The short CD of music at mom's memorial service

I was disappointed in that none of the aides from Caring Hands made it
to the little meeting, as it wasn't much of a memorial service as it was
just friends and family gathering to talk. I was kinda disappointed it
wasn't something more formal and organized where people got up to speak
about my mom, hopefully to recall important moments and such.

I put together a short CD of music and for those who are curious as to
what was on it, and for those who missed it, consisted of:

Track 2 "Dea Cantat The Goddess Sings" and Track 24 "Coro Di Dea The
Goddesses Singing Voices" from the Oh My Goddess Movie soundtrack CD. I
considered addding Track 27 "The song of an angel", but the 3rd track
was "Will you be there" by Michael Jackson.

This is too much grief for me to handle. I miss my mom, and I still find
myself sobbing. My mom deserved a better memorial service, but before
that she should not have had to die. It's probably the guilt of this
whole thing that I will have with me for some time. If I knew what my
future would have for me, I could move on easily. I don't know so I'm
having a very hard time dealing with this. I'm scared.

I noticed very few (read: none) of the sympathy cards were addressed to
me. I'm thankful that Sandy, one of mom's aides on alternate Saturdays,
did send one directly to the house addressed to me when I told her in
email.

I partly expected (for some reason known only to me) some show of
support and maybe money. Don't ask me why, I really shouldn't expect
that. I just hope I can get that kind of help pretty soon.

I'm still in the mindset and mode that mom's just in the hospital for a
while and should be coming home soon. But I also know she's not coming
home. I want her to come home.

I need to get married. I need someone else out here, someone to take
care of. I don't want to be alone.

I must stop typing here otherwise I'll not get it sent.

Didn't I tell people? The Screwing has begun

So now I'm being hounded for keys that people don't need for this
apartment. I prefer to have security and privacy, but my older sister
feels she needs keys for each lock. She doesn't need those keys. She has
1 for the back door. That's enough.

Oh so she's threatening to change the locks if she doesn't get keys she
feels she's supposed to have. That REALLY helps her position (sarcastic)
Then tries to cite some safety concern should someone need to get in
here if something happened to me. I already have a problem with her
walking in without knocking or ringing a bell. I fear for the safety of
mom's stuff. She'll just come in here and start gutting the place.
There's been talk of throwing out my mom's bed. WHY?

Then there was the promise of my older sister to help out with property
taxes and the electric until I got working again and had some money to
be able to pay that. But now she's talking about Oh I have to go online
to fill out Move In info because otherwise they'll shut the electric off
next week.

WHAT THE FU?

We can't change the name on the account yet, I thought. And I distinctly
remember her saying she'd help on the electric. Now she's lying to me!

I saw the bill mom had for this coming due date. It was $174. I don't
have the money to cover that, the phone, and Road Runner. I just don't
have it!!!

SHE PROMISED.

I threw a fit and then she threatened to call the police. RIGHT. That
REALLY HELPS your position.

I'm getting screwed so soon after my mom's death. I wish she had just
stayed where she was.

1 Gig of RAM

The package arrived just moments ago.

I took Mom's Dell upstairs. It's the first time since we got the system that I've had to open the case. Up to now, I didn't even know how to open it.

It's got a Pentium 4 with the processor fan setup like the rescued P4 tower upstairs.

It's got PATA aka IDE drive interfaces. I don't know what's causing the CDrom to act wonky at times, so perhaps that will have to be just outright replaced. I checked all the cables.

Carefully vacuumed out dust on the processor heat sink. Then removed the Samsung 256MB stick and gingerly installed the Kingston set. I bought a PC2700 DDR 333 pair meant for dual channel use, but it'll work as a single channel 1 Gig set up as well.

Got it downstairs and hooked it up carefully. Turned it on, thing beeped at me saying the amount of system RAM has changed. Damn straight. F1 to continue.

Oh my god. I wish mom could have seen this. The Dell booted up in around 1 minute. It was so sweet to see it do that. Imagine the amount of time we could have saved if this had been bought sooner.

1 minute. All icons except for the printer showed up. I mean it just leaped to life.

Right now will be a "burn in" test. It may be on for a few hours to make sure it's going to work out, but this is a Kingston product. Same brand as the dual channel set I put in that one lady's system.

It was so sweet. 1 minute boot up time. XP sees 1 Gig in there.

EDIT: Actually, the boot up time is about 2min 39sec. Much faster than the 4 minutes that became the norm after AVG Free became bloatware.

Video found on the computer

Christmas 2008 with Grandma Carol

Taking it day by day

So anywho, I was out and about yesterday. One bit of good fortune is
checking out the Alliance Big Lots and stumbled upon Shuffle disk 3.
There were 3 DVDs in the set I needed, but wasn't sure if it was 3 or 4.
I get home and check one blog posting. I needed 3 and 4, with Shuffle #2
being the one I bought at another Big Lots a couple weeks ago. But
nothing else jumped out at me as needing bought. I hope Myers and Myers
got their xxxHolic DVDs they might have wanted. But at least I have only
1 more Shuffle DVD to find.

I had tried to put an automatic timer on mom's bedside reading light,
but the mechanism inside stopped working right. I was trying to set up a
bit of normalcy with the timer. I can't find the other one I got when we
moved out of my grandparents' house. They used a few on lamps when they
went away on vacations. I'd like to get another timer and pay less than
$7 for it.

I also began using the TV's sleep timer and automatic On timer. The
sleep timer at least gives me some noise in the evening as I go
upstairs, and it shuts off like mom would do when I went to bed. She'd
watch CNN for a while, then go to reading her books. I have the Auto On
timer set at 8:30 in the morning and it worked fine yesterday. Only
today it came on at 8:30 am alright, but when I got down there a bit
later (9 am) the TV was off!

I hadn't noticed it had switched back off before I got there. I didn't
turn it off. I'm not sure what would cause that. It would be neat if it
happened again.

Today I conducted some of my business that I needed to do. I got the
statement from the credit union that I'll need to take to a Time Warner
office to get them to haul out the required forms so they can refund the
2nd $71.85 that came through when I hadn't realized mom had paid the
bill already. Both that and the phone bill payment that cleared after
she died. Time Warner sure is happy to take your money, but getting it
back they're assholes about it and make it difficult. They can't just
push one button and it's done.

Geez, these places sure jump on you when they want their stuff back. The
people with Lifeline called yesterday to get their phone back on
Thursday. Give me some time to grieve already.

Ponyo is scheduled to come out on DVD in March 2010. Why Dizzney is
missing the holiday season with it is beyond me.

Out

Tried to do some shopping but just ended feeling horrible about the whole thing. Maybe I should've stayed home.

Memorial Services planned

re: a memorial service for friends and concerned people, my sister says
Grace Chapel is having one October 24, 2009 from 3 to 5 pm.

Notices will be going out to the newspapers ASAP.

Maybe I know one thing I could use

I think I know what people can do for me: Just come by and visit. I'm
used to cooking for at least 2 people, so maybe the occasional weeknight
Let Me Cook a Recipe You Pick type of thing. They pick the recipe and
bring the ingredients. That would give me some of what I'm missing. Just
show up around 5 pm and keep it simple, expect to stay until 7 or 8 pm.

My mother

I found some images on the computer of my mom. I'm going to put the earliest of the 3 that I took in town today and got put on photographic paper.

In 2004, just after she got her Dell.

Mom's savings bond / expenses paid?!

I just now dug out Mom's savings bond that she got when working for the
plastics company back in 1995 for perfect attendance. The last time I
had checked its value was December 2007 which was $40.90.

According to the info, it takes 30 years for EE U.S. Savings Bonds to
mature. Mom would have to have lived until she was 81 to collect the
full face value of this bond.

Sadly, she fell short by 16 years.

I'm still in shock. I want her to be coming back through the door at any
moment, her daily aides coming in to help her with stuff. I find myself
thinking about something, wanting my mom to be there and I'm just
blubbering. I can't help it.

My Mom isn't supposed to die. It's supposed to be someone else's. Oh
wait, someone else's mom had already died. It was our turn this time.

It doesn't seem fair. I wish she had asked me to take her to the ER
somewhere. There was a time window if she had gotten the right help,
where maybe she'd still be alive, or she could have still died at a
hospital.

...

My younger sister just now called while I was typing this - someone from
her church found out what had happened, called the funeral home - and
will be coming down with a check to cover my mom's funeral expenses.

That made my cry even harder.

I have GOT to get some rest.