Day Six-Eighteen - Cousins

Yesterday was my Uncle Gene's funeral.  He had a long life full of changes.  He spent time in the army before marrying my Aunt Miggie then held various jobs. Most of my memories are during the years he was a dairy farmer. They lived those years in East Texas.  Since we also lived in East Texas, our family visited Aunt Miggie, Uncle Gene and my cousin Duane a little more often than some of our other family who lived further away.  Uncle Gene was a soft spoken man.  I don't know if that came from working with cows who he didn't want to spook or if he was just born that way.  But I can only remember seeing him angry once or twice and even then, he still seemed very quiet.  Later in life, he got out of the dairy business and opened a convenience store which he ran until a few years ago.

His funeral, yesterday, was nice and attended by several family members, some of whom I had not seen in several years.  I drove to Jacksonville for the funeral yesterday with two cousins.  Cindy who flew in from Oregon and Terry who lives in McKinney drove down with me. We chatted all the way to Jacksonville. Once there, we went to the family room at the funeral home where my parents, one brother and a number of other cousins and aunts were waiting for the service to begin along with Duane and Aunt Miggie.

We had about 20 minutes to greet everyone and chat before the service.  Some of the cousins present yesterday I have caught up with recently on Facebook.  Others I had not communicated with in more than 20 years and it was good to see them all.  I think that you have a different sort of relationship with your cousins than anyone else.  You all share family and I like that relationship.  There aren't many people in the world who I can talk about my grandmother with who really understand what she was like other than those 16 cousins.  Sure, I can talk to my parents about my grandparents.  But that is a different relationship than grandchildren have with their grandparents.

When you're a kid, if you are lucky, you start life out with cousins who are like ready made friends. Sometimes, they don't like you or you don't like them.  But most of the time you get over your differences and you can get along just fine.  After all, you see each other at every family function.  It ensures that you always have someone to play with at all the holidays, barbecues, fish fries and get togethers.  As time goes by and you grow up you begin to go to fewer and fewer of those get togethers.  In high school, you might chose to stay home and go out with friends instead.  Then you go off to college and can't come home for all of those events.  Eventually, most of us start families of our own and have other commitments that begin to take precedent.

I must say that my Mom has always been pretty good at trying to get me and my brothers to attend some of those events even into adulthood.  They would be having a crawfish boil or Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Johnny were having a fish fry and Mom would practically demand that we drop everything and commit to being there.  At the time, I must admit, I didn't understand what the big deal was and why I needed to attend a random family get together.  Over the years, those occasions have become more few and far between.  But after this weekend, I'm starting to get it why Mom thought it was so important for us to attend back in the day.

Cindy stayed at Aunt Miggie's house yesterday.  She'll stay there a few days and then I'll go down and pick her up to bring her back to Dallas and she'll fly back home the middle of the week. So Terry and I drove back here yesterday afternoon together and had another few hours to chat during the drive home.  It was so nice.  Either Terry or Cindy suggested sometime yesterday that we need a family reunion and I couldn't agree more.  The other side of my family has family reunions periodically.  But I have to say that the Meyers side of my family has only had a few and I don't think it has ever happened since my grandmothers death when I was in middle school.  I have 16 cousins on the Meyers side of my family and I think it's time we all get together again.  None of us are getting any younger!

So I think that I am going to begin plotting and planning very soon.  If you have any relationship to Eddie and Elizabeth Meyers, prepare yourselves, because this thing is going to happen.  If I can force a family photo of my family on the day after Christmas this year, I can make this happen too.  None of you may like me when this is over.  But you'll all be happy we did it.

Happy Sunday!

Day Six-Oh-Four - A Thanksgiving Recap

Hi Friends!
Long time, no hear, right?

I just got back from a long Thanksgiving weekend in Nacogdoches a few hours ago.  It didn't feel particularly long.  By that I mean that I wasn't sitting at Mom and Dad's house wishing I could leave.  I always have a great time at my parents house.  I think I must have a lot in common with them.  For Thanksgiving itself, the entire family was there except for Matt, Melissa and Oliver.  Oliver is only a few weeks old, so he is just too young to do a lot of traveling yet.  I haven't been able to see him in person yet. But the pictures are adorable.

Jacob and Jeni were there with little Joseph Tex Meyers their newest addition.  He is adorable and probably still seeing blue spots from all the flashes that were going off in his proximity.  He is just a little over 2 months old and the "new" hasn't wore off of him yet.  He's still of an age where you just want to smell his head and squeeze him when you hold him. Although his Mom and Dad would probably not approve of the squeezing part.

After Thanksgiving, Mom and I put their Christmas tree up on Friday.  Then Saturday we did a little shopping followed by a rousing game of Moon at the kitchen table for me, Mom and Dad.  Then I came on back home Sunday.  Before I even came back to my house Sunday I went to Lowe's to purchase a new refrigerator.  I have been pricing them and reading reviews for weeks.  I got what I think was a good deal on one from Lowe's.  It won't be delivered for a few weeks.  But I'm in no hurry.  I need to find a new home for my current refrigerator in the meantime.  I'm hoping that a nephew will take it.  But if that doesn't happen, perhaps one of my faithful readers is in need of a beer fridge.  It's a good one!  It has never given me any trouble in 17 years!  It's nothing fancy.  Just a bottom fridge with a top freezer and an icemaker in the freezer if you have a hook up.  It's a Magic Chef.  Back when I bought it in 1996 it was the cheapest one they had with an icemaker at Circuit City in Tyler.

The cats are happy to see me home.  Although, I don't know if they missed me too much while I was gone. Their catsitter plays all kinds of game with them.  Then just to keep me buttered up so that I wouldn't be too upset about not being missed, she got me a plant and planted it in an empty flower pot on my front porch! I spent half an hour looking for something that had been broken. But no breakage, just a really nice petsitter. Maybe I've been tipping her too much....

My new project is going to be scheduling a family photographer for the day after Christmas.  We are going to have the entire Meyers clan here in Dallas on the day after Christmas for a big family photo and it would seem that I am in charge of the picture.  I will tell you that this has not been easy for anyone.  My sister-in-law, Eileen and I have been trying to arrange this for a while.  We have differing opinions on what makes a good family photo. She seems to feel that everyone should be dressed similarly.  I think that if we do that, in 10 years strangers will be passing our photo around on the internet laughing their butts off at us.  (When the people being photographed range in weight from 10 lbs to 300 lbs, the attire that makes them look good, or even presentable, can be quite different.) Otherwise, we agree on most aspects of this.

Going forward, I have Donny and Marie tickets for this Wednesday night and my friend who was supposed to go had to cancel on me.  So, we'll see if I end up at a Donny and Marie concert alone on Wednesday. I'm thinking the kind of single man I meet at this concert won't be one that I am interested in a long term relationship with. (Don't start with me, Katherine!)  Well you guys have a great week and I'll try to be in touch a little more often in the next few weeks.