{"id":469,"date":"2004-06-18T04:48:25","date_gmt":"2004-06-18T09:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/06\/18\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-19T19:54:19","modified_gmt":"2005-10-19T23:54:19","slug":"more-backdating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/06\/18\/more-backdating\/","title":{"rendered":"More Backdating!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More backdating, hurrah.<\/p>\n

On Friday, J and I drove off to upstate NY. The long boring ride down the Mass Pike was broken only by the repetitious playing of the same 5 songs by the various radio stations we had on for the duration. It was dull. But there was no traffic and so it was not as long as it could have been.<\/p>\n

We stopped at my grandmother’s house, where men were doing yardwork, and went inside to surprise her greatly. We sat and chatted with her for a while, and watched bits of TV shows and movies. J discovered that she might want to watch Monk (and I decided it was probably interesting too.)<\/p>\n

She told several stories, a few of which I had heard before, and which I will try to get down here. Unfortunately I already forget the subject of one of them.<\/p>\n

Grandma’s Action Dreams<\/b><\/p>\n

Long ago (I’m guessing in the 40s or 50s) after my grandparents were married, my grandmother, who has always had very vivid dreams, dreamed one night that she was sailing a ship. This was not something she had ever done before in her life, but she was familiar with the motions from movies and books — the image of a man pulling on the ropes to raise the sails is one most people know. She dreamed she was sailing, pulling hard on the ropes, hauling the sail. And she woke up to discover she was standing up on the bed, holding in her hands the curtains she had ripped from the wall.<\/p>\n

Another night she had a nightmare. There was a stone bridge across a creek, the kind with a small arch underneath just large enough for a person to crawl under if they had to. She dreamed she was crawling under, but when she reached the other side, she discovered it had been boarded up. She could not get out, and so she began to shove at he wall, trying to break through. She woke up to find she had pushed her hands right through the closed window at the head of the bed, shattering the glass. (Luckily, she did not sever an artery or a vein; she only had scratches on her palms.)<\/p>\n

A family tradition<\/b><\/p>\n

Our conversation briefly touched on sleepwalking, and grandma related two very similar tales. One was about my grandfather’s brother Hank (I think… maybe it was her brother.). When he was a little boy, he got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But he was not quite awake, and so when he got to the top of the stairs he stopped, pulled it out, and peed right on down the steps.<\/p>\n

This performance was repeated later by another little boy. I want to say it was my Uncle Bill, but I have already forgotten exactly who it was.<\/p>\n

Bonus Tale<\/b><\/p>\n

This is not a story she told me and J, but she told it a while ago and I will include it. My grandparents got an inground pool well before I was born, back while some of their kids were still young and living at home. One night, when my Uncle Bill was in high school, he was out with some friends, and no one else was home either. Grandma decided to take a swim. And, since it was a rare opportunity, she decided she would do it naked.<\/p>\n

So she got in the pool without her suit, and she’s enjoying herself, when into the driveway rolls Uncle Bill with a bunch of his friends. Of course, they must be polite and say hi to his mother, so they come over to do that. Meanwhile she is busily churning the water so they can’t see anything.<\/p>\n

Luckily her suit was nearby, and after they moved out of sight, she snatched it up and escaped.<\/p>\n

On with the Tale<\/b><\/p>\n

Grandma wasn’t feeling hungry yet, so after the extremely cute guy doing yardwork left, we departed as well. (Says Grandma: You should see him! But he’s married, so the girls are out of luck.) We got up to J’s parents’ house in record time — they were surprised to see us; we are never on time to get there, usually rolling in around 9 or 10, even if we had anticipated getting there by 6 or 7. But for once we were early, and so J’s secret plan was put into action — she got her parents to take us to Olive Garden for dinner. It was good, though the waitress was mildly flaky.<\/p>\n

Back at the house, I got online for a bit while J fell asleep on the couch. Got a pile of bbposts written on AF and put them up, then went to sleep. Everyone had left in the morning by the time we got up, but we headed over to Great Escape with our free tickets.<\/p>\n

This day we had returned to our usual late mode; we were supposed to meet her family at 11, but we didn’t get into the park (due to a gigantic bottleneck at the entrance) until 11:15. Then we went off on our own into the park, going on rides and looking at things. I hadn’t ever been to Great Escape before; my family had gone several times during visits to my grandparents, but never on trips that I was able to go on with them — we only ever sat around the house when I went with them :P — so it was all new to me. The park was, like Six Flags New England, a renovation of an older park that had already been there. But this one was done a while ago, and the renovation is starting to become dated.<\/p>\n

However, it was nice, in spite of the utterly confusing parking (the lots are not contiguous, they are poorly marked, and they are free, all of which combined to confuse me greatly), and I had a good time. J proved her 1337 whiffle ball throwing skills, managing to win 3 stuffed animals at that game. I didn’t get any, which is just as well, as I really have no need for them. There were no rides I really wanted to go on which I didn’t get to go on, and I ate rather more than was good for me. (Mmm, funnel cake)<\/p>\n

Since we didn’t go into the water park at all, we’d covered most of the interesting rides by around 4:30. (The lines were not very bad either, which helped.) So rather than hang around, we left. We picked up our stuff at J’s parents’ house and were back on the highway before 6pm. Even with a stop at the rest stop to get gas and some food, we managed to arrive home again before 10.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More backdating, hurrah. On Friday, J and I drove off to upstate NY. The long boring ride down the Mass Pike was broken only by the repetitious playing of the same 5 songs by the various radio stations we had on for the duration. It was dull. But there was no traffic and so it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}