thursday.

Emily, 25, Benjamin, 21, Mirielle, 20, Joseph, 19, and Margaret, 13, are heading out the door for a sad road trip, to Ohio to attend services for our friend Joseph, who died in a car accident. Emily worked last night, she is a nurse on the critical care floor of a big hospital in the city, and they are leaving as soon as she gets home from work this morning. She will hopefully sleep half the day at least....they are not sleeping in Ohio, just driving back home tonight. Three of them have licenses, Joseph has his permit, so they can take turns driving.

Mali has a final at noon, so I will have to drive her to school unless she rides her bike. There will be no one else here, which seems strangely lonely. Just the little girls and I. And Rosie.

I didn't end up going to the cemetary yesterday, it was very rainy. I am thinking of going today with just the little girls. They won't understand, but it might be fun for them to go someplace different.

I should go to the cemetary where my parents are, too. I remember going there for walks with my mother not too many years ago. It is on a hill, and one can see the fields and town spread all around, it is lovely up there. My mother actually liked cemetaries. She grew up near the small city, on the shore of the lake, across from a huge cemetary, actually where Robert is. When she was a little girl, she used to play hide and seek with all her friends there. She used to say, "Oh, it's the living you have to fear, not the dead..." This morning, my first thought when I woke up was a strong memory of walking into my parents' living room. It was usually dark in there the last few years they were alive, my parents always had a silent battle about the curtains. My mother liked them opened, and the house filled with light and sunshine, but my father always closed them. Since he was stronger in the later years, I guess he won. Actually, the last time I visited my mother, my father was in the hospital, and the house was sunny and open and she was happy. My father wasn't a mean man, but he could be very depressed and difficult at times. He had a good heart, and he was a giver, but he could be miserable and rude. We weren't rude back, though, we seemed to always want to please him, which makes me feel sorry for the little girl I was.....my mother was kind though. It could make me cry right here and now for how much she served him and was thoughtful and good to him, and how he treated her so badly sometimes. She knew it was just how he was, though, and didn't return evil for evil. She DID come here to stay for a day or two when he was especially grumpy, but she would call him as soon as she got here....no, they didn't have the perfect marriage, but they loved each other and my father suffered so much after she died, missing her.

Oh well....enough sadness for now. Miss Camille is up now, and she is CUTE. She knows we are going to stay in our camper for a few days next week, so she has a backpack packed, and she carries it around, "For camping!" It has a High School Musical microphone in it, a toy cell phone, and a pillowcase. She ran and packed it last night when were talking about the camper. She doesn't understand the concept of time, so she keeps asking when we are going. Right now she has her lunchbox. When the kids were packing lunches last night, she wanted one too, so she was given a baggie of Cheez-Its, which she put in her lunchbox, but I intercepted because it was bedtime. She remembered it, and now she has her lunch. In her jammies with her cast, limping along, or should I say, STOMPING along...it is noisy, but so cute....