from when I was a child, but it's good to have it on DVD now (but she was still a bit sad that I already had it on a home media). Mskate got some candy, puzzles, gift cards, and a special gift that I helped my grandma give. But before I get to that, I need to go through the gifts we gave my grandma. We got her an ornament we painted together some weeks ago, a Minnie Mouse we bought her in Disney World, a build a bear shirt we got on sale in Disney World, some gift cards, and this special gift of gift. Grandma is always saying "I don't have anything for you to eat" whenever we come over, especially since mskate has multiple food allergies. Well, on prime day I found these organic fruit snack starburst things that I knew mskate would like, but I knew she would like them "too much" and they wouldn't last a week in our house, so I wrapped them up as a gift from grandma to mskate, put it in a box, and then wrapped it up as a gift from me to grandma. When she grabbed the box, I told mskate to go over to her and get ready. When she opened it and saw it was another present, I said "read the label" and she handed the inside package to mskate, and mskate liked the organic starburst to keep at her house. We also gave vikingpolak some gifts, a universal socket, a tactical flashlight, and something I'm forgetting. Oh well, it was still fun. My parents got clothes and gift cards.

After gifts we went to church. It was a good service. After church mskate and I took dad back with us so he could get dinner started. Dad made a pot roast and some baked potatoes. It was really good. After dinner we packed up and went to mskate's parents house for the night. We exchanged some pre-gifts with her parents, some clothes and ornaments, and gave the dogs some toys. I wanted to watch A Christmas Story on TBS with IRA, but he isn't a fan of A Christmas Story so we watched my new Recess DVD. After the DVD it was time for everyone to go to bed because "Santa had to come set-up." I wasn't ready to sleep yet, so I watched some of A Christmas Story in bed on my phone. IRA offered to let me watch it on his DVD copy, but it has to be 24-hours on TBS, because 24-hours of A Christmas Story on TBS is my 14 year long tradition.

OK, it's Christmas morning. Last year we learned our lesson and put the dog's presents up high so Dalilah wouldn't get to them. IRA though was up at 4AM excited for all the stuff. Even though he's 24 years old, he's still a kid at heart and gets really excited for Christmas morning. The rest of us got up at about 7:30 AM, and we started at around 8AM (and while everyone was waking up, I watched some more of A Christmas Story). It was quite the sight, because my in-laws get REALLY into Christmas. I got some cool Sonic and Pokemon socks, some lego sets, puzzles, games, and blu-rays. Mskate got puzzles, legos, clothes, and Addie the American Girl Doll with bed. IRA got a bunch of movies, and we got him a "pokematic family staple," The 3 Stooges complete collection of DVD. He was REALLY excited about that. As for my parent-in-laws, we got dad a USB fan and washing machine cleaner (because that's the kind of stuff he likes), and mom got a peanuts colorform and spoon rest. They got some other things as well from us, but those were the key things that really got them excited. It's funny, mskate and her mom always had difficulty shopping for her dad because his standards were either too high, or they paid too much for what they bought, and they just didn't know what to buy him, then I came along and said "for the man who loves his computer and to keep the AC off in the summer, give him a USB desk fan."

OK, now it's time for breakfast. I had an over easy egg and medium well bacon, mskate had an egg replacement omelet, and everyone else had this egg casserole and medium rare bacon. While breakfast was cooking I watched some more Christmas Story, but with the west coast TBS feed because that was closer to where I left off last time. A little later mskate and I went to pick up her aunt to have breakfast and christmas with us. Nothing too spectacular to say, except IRA and I took her back afterwards and I finished watching A Christmas Story after that (once again, on the west coast feed), and that's how I watched all of A Christmas Story over 4 airings this year.

OK, now it's now about 2 PM, and time for us to spend time with my side of the family. My parents throw a party every Christmas and this year was no exception. Vikingpolak picked up my grandma, and their accordion friends showed up a little bit after. The really fun thing though was mskate's cousin M came as well. Mom said "if cousin M isn't doing anything, he can come to our house," and he did. We all visited for the first hour or 2, introducing cousin M to everyone and catching up on life. After that we had dinner. Since my parent's dining room table isn't big enough for everyone there was a "kids table" and "adult table." Since there's normally more than 10 people at these functions and my parent's china set is only for 10 people, and I'm a bit clumsy, I normally have to use a normal dinner plate, so when I asked "where's my plate," I wasn't being rude or entitled, I just knew my place. However, because Christmas was 10 people this year I got a china plate this year. I had ham, green beans, and a roll. After dinner we did the accordion sing along. IRA and mom-in-law came over for that, and it was fun. This was something new for cousin M, and he enjoyed it. While we were singing tanman called to wish everyone Merry Christmas. I was one of the last people to talk to him so I didn't know who to hand him off to, so I said "here, talk to cousin M." Neither of them knew what to so, but mom was like "no, here, talk to your accordion grandparents." After the sing along we all said our goodbyes and went back to mskate's parent's house since we still had festivities with my parents the next day. IRA and I watched one of his new movies, The Suicide Squad, not to be confused with Suicide Squad. This is the R-rated soft reboot, and I gotta say, it was pretty gross. Like, LOADS of gore and brutal deadly injuries, and I guess this is what people wanted, but it was a little too much for my tastes.

OK, it's now the 26th, the first day of Kwanza, and the day we're exchanging gifts with my parents. We met my parents and vikingpolak at Sunday church and had a good mass. My parents still had some setting up to do so vikingpolak, mskate, and I drove around the city a little. We went to the restaurant with really good gluten free bread to see if we could buy 5 pieces of bread quick and easy. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed so we just drove to the edge of the city and then back to my parents house. When we got there my parents had it set-up like they always do (brother's pile, my pile, their piles, and now mskate's pile). We added our stuff to their piles. Some of their key presents were a new French press for dad (since his was falling apart), a set of cooking tongs with a silicone tip one, and mom got a soap dispenser that dispenses soap in the shape of micky's head. There were some other things, like gift cards, but they aren't the main things that got a lot of fun. We also got my parents shirts from our Disney trip, and they all really liked them. We got vikingpolak some other things, but what they were escape me at the moment. Mskate and I got some puzzles, candy, a shirt or 2, gift cards, a build a bear thing, and plasticine clay builder thing. Vikingpolak then gave everyone special gifts. He gave everyone a utility bucket with a stuffed animal and gift card in it. I had a legendary pokemon, mskate got a corgi dog in a santa costume, dad got a snoopy in his WW2 flying ace costume, and mom got a queen bee. After gift exchanging we packed up our stuff and went back to mskate's parents house to pack up everything. The rest of the day was pretty basic, and we had some relaxing.

OK, now it's time to enjoy my week off. Monday was a day of shopping and doctors. Mskate needed to get some blood work done, so we went there after doing some shopping at BJs. Tuesday was more shopping, this time at IKEA and Ollies, and then dinner at an upscale steak house because we had a coupon for a free appetizer. That ended up getting crazy because while backing out I accidently hit the car behind me. I went around the restaurant asking "do you have a dark gray traverse?" and eventually found the owner. It was just minor damage, some scratches on the bumpers, but we still filed the police report. I called my insurance and got things taken care of, but it was a crazy night.

Wednesday is when things got "fun again." Mskate had a doctor's appointment at 10 so I waited outside and watched Elvira while she was in there, and after that we went to see my aunt and grandpa. It was an hour and a half drive up to them, and then we had a fun visit. We exchanged some gifts, and they really enjoyed them. My grandpa liked to carve wood in retirement when he could and one thing he really liked to carve was santas, so instead of putting up a tree with ornaments my aunt puts up multiple little pencil trees and all her carved santas up in a little santa village. Some weeks ago we took my grandma to a pottery painting place and made a santa ornament for my aunt and grandpa for the santa village. I think he fits in perfectly with the rest of the santas.

We also got my grandpa a pair of wireless headphones for the TV. My grandpa is losing his hearing so he keeps the TV kind of loud, and one time she asked "is there a way to give him headphones or something," and after looking at the TV I said "yes there is," and when I saw bluetooth headphones on prime day I said "this would be great for grandpa," and since I already had a bluetooth transmitter that plugs into a headphone jack I knew I could get this for them. Unfortunately I forgot what the specific jacks were on her TV and didn't bring an RCA to 3.5mm jack adapter, but it works for his ipad and the cell phones since there's a standard 3.5mm audio cable option, and they are happy about them. We also got them bird feeder cylinders and lindor chocolates, and they enjoyed them. We had ham sandwiches for lunch, and we had some good conversations. It was a fun little day.

OK, it's Thursday now, and it's dad-in-law's birthday today. We went to my dad's first because we had to pick up some stuff and just wanted to see him. After that we went to mskate's parent's house and played our new Disney Eye Found it game. Mom-in-law didn't understand it too well, but IRA enjoyed it. After that IRA and I watched an episode of Seinfeld and then we just waited around for dad-in-law to come home from work. I played Animal Crossing New Horizon and watched Just Go With It on Hulu. When he got home we ordered pizza and made a lava cake we got from BJs on Monday. Everyone enjoyed them. It was a fun day.

Alright it's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday, and New Years Eve. Mskate and I planned on going to the American Girl Doll Store in Columbus for the new year release of the girl of the year, because mskate really wants the girl of the year since she's a future Olympian and her welly wisher sister is a figure skater. Thursday night she learned that they released them 2 days early, and so we went there New Years Eve before going to our hotel. It was a really fun store, and I may put some clips up.

We got the Welly Wisher, the skating outfit, an Olympic medal presentation set on sale, and some blind bags we felt to figure what we'd get (milk and eggs, cheese and grater, and waffle iron). After the store we went to our hotel and it took us a little while to check in (many people were checking in as well), so I just watched hulu while I waited. After checking in we drove around our hotel to find dinner. We found a Japanese restaurant next to a barcade (arcade that is paid for with alcoholic drinks) called Level One. We ordered avacado sushi rolls and a salmon sushi roll for mskate and steak teppan yaki for me. While we waited for our food, I went to the barcade and played "Russian Tetris" (the arcade version with more Russian imagery" and different mechanics and logic, knowledgeable Tetris players know that there are subtle but major differences between releases), and more importantly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles In Time. So, little story; when I was about 9 and my brother was 7, we went to a hotel in Canada called The Wheels Inn, where they have a giant arcade, mini-amusement park, bowling alley, laser tag, shuffle board, light gun shooting gallery, mini golf, giant "McPlayland" thing that was so big I sometimes got lost in it, bounce house, and more, and the game that captured our attention the most was TMNT Turtles In Time, but we weren't good enough to get past the 2nd level. When I saw it, I knew I had to play it, and if it was free play, I had to beat it.

It took about an hour and 40 free credits, but I managed to beat it. Young me was proud. The food was ready for a while, and a little cold, but it was worth it to me to beat it. When I sent the picture of the victory screen to my family they all said "oh that's great." After getting our food we went back to the hotel and ate dinner. The food was good, but not very filling (I'll get to that later). Mskate played with her new dolls and clothes, putting the Olympic outfit on the doll she brought and putting the skating outfit on the welly wisher.

After the play time and watching an episode of Numb3rs on hulu I went back to the barcade. I didn't buy a drink for playing TMNT while I waited for the other food, so I figured I should go back and get a drink. Mskate didn't want to go with me (not her thing, and she was tired), so it was just me and I could have all the fun I wanted. I bought a TRON, a cocktale with voka, rum, gin, and blue curacao "with a splash of sour and sprite," and it was REALLY good. If you ever go to Level One, I recommend it. I needed something to play with one hand while I drank so I played Q-Bert, a light gun game, and Frogger. After finishing my drink I played Tapper (which also has some history since that was my favorite arcade game to play on Shockwave.com in 5th grade, along with Rampage), Donkey Kong, and Punch Out. I could have played more, but I had to get back to mskate (but I'm definitely coming back here). Mskate was hungry for more food, so I bought her another order of avocado rolls. She kind of wanted more salmon rolls, but 1 salmon roll costs about the same as 8 avocado rolls ($4.50 for 8 avocado rolls, $3.25 for 1 salmon roll), and when she said "I could have gotten more salmon rolls," I almost said "like hell you are." She enjoyed the avocado rolls, so that was good. When I went to order more sushi rolls one of the employees said "hey, didn't you already order today?" and I said "yeah but we want more." When I got back mskate ate and then went to sleep while I watched Numb3rs waiting for midnight. Around 11:30 I accidentally woke her back up and 30 minutes later we watched the ball drop and rang in the new year with some kisses.

New Years Day started off OK. I woke up around 8:30 and went down to see about continental breakfast. The hotel was asking $12 for their continental breakfast, and I was like "no, I'll just eat the snacks and poptarts we brought." I ate my snack breakfast and called to find out when checkout was while mskate looked to see if there was a mass around us (Solemnity of Marry). Turns out checkout was the same time mass would be over, so we packed up our stuff, checked out, and went to mass. Since people were loud the night before (because new years), mskate didn't sleep as well as she would have liked, and wasn't sure if she would want to go back to the store, but would make the final call after mass. When mass was over she said "it's less than 15 minutes away (just barely at 13), so I want to go." We did and she found matching pajamas for the welly wisher and her, which was great. Unfortunately there weren't any big festivities, so that wasn't very good. Oh well.

After the store we went to the "mall building," where they have restaurants and this cool game store. Mskate got Bibibop and I got panda express, 2 things we don't get very often. At the game store I looked around at all the coin pushers they had to see if any were ready to pay out (I have a coin pusher at home and played it enough to be able to tell when they're ready to pay out), but unfortunately none were. We drove home and thus concluded our little adventure.

Overall this was quite a fun vacation. If I could do it over the only thing I would change is remembering the right cable for the headphones and getting it completely set-up. Well, now it's time for me to get back to real life. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Easter Fun 2022

 Hey everyone, it's Easter time again, which is a fun time with our family. This year was a REALLY big year though, because mskate went through RCIA to join the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. I'll get to that soon enough but first I need to go through everything starting at Friday.

So every year my family makes soft pretzels for Easter, a Polish tradition we normally did with my dad's side of the family when we went to see them on Easter. We haven't done it with them since my paternal grandma passed, but we still do it with my parents, and this year IRA and my maternal grandma joined in. This does put a little challenge for mskate though, since she has pretty much all the food allergies, and most of those things are in pretzels. My ever accommodating parents found a way though, finding a good allergy friendly dough recipe online and making her special dough. We made her pretzels first to prevent cross contamination (no flour on cutting board, no pretzel residue in the baking soda bath, no pretzel crumbs on the baking sheets). The fun thing is we got to use our pretzel making template we got for a wedding present. Since Dad and I like Good Eats with Alton Brown, we made jokes about the unitasker. It was pretty handy though, because you shape the pretzel on the mold, and then it lifts off the mold to put in the bath, and then that can be used to fish it out. After making mskate's we made our normal pretzels, and it was really fun.

After the pretzels we dyed eggs. We had 2 different egg kits going, but we just couldn't get some of the colors to turn out right. This is where grandma really enjoyed watching us, because when we we little we would dye eggs at her house and it brought back a bunch of memories. One of the interesting things in one of the kits was an "egg glaze" which made the eggs shiny after dying. IRA and I had some fun with that, but the glaze was stale or something and didn't really spread well (it was kind of like a gelatin-jelly), and they didn't turn out very well. We also did egg sleeves, and mskate was really fascinated by those. Unfortunately my parents got "large eggs" and the sleeves were more meant for "medium eggs," but we were able to use most of them and they turned out well. It was a really fun time. At some point mskate and I made it to church, but I don't remember if it was before or after my parents.

Saturday was the BIG day, probably the most eventful of all the days. First off, mskate's sponsor and her husband came up on this day. We met them at a restaurant mskate and I discovered one night when I said "I don't want to cook, I want to go out to get Chinese at a restaurant," and while this wasn't Chinese it was a new restaurant. This was really fun since I haven't seen them since the wedding, and I get along really well with the husband (but I don't know him well enough to come up with a blog name yet, lol). We sat together and had some fun discussions about the trip up and jobs. I guess you can say we had brunch, because some people had breakfast foods and others had lunch foods. The restaurant is also along the water, so after the meal we went out and walked along the dock. The really fun thing was pointing out Canada (because we're close to the border, one of my favorite radio stations is a Canadian station, and if I set-up the TV antenna just right I can get like 4 Canadian TV channels). Mskate and I grew up close to the border and had short vacations in Canada in our youth, so we take "look, it's a foreign country" for granted, but for them it was really impressive to be able to be able to see Canada in person across the water. 

After lunch it was time for another big event. IRA and I are fans of Steven Crowder and when they announced that Dave and Steven would be doing a live show at the Royal Oak Music Theater (something that isn't too far from us, and I went there when I went to the Mike and Micky Show), we knew we had to do it. I picked up IRA and we found parking. Then we got in line and it was pretty crazy. The line stretched all the way around the block past the transportation center, a lot of people wearing Steven Crowder shirts, Let's Go Brandon, and MAGA. I know IRA wore one of his Crowder shirts; I want to say it was "piss off youtube."

When we were in line venue security came walking around distributing "legal to drink" wrist bands (this makes it easier on the bar inside, instead of everyone showing their ID everyone just shows the wrist band). I didn't have any plans on drinking, but I wanted the wrist band. While we were waiting in line I remembered I had my pocket knife on me (because if I'm not at my day job, I probably have my pocket knife on my person like a good boy scout), and I remembered "live performances don't want you to have pocket knives." I ran back to the car, dropped my knife in the cup holder, and ran back. I struggled a little to find IRA, but after calling him I reunited.

Once again I assumed my ticket was in the balcony, but the usher told us "no you're on the main floor, center." We weren't super close like I was with Mike and Micky, but it was still pretty close to where we could clearly see the acts. One thing that was really cool was the pre-show music was either Louder with Crowder parody songs or pogo. I want to say that the song before the start was the song they play before the online show, but I can't say for certain. The opener guy was pretty good, I want Steven to have him on the online show some time. Dave and Steven were hilarious. I don't remember a lot of the jokes they told, but it was really fun seeing them do jokes that weren't just about modern social-political topics. Dave's closer about the prostitute and White Castle sliders was gold. What was really neat is that a lot of the jokes were specific to South East Michigan since Dave is from Detroit and Steven's family is from Detroit and Steven used to live in Ann Arbor. Since they're high level comedians the jokes work if you're unfamiliar with the area, and I'm sure they use the same jokes elsewhere in the country, you could tell there was "hometown details" that were added, like Dave talking about "getting high at this house on Gratiot" (a street in Detroit) at this show is probably "there was this Detroit house I used to get high at" in other shows. After the show I dropped IRA off and went back to our house for Easter Vigil. Mskate was worried that the show would go too long and I would be late, but it didn't.

This was quite the ordeal. Mom and Dad brought grandma, and that was quite something. I struggled with mass, because they had a bunch of Easter flowers in the church, and I am allergic to pretty much all the flowers. After everyone was seated and situated, I stood outside by the fire they had going. As I stood out there I had the great idea of "if anyone joins me I will say 'surely you were with him' and see if they say 'I do not know that man.'" Unfortunately no one joined me so I didn't get to use that, but it got some laughs when I told people about it afterwards. My standing out there actually helped with the technical production side since I was able to give them a reference for "average height adult male" when framing the shot for the online stream and projected video inside the church for when they were lighting the candles off the fire. The mass was good, but twice I had to step outside and get some non-allergy air. The first time was about halfway through mass, and the second time was after communion. After the second time I sat in the back away from all the flowers, and that helped some. After mass when we were packing up my grandma, she told me "it's really late, you can stay at my house, I don't want you driving all the way home." I reminded her that she was at my church, and my house was much closer than her house. Bless her heart, but she gets very confused. After mass I took a hot steamy shower to clear my sinuses, and that felt good.

Easter Sunday, the day of celebration. Mskate's friends joined us for breakfast and we made these vegan pancakes that everyone could eat. It was a really weird recipe, since the batter was the consistency of cookie dough and not pancake batter. When we put chocolate chips in I originally said "put the chocolate chips in after pouring the batter," because with normal pancake batter you do that because if you mix it in the bowl the chips all settle at the bottom and the distribution is all off. However, because this was "cookie dough" the chips were all stuck on the top and melted into the pan without going into the pancake, so then I mixed it in with the batter in the bowl like I would with cookie dough. Mskate and I distributed the work; she mixed all the ingredients, I cooked them in the frying pan. The scraping scoop we had dished out the perfect amount, and everyone enjoyed my cooking.

First we saw the in-laws and we gave Easter baskets, just nothing super exciting. After them we went to my parents for the Easter party. Grandma and her accordion friends came over, and we had a fun sing along. We sang some Disney songs and old spring time songs, but what was really weird was singing "you are my sunshine" and "a tisket a tasket." Everyone knows the chorus for "you are my sunshine," it's a pretty common public domain song (and if it's not like how Happy Birthday was still under copyright until recently, it's part of the American cultural cannon). Well accordion friend printed off the verses for it and this was the first time any of us have heard it, and it turns out the song we all thought was an up-beat love song ("you brighten up the day like the sun, I can't imagine life without you here") is actually a depressed break-up song ("my life was full of light when you were here, but now that you are gone my life is dark and meaningless"). That was crazy. Then with a Tisket a Tasket, pretty much all of us only knew "a tisket a tasket, a [something something] basket," and we had the Ella Fitzgerald version which has the line "and if she doesn't bring it back I think I will die," which is a pretty extreme reaction to "I lost my basket." I think we had a pot roast dinner, and it was good.

Because Easter fell on a Sunday this year, I had the Monday after off. Mskate and I largely spent the day relaxing and organizing after Easter (new toys and candy, had to find places for them), and then I was like "it's been forever since I went to the movies, I want to see Uncharted." And so I found a theater that was playing Uncharted and I saw it. Since Uncharted is basically a videogame adaptation of treasure hunt movies, it translated to film pretty well. And that was my Easter weekend. It was pretty jam packed, and really fun. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.