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Oct. 12th, 2002 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
willowispIt was a long and draining day. I've summarized, but it is long and deadly boring.
I ended up staying up until Aunt Eileen's crew got here last night. I think I finally got to bed around 3am, and allegedly Aunt Eileen, Mom, and Uncle Rich stayed up even later and just talked. Gerry found this reason for much taunting tonight, and threatened not to leave until 4am so they could tie, if not break, their record from yesterday.
The dinner was a bit odd. Grandpa looks so much more frail even than last month. Pamela says that when Uncle Rich saw him (he last saw Grandpa in August, just before the second chemo session) he just started crying. Grandpa actually looked fairly well, considering the shape he was in last week -- the two newest medications seem to be helping. One is for nausea, the other is an appetite stimulant, since Grandpa's lost 14 lbs. Anyway, near the end he was getting worse, and he had to be helped to the car.
Meanwhile, back to the dinner: the oplotke was done differently this year. Rather than each person taking a turn and going to each family member in order of age, everyone got up when the person who had been seated to their right passed them. This insured that every family member got to break the wafer of everyone else, but was quicker and less draining for Grandpa. Plus, with so many in-laws and such it would have been a major event figuring out the age progression.
The tradition is that you have to eat at least a little bit of everything. The meal is meatless (fish don't count as meat), with kvoshnitze (translation: sour soup. It's made from saur kraut, butter, and flour. This year it was wheatless flour) and pea soups, pierogies, and fish. I mostly filled up on the cabbage soup, since the fish was breaded and the pierogies had wheat and quite possibly eggs. The pea soup, which was instant, had noodles and added wheat gluten, so I really skimped on that. Pamela's SO had said he wasn't going to follow the tradition of eating a bit of everything, but fortunately he changed his mind.
After eating we cleaned up while the children played around a bit, then we began passing around gifts. Most were little things, but there were some nice suprises. A few people who didn't bring gifts felt bad, though we told them not to worry about it. The little jewelry sets for the three older children went well, and the moose and bunny suits went over well. Gerry loves mooses (meeces? Mice?), and he and Julie said they'd been looking for something nice and warm which would fit him this winter. They think he'll need to grow into it a little bit but that'll happen right about when winter gets nasty around here. The bunny outfit also appears to be the correct size or perhaps slightly large. Pamela got the babies the cutest little shoes, too.
Aunt Eileen had one of the pictures from Grandpa's album, the one in whose caption I say Mom looks like Pamela, enlarged and gave out framed copies to everyone. I also got a gorgeous picture of Pamela and Dave and a beautiful little teddy bear-resin statue thingy. Mom gave us an ornament (Andy had inscribed all of them for her) and a Pinky and the Brain popup book. The cocoa I made seems to have gone over well, and Aunt Eileen took one look at the C&H book and said "You're right; I'd never heard of them."
Grandpa loves the photo album. He choked up a few times telling Mary who some of the people in the older pictures were; siblings and friends he'd outlived. The album itself went over well; there were a lot of compliments on the front cover design and how the pages resembled parchment and the whole thing had an antique look (right down to the pages being sewn, not glued or stapled). I'll have to take the album back for a bit so I can let some people scan last-minute additions and so I can add pictures from today. The one thing I regret is that Grandpa began deteriorating rapidly near the end, and after he left we just never got around to doing a full-family photo.
Afterward we cleaned up, returned the tables to their original places, and then went back to Mom's house. She began cooking the ham, and I began working on the last two kolotz. I think a crust-and-a-half recipe works the best of any way I've tried for my version. Real pizza dough is so much easier to shape properly, though. The fact that I only needed to do the last two steps in making the potato and cheese mixture was a boon, and the second batch of kolotz came out just after the ham did. Very surprisingly for a Pilny gathering there was no candy out (usually there are zillions of types of candy and sweets), but kolotz and ham was just the correct speed to follow up our huge late lunch. Perhaps the largest mishap was that I didn't read labels closely enough and opened a bottle of wine instead of Martinelli's. The wine was fairly sour, which just added insult to injury.
Some of the evening's highlights include a contest between Gerry and Uncle Rich as to who could maintain a paddleball for the longest run. Gerry first got into the low hundreds, which Uncle Rich managed to beat some time later. Then Gerry got up to 501 and stopped, and Uncle Rich didn't even try to break that streak. They did end up breaking both paddleballs which had been given to the seven year-olds earlier today. The other also occurred when Gerry and Uncle Rich decided to redecorate Mom's kitchen.
The redecoration took the form of turning all stuffed animals and even a knick knack upside-down, switching pictures with clocks, and turning every magnet (and some of the things held therewith, including a calendar), upside-down or sideways. They did it in front of a witness, so neither one got into undue trouble.
Things wound down at 22:30 or so. Meredith, Sandy, their assorted spouses and children had headed out around 15:00. Gerry, Julie, and CJ left around 22:00 and Kim and Justin followed them a few minutes later. Oh, and she liked the opals I set for her birthday. I'm glad she mentioned last time that she loved opals. They may come back (or we may go there) tomorrow for ham and kolotz and (for them) eggs cooked in various manners.
Tomorrow the plan is to see Aunt Eileen, Chuck, Kim and Justin off at 11-ish, Uncle Rich and Susanna off around noon, and then head to Old Forge which is currently in peak season, leaf-wise. We'll take the ski lift up Mount McCauley, take pictures, and then visit Grandpa and Mary. If possible I may try to talk people into going to the Buffalo Head restaurant so Andy can try the real version of Dutch apple pork chops. It won't break my heart if that doesn't work out, though.
On Monday we may go to Oswego, where I attended college. I may even go talk to my favorite English professor (who is hopefully still department head) about possibly graduating if all of my credits haven't already expired. I was only a class or two short, so maybe something could be worked out, especially since Oswego has a distance-learning program in place, or at least did two years ago when I checked. If not, at least I'll get to show Andy how gorgeous the place was.
Tuesday we get to do the airline thing again. I'm not sure whether we'll be volunteering or not; I suppose a lot would depend on when an alternate flight could get us home. If things go according to schedule, however, we'll be touching down at RDU at just after 19:00. Andy will have absolutely no time to relax once we're home, and is very worried that his committee will make him postpone his defense, though he's working on a schedule which will see him ready if his committee gives him the go-ahead for October 23rd. His dissertation is at 336 pages/62,000+ words, and he has over 100 slides made. He plans on working in the car to and from Old Forge, and probably while we visit Grandpa and Mary.
I ended up staying up until Aunt Eileen's crew got here last night. I think I finally got to bed around 3am, and allegedly Aunt Eileen, Mom, and Uncle Rich stayed up even later and just talked. Gerry found this reason for much taunting tonight, and threatened not to leave until 4am so they could tie, if not break, their record from yesterday.
The dinner was a bit odd. Grandpa looks so much more frail even than last month. Pamela says that when Uncle Rich saw him (he last saw Grandpa in August, just before the second chemo session) he just started crying. Grandpa actually looked fairly well, considering the shape he was in last week -- the two newest medications seem to be helping. One is for nausea, the other is an appetite stimulant, since Grandpa's lost 14 lbs. Anyway, near the end he was getting worse, and he had to be helped to the car.
Meanwhile, back to the dinner: the oplotke was done differently this year. Rather than each person taking a turn and going to each family member in order of age, everyone got up when the person who had been seated to their right passed them. This insured that every family member got to break the wafer of everyone else, but was quicker and less draining for Grandpa. Plus, with so many in-laws and such it would have been a major event figuring out the age progression.
The tradition is that you have to eat at least a little bit of everything. The meal is meatless (fish don't count as meat), with kvoshnitze (translation: sour soup. It's made from saur kraut, butter, and flour. This year it was wheatless flour) and pea soups, pierogies, and fish. I mostly filled up on the cabbage soup, since the fish was breaded and the pierogies had wheat and quite possibly eggs. The pea soup, which was instant, had noodles and added wheat gluten, so I really skimped on that. Pamela's SO had said he wasn't going to follow the tradition of eating a bit of everything, but fortunately he changed his mind.
After eating we cleaned up while the children played around a bit, then we began passing around gifts. Most were little things, but there were some nice suprises. A few people who didn't bring gifts felt bad, though we told them not to worry about it. The little jewelry sets for the three older children went well, and the moose and bunny suits went over well. Gerry loves mooses (meeces? Mice?), and he and Julie said they'd been looking for something nice and warm which would fit him this winter. They think he'll need to grow into it a little bit but that'll happen right about when winter gets nasty around here. The bunny outfit also appears to be the correct size or perhaps slightly large. Pamela got the babies the cutest little shoes, too.
Aunt Eileen had one of the pictures from Grandpa's album, the one in whose caption I say Mom looks like Pamela, enlarged and gave out framed copies to everyone. I also got a gorgeous picture of Pamela and Dave and a beautiful little teddy bear-resin statue thingy. Mom gave us an ornament (Andy had inscribed all of them for her) and a Pinky and the Brain popup book. The cocoa I made seems to have gone over well, and Aunt Eileen took one look at the C&H book and said "You're right; I'd never heard of them."
Grandpa loves the photo album. He choked up a few times telling Mary who some of the people in the older pictures were; siblings and friends he'd outlived. The album itself went over well; there were a lot of compliments on the front cover design and how the pages resembled parchment and the whole thing had an antique look (right down to the pages being sewn, not glued or stapled). I'll have to take the album back for a bit so I can let some people scan last-minute additions and so I can add pictures from today. The one thing I regret is that Grandpa began deteriorating rapidly near the end, and after he left we just never got around to doing a full-family photo.
Afterward we cleaned up, returned the tables to their original places, and then went back to Mom's house. She began cooking the ham, and I began working on the last two kolotz. I think a crust-and-a-half recipe works the best of any way I've tried for my version. Real pizza dough is so much easier to shape properly, though. The fact that I only needed to do the last two steps in making the potato and cheese mixture was a boon, and the second batch of kolotz came out just after the ham did. Very surprisingly for a Pilny gathering there was no candy out (usually there are zillions of types of candy and sweets), but kolotz and ham was just the correct speed to follow up our huge late lunch. Perhaps the largest mishap was that I didn't read labels closely enough and opened a bottle of wine instead of Martinelli's. The wine was fairly sour, which just added insult to injury.
Some of the evening's highlights include a contest between Gerry and Uncle Rich as to who could maintain a paddleball for the longest run. Gerry first got into the low hundreds, which Uncle Rich managed to beat some time later. Then Gerry got up to 501 and stopped, and Uncle Rich didn't even try to break that streak. They did end up breaking both paddleballs which had been given to the seven year-olds earlier today. The other also occurred when Gerry and Uncle Rich decided to redecorate Mom's kitchen.
The redecoration took the form of turning all stuffed animals and even a knick knack upside-down, switching pictures with clocks, and turning every magnet (and some of the things held therewith, including a calendar), upside-down or sideways. They did it in front of a witness, so neither one got into undue trouble.
Things wound down at 22:30 or so. Meredith, Sandy, their assorted spouses and children had headed out around 15:00. Gerry, Julie, and CJ left around 22:00 and Kim and Justin followed them a few minutes later. Oh, and she liked the opals I set for her birthday. I'm glad she mentioned last time that she loved opals. They may come back (or we may go there) tomorrow for ham and kolotz and (for them) eggs cooked in various manners.
Tomorrow the plan is to see Aunt Eileen, Chuck, Kim and Justin off at 11-ish, Uncle Rich and Susanna off around noon, and then head to Old Forge which is currently in peak season, leaf-wise. We'll take the ski lift up Mount McCauley, take pictures, and then visit Grandpa and Mary. If possible I may try to talk people into going to the Buffalo Head restaurant so Andy can try the real version of Dutch apple pork chops. It won't break my heart if that doesn't work out, though.
On Monday we may go to Oswego, where I attended college. I may even go talk to my favorite English professor (who is hopefully still department head) about possibly graduating if all of my credits haven't already expired. I was only a class or two short, so maybe something could be worked out, especially since Oswego has a distance-learning program in place, or at least did two years ago when I checked. If not, at least I'll get to show Andy how gorgeous the place was.
Tuesday we get to do the airline thing again. I'm not sure whether we'll be volunteering or not; I suppose a lot would depend on when an alternate flight could get us home. If things go according to schedule, however, we'll be touching down at RDU at just after 19:00. Andy will have absolutely no time to relax once we're home, and is very worried that his committee will make him postpone his defense, though he's working on a schedule which will see him ready if his committee gives him the go-ahead for October 23rd. His dissertation is at 336 pages/62,000+ words, and he has over 100 slides made. He plans on working in the car to and from Old Forge, and probably while we visit Grandpa and Mary.
