it was a busy weekend packed full of family visiting. we got up there friday night at a decent enough time to visit with MIL a bit. saturday we had our family get-together with gma h in the nursing home. it wasn’t a great turn out, less than fifteen when we usually have over sixty, but there was good conversation. it was only the second time that gma has ever not known hubby. she can’t even remember any of her old stories anymore, which is sad. i guess she’s still doing alright for being nearly ninety-eight years old but it just almost seems like she’s already gone. she’s such a wonderful woman. we left that nursing home and went to another to see hubby’s ex-grandmother-in-law. she was perfectly fine when we last saw her a couple of months ago but it seems that she has started to lose her mind since then. she didn’t know me and assumed that hubby had just gotten remarried. she was very proud to meet me and was happy to call me one of her own. i’m glad that after a couple of years of visiting her, i still make a positive first impression. she didn’t know she was in a nursing home, thought she was in the hospital and getting ready to go home. after leaving, hubby and i talked about how heartbreaking it must be to lose your mind. we are hopeful that they don’t know that it’s happening. we went from there to hubby’s ex-in-laws and went to dinner and back to their house to see a slide show from their recent 50^th anniversary party. we’ve always had nice visits with them but this one seemed much more relaxed and personable than before. i guess because we were always there primarily to visit granny a, they didn’t feel as relaxed. who knows. it was a pleasant evening but, as always, i left saddened by the fact that i have a better relationship with my husband’s ex-in-laws than with my own mother. his ex-MIL hugs me and tells me she loves me; mine told me two years ago that she didn’t want to see me or talk to me anymore. such is life, eh? we got back and spent some time with MIL and FIL before going to bed. unfortunately, i was not to get any sleep whatsoever saturday night. that’s when the storms rolled through from fay’s outer bands. generally, a storm doesn’t bother me but the wind was so strong and swirly-sounding i was certain that we were going to be carried away in a tornado. i can take a hurricane any day, i am terrified of a tornado. even after hubby got up in the morning and the weather had calmed down some, i wasn’t able to get a nap in. made for a very long day yesterday. we had our family-gathering at gma m’s house which was bought by a grandchild after her passing this year. it was the first time i had been back there and i was afraid that it was going to be awkward and sad but it wasn’t. the cousins have done a nice job of opening things up and utilizing the house more. it was a good turnout (all but two grandchildren+ showed up) and everyone had a good time. i felt a little bad for cousin’s wife because she was so worried about everything being perfect and everyone being comfortable and after twenty or thirty minutes there, the power went out. it stayed out the whole afternoon (despite the power company’s estimated fix-time that came and went with no power). luckily, it was a breezy afternoon so with the windows open, it was fairly comfortable and the food was being cooked via propane anyhow so no plans were disturbed. we got on the road late in the afternoon and made it home around 22:00 last night. we asked around and fay was a non-event around here (“how was the storm?” “storm? what storm?”). now can we all agree that it’s friday and get on with our three-day weekend?