vel's journaly thing

Oma's funeral/memorial? was on Saturday, December 4th. I guess you can't really call it a funeral since she wasn't buried anywhere. But it was a really nice service and the church was completely packed with all her friends and family and students and colleagues and so on; seriously, standing room only...she knew people from everywhere. Her best friend Maxine, who's known her since 1935, told her biography and lots of funny anecdotes. Oma had written that we shouldn't be sad, and to play a good polka or waltz for her.

After the memorial everyone went down the street to a school she used to teach at, and where my aunt works part time now and both my cousins went to for elementary school, because the reception was held in the cafeteria there. Pretty appropriate for a school teacher I think. The night before we had set up tables and chairs and decorations and stuff, but waaaay more people came than expected, so there weren't enough seats and we ran out of food and had to go buy more. It was good, though. My uncle had made a powerpoint slideshow with over 100 pictures of Oma from throughout her life taken from her photo albums, and that was shown on the screen on the stage. Also the cafeteria had a TV and VCR on the wall, and a news tape was played of Oma being interviewed and dancing in her folk dance group from October. My mom and aunt spent the entire time talking to Oma's friends; I don't think either of them ever got the chance to even sit down. Now they can finally rest for a while.

My parents are on a cruise in the Caribbean. They were originally supposed to leave on Friday, but then all this happened and the funeral was planned for Saturday. They debated cancelling the trip altogether, but that's definitely not what Oma the world-traveler would have wanted. So instead they changed their flights and left late Saturday night and will be gone for the rest of the week. I hope they have some fun because they need it.

I guess it's about time to go back to mundane crap. I'm waaaaaay behind on my schoolwork in every class. I'm going to fail my anime class since I haven't been to it in about four weeks and I didn't write the paper, but that doesn't matter since it's a completely meaningless community college class and no one will ever see the transcript from that school. I haven't even *started* the final project for my intercultural communication class, but I talked to the teacher and he says I can get an incomplete and turn it in next semester due to the circumstances. My English structures class is really the one I have to get working on because I'm doing it with a partner. These past few weeks she's been working on the assignments alone, and they're due today. Then the final project where they're all combined is due next Monday. She and the teacher have both been very understanding, but I feel bad about her having to do all that work herself because I haven't been able to help.

I've added to my profile to reflect this uber-sucky year. Rest in peace Oma and Sierra.

Oma passed away earlier today. She was 83 and I know she led a long, happy, healthy, active life, and that I should be thankful for that, but it was still cut short unnaturally early. She was a wonderful woman and didn't deserve to end her days the way she did. She was a schoolteacher for 30 years, and continued to tutor children even after she retired, right up until the present in fact. She loved to travel and visited many countries all over the world from South America to Europe to Australia. Every time we went to visit she had just come back from another trip and had lots of pictures and stories and souvenirs to share. Her parents came to America from Germany, and she spoke German and had a lot of German friends, as well as many, many friends and colleagues and students of all ages. She was an active folk dancer and bowler and hiker, as well as the world's best cook (I'm not kidding, she's won lots of awards for her desserts). She was well loved and will be dearly missed by everyone who ever knew her. Her final wish is for her ashes to be spread over a local rose garden.




Thank you to everyone for your kind support; this has been a really rough time for me and my family, especially my mother and aunt.

...and my nose is stuffed and my chest hurts because I've just been lying in bed crying instead of sleeping. In the morning we're going to pick up our new puppy, and I think it's just now hit me how much I truly miss Sierra. I never knew how attached I was to her. It explains a lot about how I've been acting lately...I don't have much interest in the puppies when we go to see them, I don't really care which one we choose, and I don't like any of the names we've been coming up with. I really don't want a new dog, I'm just not ready for that. No dog could ever in a million years come close to being as great as Sierra was. But my dad wants another dog and I guess Yukon needs a friend. I don't want a new dog. I just want Sierra back. And since that can't be, I simply don't want another dog at all. Yet I'm going to be the one stuck with the new puppy most of the time. I don't want that responsibility, but I don't have much of a choice; everyone else is gone all day while I sit here at home thanks to my excessive amount of night classes. Sigh...I want my dog back.

So tonight we went to look at some labrador puppies, and it looks like we'll be getting one of the females. There are nine puppies total, 6 females and 3 males, all of them light yellow (my dad's favorite lab color). They're all very good looking and friendly with very nice parents, so I think any of them will make a good pet. Right now they're four weeks old, so we'll go get one at about 8 weeks. We're third on the list for females, so we'll choose one of them from the four females left after the first two people pick theirs.

I kind of have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I still miss Sierra terribly, and I don't know how ready I am for a new dog. Puppies are certainly cute and sweet and fun, but they also require an enormous amount of work and attention and training. Most of that will be left up to me since I'll be at home a lot due to my night classes, plus I'm the resident "animal expert" and trainer.

Anyway...we're trying to come up with appropriate names for a yellow female lab. Two that I like a lot so far are Willow and Summer. Feel free to leave suggestions :)