Friday

Friday Andy had bro-time plans with Dan to go have sushi so I made bff time with Raye, even though she had a theatre shift that night. I took a walk along the waterfront after work, and soaked in the loveliness that is Seattle in the spring. Stopped at one of my favorite views of the city at pier 66, through the Pike Place Market as it was closing shop and just breathed Seattle in before walking up Pike to the Schmee. I only had $14 in my account and the tip money from the night before so it was to my benefit that my hang out time with Raye was at the theatre so I could get staff discount drinks. While the show was going on we got a text from Anna who was in the neighborhood and so she ended up dropping by in the second half as well. It was good to catch up with her (with the exception of maybe Raye, Dani, Sam and Dorothy I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of my friends in a long time) and having come by after a date that went well she was very happy, which makes me happy. Got a text from Andy at one point asking my bra and panty size and answered without much question and carried on. After a while Raye, Anna and I met up with Dan & Andy and had drinks at the 6 Arms. Apparently the boys stopped at the Love Zone and Andy bought me(us) a present of sexy bra and panties, oh la la! Finally, to cap our night, while Andy and I were at one point out smoking in front of the bar we saw a middle aged lady hit a cop car right in front of us. He was turning left and she was behind him and didn’t stop in time and BAM! The look on the cop’s face was pretty priceless when he got out of the vehicle. More cops showed up, they had her do the whole intoxication test (right in front of a bar, which seems so cruel because everyone inside was enjoying their drinks and laughing in her direction.) I’m sure that really spoiled the end of her night but in the end they let her go. It was an entertaining cap to our evening.

Saturday

Saturday we had tickets to go to the Morning Glory Drag Brunch in West Seattle. I was excited because, like I said I feel I haven’t seen a lot of people since the no-pants light rail ride, or in some cases December at the triple birthday party, and a bunch of people were going to this. Sarah, Anna, Dorothy, Astro, Aaron, all came with Christine & Cory and Raye came with a bunch of the Melrose crew, Arik, Jeff & Lisa, Lindsay and me Dani and Andy came. It’s also been a really long time since I’d seen a drag show. I want to say either Portland or that one at Cathy’s birthday that wasn’t good. I can’t remember but years anyway, which is pretty unacceptable. I felt bad I didn’t have more cash to offer up, I had spent all mine at the theatre the night before, and what Andy had went pretty quick between the both of us. Andy got some love from a couple of drag queens, calling him handsome and sitting on his lap. Arik, Dorthy and Aaron got some attention too. It was a great time. I had a blast.

My Camera was kind of rubbish for this kinf of event. The flas takes ages to charge and so movement indoors don't work too well. I got some shots though.

After  a couple hours of down time at home with a book beside the window, I had a bartending shift for closing night at the schmee. This play, Lark Eden, was really good. It’s a pity that more people didn’t show early on in the run but it got better. It’s a beautiful play and good cast it is sad to see this one go, however, I’m glad I don’t have to put myself through crying every night I have to bartend. The whole last ten minutes or so just emotionally put me through the wringers. I have to thank patrons on the way out with mascara all over my cheeks but to be fair, the audience is coming out wiping their eyes as well. After all the mimosas at brunch I wasn’t feeling having drinks after the show. I was pretty exhausted but stuck around for little while with everyone backstage for the after party.

Sunday

Sunday morning I checked my e-mail and Charlotte, my best friend from London, had returned the e-mail that I had sent her the day before. I had told her about how the job hunt was going, how the play reminded me of her because it’s about friends writing letters to each other over their life time and how Andy and I are going on holiday in LA/San Diago in May. After I read her letter I moved on and was checking Facebook when Andy woke up. As I was sitting there I logged out as me and logged in as him to “check his  hit” and saw he had a message and he asked me to click on it. It was Charlotte messaging him about coming to LA and surprising me. D’oah! I saw it. Surprise fail. Andy replied, letting her know that I saw the message right off the bat but they coordinated and in a couple of hours BOOM Charlotte had a ticket booked to land in LA the day before us and we’re going to hang out. I get to see lovely little Charlotte in LA! There’s a few things that we had planned like the road trip to San Diago and go to SeaWorld and see a Dodgers game that will just be couple time and she probably won’t be interested in Alpine Village but the first few days Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday we can all run around LA together. I’m kinda bummed that she can’t come to Seattle (until the wedding, of course, she’s one of my bridesmaids…whenever the hell that ends up happening) because I would love to show her my beautiful city. However she’s been to LA before and she knows she likes it, so if she came into some money for a holiday she should go where she likes. (The Brits I’ve noticed really like places like California and Florida, it’s the sun I think.) I’m just glad I’ll get to see her.

After all that quickly arranged itself we went out to pick up my rents and go to Safeco for the Mariners game.  Andy bought tickets for us all a while ago, it was the first day game of the season and it was a beautiful day for it. We were in section 151 in the outfield right by the third base foul line. They were playing the A’s so I had already checked with Jaden to see if he was going. Turned out he was in section 152 in the same damn row as us! So we saw him before the game and shot the shit for a little bit then watched the game. In the bottom of the 2^nd inning Brendan Ryan hit the first homerun of the game for the M’s and it went straight to Jaden who caught it in his A’s hat. People sitting around us were all huffy puffy “wasn’t that that A’s fan guy? He should give to a Mariners fan.” Jaden said he thought about throwing it back, as is done in other cities when the opposing team hits a home run and a fan catches it, but it’s a good thing he didn’t because apparently in up-tight Seattle you get thrown out of the stadium for that. Also, it was Jackie Robinson day so all the players commemorated him by wearing jerseys with his number, which by coincidence was 42! I was greatly amused by this and even kinda saw it as a sign for good luck. I got my shishkaberries in the inning, the sun was shining but my beers were staying surprisingly cold, I was quite happy. In the end the Mariners won 5 to 3 and we met up with Jaden and Arch after the game and had a few beers over at Pyrimd Ale. Jaden’s caught baseball got passed around and catching up and stories were had. It was great to see him. The only bad part of the day was that I didn’t think to put sunscreen on before leaving the house (I’m obviously not in nice weather mode) so after three hours in the direct sun my arms are like lobsters right now and were burning all night long.

Though I took a pic of Jaden and the ball he caught I’ll refrain from posting it as I didn't ask for permission first.

So yeah, what a fantastic weekend. I saw loads and loads of friends I hadn’t seen in a while. I even found I’ll see my good friend from London Town in just a few short weeks. Plus I go to do fun stuff. What more could a girl ask for?

 I’ve always felt like much more of a Staley, while I felt like more of a black sheep on my mum’s side of the family. Though I have bits of me that are very much my mother (like my fear of authority and my pension for fuzzy socks) I know my sense of humor and my artistic and existential sense comes from my dad. So this, to lose the last Staley of a generation, is significant.

I long wanted to sit down with a recorder and have grandma tell me stories, as did my dad and his brother, but she always refused. I don’t know why. I assumed it was because the telling of her stories would be a validation of her near death and she didn’t want it. Maybe that wasn’t it, maybe she wanted to dole the stores out in some kind of mystic. I don’t know. What I do know is that she’s been a fascinating woman to me, one I’ve been very proud to be in my family and one who, even in old age, had maintained her sass and her sense of humor through and through.

My dad had a tough weekend. He had to go rescue Regan in Oregon much to the dismay of his wife (whose side I was kida on with this one) and they had a fight about it, obviously. He drove Andy to SeaTac Suday morning, then just continued on down to Oregon and then back only to get home and after a short bit of time to relax and start to watch Portlandia, get a call from his brother to hear him mum was dead. My poor dad.

He called me that night to let me know. And I was pretty sad and upset and yet alone (because Andy was in Chicago for work) but I called Andy and got to sleep okay. I made plans to have coffee with my dad today to talk.

My dad’s doing okay. He said he can hear the words of my grandma saying “Oh, don’t cry for me honey.”  And that helps him. And by the way I don’t mean that in any spiritual or ghost or any mumbo jumbo. He’s just talking about the sprit that she had when she was alive.

My grandma was a very spirited woman. When I think of the qualities I get “from my dad” that are a (a sense of humor b) a sense of irony c) a sense of “take life by the ears and fucking grab it” they are all virtues that have come from her.

And yet at the same time she was a woman of her time who made huge sacrifices. I found out that, when she was a sales-woman for the biggest department store in Denver, selling undergarments to the most famous people when they happened to go through town at the time, she was offered the job of being a fashion editor to 17 Magazine. (A story a fictionalized for my MA). She sacrificed for her husband and decided to stay back in Colorado—rather than take the job in Manhattan for what would have been a more lucrative life, but my grandpa couldn’t handle his wife making more money than he did.

Whenever I think of that story I get mad at the concession she made. However, if she hadn’t done that my dad never would have been born and I would never be here. So, I don’t know. I wrote the story thinking, yeah this is how it happens, it might not be the typical “feminist thing” but isn’t that a sacrifice that happened sad but beautiful in its own way. 

I don’t think my grandma would want to be pitied though. And for that I have to apologize for the story I wrote. I think there’s room to say that she’s kind of a hero for the sacrifices she’s endured for the years.

That was a story I got from my dad. I wish I had more stories from her verbatim. The one story I did get in 2004 was good. I was there after my grandpa passed, so she had a new sense of freedom speaking in her own house. We were listening to a CD my dad had got for her of Cab Calloway. My dad was gone and it was just me and her playing gin rummy at the dinner table in the mid afternoon.

I remember Cab Calloway from both his cameo in the Blues Brothers to when he was on Sesame Street when I was a toddler, he was always a household name in my family since I was a young child. It almost faded into obscurity when I discovered rock’n’roll and turned into a teenage. But by that time when I was playing cards with Kate as a college student, I had gotten back into jazz and not being afraid to appreciate it.

It was then I heard the coolest thing.

Kate told me about when she was 19 and living in some godawlful part of the states I’m ashamed I can’t name because it’s really all the same to me, Nebraska, Arkansas, I don’t know. But the point was that she was a 19 year old hottie (yeah she was a hottie I saw the pictures) out against her parents will at a Cab Calloway show. She talked about how charming and charismatic he was on stage and how sexual it was. She said how they made eye contact on stage and it was the most sexual experice she had ever known. Now she kept it to that but I think, based on some of the background I’ve heard frm my dad and uncle, she was a sousy little minx. I think that naughty little minx was a one night groupy for Cab Calloway. Which, If I were her, I would say loud and proudly on my death bed. So Go Grandma!

I know that a woman with stories like this must have had other amazing stores. She was just weird about reveling them. I really wanted to go back there with a tape recorder and just have her talk, but my dad said he tried that and she was having none of it.  If the nature of the relation was what was holding her back I regret never going through with it.

My dad though, is dealing with the loss of his mother, thus far, by writing down memories. And I think that’s good. I know he’s going to share those memories with me and I know I will get a lot from them. Like I said she is the line where all the great from my patrological attributes come from.

I think too that my grandma was very proud of her grandchildren. I think she was proud of me for getting my masters in London and I know she was proud of Kent for seeing the world. I feel bad for Kent for having to be the grownup at 26 and deal with all this death business. (But his father and mother are both too old/out of it to deal with reality when it calls). I sent him a FB message to tell him how great a grandson he has always been to her, but, although he posted on his wall about her death, I haven’t heard back. My part of the family’s geographical disconnection from the family has long been an un-talked of subject of contention. And when these things come up, the years of being far away add up in everyone’s mind. My dad hopes, however, to go back in early March, when he birthday would have been, to do something in Colorado, to celebrate her life. But, if he needs to go back sooner, he will try to do so. Everything’s, just kind of up in the air right now. And we, feeling terrible for being far away but still not regretting it for a second, are trying to catch up.

Anyway for last words my grandma was a sweet, smart, funny, sassy woman who sacrificed so much for her family but confessed she had very few regrets and was content with her lot in live.

Rest in Peace Grandma Kate: You’ve been a beautiful person, a great inspiration to me and always had your perspective aimed at the positive no matter what. The world is slightly less without people like you but I plan to carry the torch in my own way. Love you.