thought of the day

My thought of the day was that the roman numeral for 40 is XL and since that was my size at 40, that seems to be a strange concidence. Hopefully by 50, I will just have L.

Tomorrow is the anniversay of my Aunt Carole dying, which brings up some tough emotions about family. Her son, Greg, reacted poorly to my comments and decided to not have contact with me anymore. Any of you who have read the blog knew this, so sorry for the repeat. I spent some time with one of my uncles on Thanksgiving who I didn't really know. He cut contact with the family mostly in 1959 when he joined the Army and completely in 1969. So, I really didn't know him. He seems to be a pretty neat guy. It was a joy having he and his wife over for Thanksgiving and I am sincerely hopeful that we can build a relationship that lasts. He does not seem to have the family's penchant for illogical behavior and criminal or deceptive actions. We had a little discussion about the family's M.O. in dealing with any perceived slight. The generally performed action is to take a half-truth which is only assumption anyway, build it up through a series of nastier assumptions about someone else's motives and then demonize them for the 'obvious truth' of your conclusion. It seems almost comical, and at the very least fictional, but it is the way they operate. There aren't many left in the family I grew up with. While there are many cousins, I had little dealings with most of them except for Greg. With my Aunt Carole and Uncle Raymie both dying in 2007, and my Grandmother slipping away in her mind, there are really only my Mom, my brother, Greg and my Uncle Chuck (who now goes by Dallas). I would like to say I have grace and room in my heart for Greg and Chuck. But, the truth is that I don't know. Greg is showing himself to be either like Chuck or wanting to be like Chuck, and that is not something I am interested in having around. Not that it is up to me, he has told me that I am dead to him due to what I wrote. I still don't know what he found so objectionable.

Wow, that was more than I intended to write about that.