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 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.

Easter 2019 Adventures and Fun

(A little backstory to help things make more sense, I have a girlfriend now, and a lot of the events involve her).

Hey everyone, Jesus Christ is risen, and here are my fun stories of the season. First we'll start out with Palm Sunday. Of all the masses in the year, Palm Sunday has to be my favorite, mainly because we're given palm branches. Actually, just because we're given palm branches. I know there are more meaningful holy days, but the "here's a palm branch, wave it for Jesus" thing really appeals to me; always has, always will. This was also when I went to my parents to make pretzels and dye eggs. I texted my mom earlier in the week asking if we were going to dye eggs and make pretzels, and she forgot (so it's a good thing I reminded her). Why pretzels? There's quite a lot of catholic symbolism behind them, so I'll give you the run down. First, they resemble one way to pray (hands across the chest touching the opposite shoulders). Next, they are simple bread of flour, water, and yeast (though we use store bought dough, for convenience), and simple bread is brought up many times in the bible. Then there's the baking soda bath to give them the color and texture, which can be analogous to baptism. There's also the salt, which sometimes is used to represent the tears shed when Jesus was crucified. There's also the Easter Eggs, which everyone is familiar with. I bought an egg dying kit last year after Easter to use this year, and it was still good (yay). There was a little trouble though, my parent's vinegar was old and took the tablets a long time to dissolve. Since I'm into pickling, I said "next time I'm bringing my own vinegar." We rolled and baked many pretzels while we let the eggs sit in the dye to get that bright color. It was a fun time and I'm glad I was able to keep the tradition alive.

Fast forward to Holy Thursday. This was a very special Holy Thursday, because I got to spend the evening with my girlfriend. She lives out of state but was coming in for Easter, and since I was on her way to her parents house, we had a date night. We said our hellos and I had things set-up to listen to some of my records (one of our things is listening to music together), but she surprised me with "lets watch 3 Identical Strangers" (the documentary about 3 triplets separated at birth that were reunited in their late teens/early 20s). She rented it on amazon and wanted to connect her laptop to my TV, but my TV is weird about connecting laptops to it, so instead we watched it through hulu plus (I have hulu, she doesn't, soooooo, plus I already wanted to watch this at some point since I already had it in my watch list). We got comfortable and enjoyed our little movie night. About 2/3 of the way through we stopped to eat. I made a roast in my crock pot that had been cooking all day, and it was good. I lit some candles in the pinch pots I made in elementary school (my mom held on to them all these years and now that I've moved out she said "take them, decide what you want to do with them," so I turned them into candle holders). We each had about 1 bowl, leaving me some left overs. I might have put in too much potato and pineapple, but whatever, good for later. After dinner we finished up the movie. It was a good movie. After the movie we went to church. We were going to get ice cream afterwards, but because mass went late and she had to get to her parents, we just said our goodbyes and called it a night.

Good Friday was a pretty good day. Since my mom worked for the Easter Bunny at our mall, my girlfriend and I decided to pay her a visit and get our picture taken (and "be the cute couple holding hands as they walk around the mall"). Since I knew I wasn't going to eat much for dinner (I was going to have the bread part of the Chick-Fill-E sandwich), I had my large meal at lunch. I had a pickle and lettuce sandwich with some shredded cheese, and mozzarella sticks. Yum. I went to Good Friday mass out by our parent's way (scheduling reasons) and made it to my parents home parish. I ran into mom at mass, so we went to mass together. Yay. After mass I did some thrifting and found some mystery VHS tapes (record TV tapes that didn't really say what was on them, perfect breading ground for lost media). I also found some other interesting tapes, some that I think I'll make videos about; stay tuned.

The Easter Bunny and mall time was an interesting experience. She was doing some shopping with her mom beforehand and met me in line. When we got kind of close we waved to Mom, who was running the cash register at the time. She saw us and waved back. Now for the funny thing, the credit card reader lost it's phone connection, so Mom called me over to try to fix it, because I am the technology boy wonder. Her manager came over and managed to fix it, by unplugging the phone line and plugging it back in. Ahhh the age old "turn it off and on again." After another 20 minutes of waiting in line, we made it to the front. We took a selfie with Mom and then got our picture with The Bunny. Mom told the photographer "this is my son." We placed the Chick-Fil-E order while we were in line with the mobile app, and that made it come faster when we went to the food court. She had the grilled chicken patty and tomato, I had the bun with lettuce and pickles. We split the waffle fries, and the lemonade with 2 straws. It was cute. After that we went to the ice cream vendor and each got a small ice cream. Once we were done with ice cream we walked around the mall, stopping at the Microsoft store (for me) and a clothes stores (for her). Neither of us bought anything, nor spent a lot of time in our respective stores, but it was fun getting to share some of our interests with each other. After fun at the mall we went to her Lutheran Good Friday mass. That was a fun experience for me since I haven't been to a Lutheran Good Friday mass. There were a lot of similarities to my Catholic mass, but also differences. The thing that made us both laugh was when their pastor said "peace be with you," and apparently the Lutherans still say "and also with you" instead of "and with your spirit" (which was a change the Catholic Church made 6 or so years ago), and both of us had a good laugh at "and with your - also with you." We didn't do anything after mass, and so I went home.

Now for Saturday. The fun thing today was I had dinner with my girlfriend's family, first time since we started dating. Now for most couples this would be intimidating; first time spending the evening with her parents and siblings, trying to make a good impression and her dad to not want to kill you. However, that wasn't my case. You see, I've known them for quite a while, because we were friends before we started dating. I remember at her highschool graduation party I really hit it off with her dad, basically spending the entire party talking with him and that was the first time we met. Then all the subsequent times I went over to her house I'd normally spend at least 10 minutes talking with him about our shared interests. I also know her brother well, having gone on a small road trip with him and spending an afternoon at my condo admiring all my cool nerd stuff. I also get along pretty well with her mom, but nothing really to talk about. I will say it was pretty interesting being there and spending time with them in a different capacity, because while everything was pretty much the same, there were some things of "now I'm seeing if this is something I may one day want to marry into" instead of before which was "ahhh different family dynamics, how fun" (and while we both agree marriage is a far off thing neither of us is ready for, we can't completely ignore it since that's the point of dating). It was nice not having any "soooo, what do you do at your day job" kind of grilling, and instead just talked about each other and the home made pickles I brought. It was a lot of fun. I made sure I left by 7 so I could make it to the Easter Vigil at my church. We said our goodbyes and "see you in 3 weeks" (because this was the last in person fun we'll have until next event). The Easter Vigil was your standard Catholic Easter Vigil; start from creation with the lights out and lighting candles, read passages leading up to Jesus's crucifixion and sing Alleluia for the first time when we get to his rising, and bless the holy water and candle for the coming year. We didn't have anyone baptized this year though. Oh well. Still a good mass, even if it was late.

Now it's time for Easter Sunday. I woke up early and went to my parents house, so then we could pile into my car and drive up to my aunt's house to see Grandpa. We brought our blessed Easter food (because we do the blessing of the Easter baskets) and said our hellos. We went to church at their church and this was some crazy planning on their part; they have a 7AM, 9:30AM, and 11AM mass, that pretty much go right up against each other. My brother and I got there early to save the seats, but that didn't make much of a difference because they went in on the side door and we went in the main door, resulting in a constant flow of people coming out and them able to get in before us. Good mass all in all. After mass we went back and had brunch. I brought bacon and home made pickles. Grandpa really liked the pickles, yay. We also had kielbasa and ham, and the pretzels and eggs from before (and some other things not really worth mentioning). Since my brother recently bought a DSLR, he showed it to Grandpa and Grandpa showed him his DSLR. They had a lot of fun talking photography. I told Grandpa about my current events at work, and he likes hearing about them. I also showed mom the pictures I took at the Mike and Mickey Show, and how they still managed to put on a good show. It was a good visit. Near the end I showed Grandpa the picture with the Easter Bunny and my girlfriend, and he had a rather calm reaction (unlike my other granparents, who got really excited and had us married next week, but then again they already knew her and "had us dating" pretty much our entire friendship). That was pretty much my Easter. I also digitized one of the mystery tapes, and it was this 6 hour basketball special without many commercial breaks. It was quite boring XP

The Monday following was a good day off. I recorded a new episode of the Peanut Butter Podcast and did some editing on a Tennessee Vlog installment (because I'm finally getting around to those after close to a year). I also got my allergy shot, because I had the time and was close enough to when I was due. I converted the remaining non-mystery tapes (one of which I have the perfect idea for a video). I watched Lars and the Real Girl, and made a podcast about it. I also realized I have about 2 months before my 10 year anniversary of opening up my youtube channel. I need to figure out what I'm doing for that. That was my Easter. It was really fun. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and if you'll excuse me, I'm going to do some after Easter sale shopping.