Windfall

My brother Richard brought my father by for a visit yesterday afternoon. It was nice enough, but hard in some ways. My dad is 84, nearly deaf and pretty much spends his days in his apartment watching tv. This makes it very hard to have an actual conversation with him. As for my brother, he's 59 and pretty right-wing in his social thinking. Compared to me at least. A couple of his comments were - not exactly racist, but definitly showed a broad streak of intolerance. At one point, I had to gently remind him that I am one of the working poor he was talking about.

Still, we got to visit, and I so seldom see or talk to anyone in my family. Then as they were leaving, my dad handed me a card and told me to open it. Inside was a check for - well - more than a week's take home pay for me. Seems he'd gotten a bit of a windfall from his last brother's estate and couldn't think of anything he needed or wanted to do with the money, so he split it up between us kids. This means I can do Christmas shopping without having to make partial payments on bills. I might still fall a little behind on some utilities before winter is over, but not so badly. I was even able to give my youngest some money so he'll be able to buy some presents for people. I remember how it was being a teenager with no money to speak of.

Now, just one more week of work. Then our Christmas gathering with Trish's sire and step-mom next Sunday and surgery the day after that. Whoopie!