August 13, 2003 11:10 am
Family reunion time
I did finally check on the ratings and they were very grim. The boss didn't even want to show me because he didn't want me to be discouraged because he thinks they are a fluke and will bounce back to some degree on the next book. Lordy, I hope so. I still blame it on the Dixie Chicks.
I'm going through a tough time with a co-worker that I don't believe I've ever psuedonymed here before, or even written about. The names that pop to mind are cruel names that describe his appearance which aren't fair so I won't use them. I'll just call him Anachronism, or the Big A. My therapist and I have gone over the same ground dozens of times: I like to be liked. I like to please everyone. It causes me great anxiety when anyone doesn't like me. Ergo, I'm under some great anxiety and stress this week. Big A attacked a song we are playing and me personally for the job I am doing... related to this song. Funny thing is, and this helps me not take it too seriously, is that he is blaming me and raising a fuss over this one song and it was not a song I chose or participated in playing at all. This one was chosen by our bigger boss. I took the heat and tried to explain "our" position and he went off even more. Today the bigger boss will be back in the office, so we'll see if he cares to get involved. He may not. Sometimes he is smarter than me (sometime?) and just steps back and lets things settle on their own.
On to happier thoughts... I went to my big family reunion over the weekend. It is my favorite weekend of the year. It's more fun when Mark can go with me, but he couldn't this year, he had a gig. It is sometimes fun without him because I don't worry about him having fun or not, I'm on my own. I do like him to show up every few years so no one will worry about whether or not I'm still married.
Friday night I made two fabulous pecan pies and some baked beans. This year I didn't go whole hog on taking all my genealogy info, I just took the bare minimum, which was plenty. I learned a lesson.
The family consistes of a couple that moved to Texas from Tennessee and Alabama and he became a Texas Ranger and she fought the Indians along side of him and they were pioneers in Comanche County during the end of the Republic of Texas and the beginning of statehood. They had 12 children and this reunion is the descendants of those 12 kids. We take a count each year of the number of decendants from each branch. Ours is one of the smallest families of the bunch. It just happens. A family doesn't have kids and the family gets smaller. Or their kids move off to Illinois and they never come to the reunion. Or they live in Dallas but refuse to even acknowledge our exsistence. This past year, one of the sweetest elderly members of the family died. She was called Sade and she was a hoot. I loved getting to see her each year and have corresponded with her and visited her in Houston and Henrietta over the many years I've known her. Without her there, I was afraid her family wouldn't come and our bunch would be very very small. I was wrong. Her daughter and grandson and his family and another granddaughter all came. My parents came and a few more cousins I didn't expect to see were there and all in all we had 18 which may have been twice as many as we had last year. It was a very respectable bunch. The reunion itself had about 200 there this year. We've had as many as 600.
I stayed with a cousin from another side of the family (that doesn't get to go to this reunion). I think I told myself last year that I wouldn't stay with them again for a variety of reasons. I had forgotten those reasons this year and stayed and was reminded. The number one reason I will try to go to a motel next year is that she and her husband have a loud blaring alarm go off at 4 in the morning and they DON'T HEAR IT!!! I'm down the hall bolting upright in bed and it just goes and goes and goes. Last year I got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, got dressed, packed my bags and LEFT and it was still going. This time I closed my door, put a pillow over my head and managed to go to sleep with it continuing to not wake them down the hall.
Bless them, though, I came back to the house later in the morning to get my pies to take them to the reunion and she noticed I had a low tire. Her husband took it off and patched it and put it back on so I was able to go to the reunion and make it home safely, too. How many cousins have, on hand, what it takes to take off a tire and fix it? Thank God for farmers.
I visited the cemetery and communed with my many relatives that are buried there. The great-great-great grandparents that began this family, buried now out in the bright sunshine after an old old crape myrtle finally completely died and was chopped down. Next to them, my great-great grandfather and grandmother. Not far to the east, my great-granparents. I attended her funeral when I was in first grade. My first funeral and I remember it distinctly. Over on the other side of the cemetery is another pair of great-great grandparents from another side of the family. He fought in the Civil War and was captured by the north and was a prisoner of war until he escaped and walked, barefooted, back to Alabama. .....(and I complain because a co-worker doesn't like me. That's putting things in perspective). All around are other cousins and my favorite Aunt Det, my grandfather's sister. I wish my grandparents were in this cemetery, too, and they should be, but they are buried up near Amarillo, where they were living when she died and near my aunt and her children. I would very much like to put a bench or a stone in this cemetery with their names and information so that they are remembered by future generations when they come to this reunion. I've talked about that for years and have never accomplished it or pursued it. Another To Do to add to that never ending list.
The Sunday morning breakfast at the reunion again was my favorite meal. There are hotdogs on Saturday night and a huge Sunday lunch of barbeque and everyone brings their homemade goodies (okay, more often than not people pick up something at the grocery already made and plop it on the table and call it good----it ain't). But Sunday morning consists of a big cauldron of hot cowboy coffee with the grounds in the bottom of the cauldron (I learned that the first year I was there for breakfast and I stirred it up good before dipping a cup). The cooks have big griddles placed over open campfires and they cook chicken fried steaks in grease. They are the most tender chicken fried steaks you've ever had and taste NOTHING like the steaks at my favorite Austin home-cooking restaurants. It's almost like the difference between canned peaches and fresh peaches. Sure, I love canned peaches and they have their place and you eat them because they are there 12 months out of the year, but when you can, you savor that fresh peach because it is something that only exsists temporarily and needs to be appreciated and anticipated. The cooks also scramble lots and lots of eggs (last year I must have cracked five dozen eggs for them.... it gets old, believe me) and they make a big pot of sausage gravy. There is no better meal in the world. Sausage gravy on a piece of "light bread." That's the only time of the year I call it light bread, but that's the words that pop out at an historic event like this.
Last year and this year I did the mailing address labels for the invitations (about 600 of them). I think I got fired this year. I know I had written the secretary and suggested they get someone new because I wasn't doing a very good job this year... AND THEY TOOK ME UP ON IT!! I really thought they would encourage me to continue. I'm glad they didn't, but in my paranoid, need-to-please world I was a little hurt. I am still the keeper-of-the-genealogy so I have a job (and it is a big one). This one does suit me better. I need to get enthusiastic and work on it on a more consistent basis so it doesn't all jump up and panic me next July.
Okay, I've written an entry. I feel good. I need to feel this good more often.