You had me at "coffee".

Things I have accomplished this week

1. Catching up on reruns of “90210” (and remaining puzzled as to what has happened that makes Ian Ziering attractive now).
2. Filling out several applications in a market that has nothing to do with what my resume says.
3. Starting to sleepwalk.
4. Getting new tan-lines.
5. Talking to an old friend from high school who I never thought I would speak to ever again (only because I was sure that she had been swallowed by the abyss that is marriage and family).
6. Singing happy birthday to my 92-year-old grandfather.
7. Leaving my wallet in JM’s car and then spazzing about it for an entire day.
8. Getting a B on my History Midterm!
9. Remembering an anniversary that I will probably never forget no matter how hard I try.
10. And soon…very soon…seeing Pinhead for the first time in over two years.

Today is my grandpa’s 92nd birthday. Since, D had offered to take me to lunch at her favorite Thai restaurant (which was not the one that I have been avoiding since it opened, mind you…), I decided to surprise him with a birthday treat. Being that I have no money (we unemployed folk rarely do), I couldn’t do much, but I bought the tiniest birthday cake, just for one, stuck a candle in it and marched into my grandpa’s apartment and said, “Happy Birthday! Make a wish!” It seems, after he told me the story of how he met my grandmother, that he has pretty much gotten everything he’s ever wished for.

My grandfather is the sweetest, most adorable man alive and he knows that he is one of the lucky ones. He was married to the love of his life for 51 years…even if his first thought of her was “That’s a BIG girl!” (He says that this is because they met on a stairwell and she was standing on the landing and he was several steps below, she was only 5 feet 6 inches.) He told me how she and three other nurses were living in a duplex close to his college campus and that he had gone to a luncheon where the ladies were to bring lunches for the men and then the men were to bid on the lunch they wanted. He said that most of the men were scoping out the women and not the lunches, but my grandfather, the bagged lunch connoisseur, was actually checking out the lunches. He found one that was particularly interesting (it was in a coffee can with a can opener taped to the side) and he bid on it. That lunch belonged to my grandmother’s best friend Ronnie. My grandpa had lunch with Ronnie and then a week later found out that she was in a clinic because, as a nurse, she had been exposed to TB and was receiving treatment. Grandpa called the house where Ronnie lived with my grandmother and asked if anyone would like to go and visit her in the clinic. He was told that someone would come. It was my grandma. And they rode 30 minutes out of town together and it was then that my grandma told him that she had been the one to make that lunch and had intended to be at the luncheon too but had been called into work. I wanted to ask what she was wearing and if he knew right away that she was “the one” but he seemed so enthusiastic about telling me about the honeymoon that lasted a month and involved cross-country driving and a bear getting into their car, that I didn’t want to interrupt. He is a fascinating man, my grandpa. So…if you have one…and you can…give yours a hug today…

I guess now we know why my family is so obsessed with coffee, eh?