Weddings and Near Funerals
I had the day off today and decided to do nothing. I had such a long week last week! I had gone to that wedding in the boonies on Saturday and then painters came Monday to begin the process of getting the house ready for possible family guests. What with my cousin's impending nuptials, people were flying in from all over. The house actually looked worse than ever for a while there but eventually all cleaned up nicely but the problem is the process was quite hard on my allergies and sinuses, which had already flared up the week prior after my friend's wedding in this dusty little town. My cousin's wedding was in a garden near Disneyland so even though I'd taken a Claritin earlier that day, I had also done some major cleaning in the house which had raised tons of dust (and had then gone shopping and rushed back to get ready and drive out to the wedding), and this garden was probably the last nail in the coffin.
The wedding itself was nice. I liked my cousin's dress and the setting was pretty. What was even better, though, was seeing family I had not seen in years. For example, the bride herself is someone I had not seen in about three years. I also met some cousing from Miami for the first time, as well as the bride's brother's little son. They'd flown in from El Paso. My aunt from San Francisco flew in with her husband and son. Her daughter couldn't make it- she's in New York. The son is someone I held in my arms when he was a baby and now he's an eighteen-year-old young man who is six feet tall. He was easily the most handsome guy there. The last time I saw him was my grandfather's funeral when he'd looked about the same except that he had a lot of baby fat. Now he's quite thin. His sister is also very good looking but as I said she wasn't there. They are all a very handsome family- my tiny aunt being cute and chic and her husband having a resemblance to Christopher Reeve. (I told him so and he said, "You're my favorite neice!") One of my cousins there is an Iraq veteran and I'd never met him before but his sisters insisted I go and stay with them in Miami one of these days. I was also invited to San Francisco and told I should stay with my New York cousin when I fly east for Walter's wedding in New Jersey.
I'm watching E's countdown of 25 Celebrity Near-Death experiences. Everything that could have brought you to your grave (or actually dying clinically) counts, including Mark Walhberg's missing his flight on September 11, 2001- a flight which we all know ended in horrible tragedy for thousands of people. The countdown also featured Eric Estrada's stunt gone wrong on CHiPs and the fact that his partner Larry Wilcox said, "He had that death look in his eyes I'd seen in Vietnam and in the hospital, a priest read him Last Rites." It also had the near-fatal multiple stabbing of an actress by her stalker over at Los Angeles City College, a college I attended.
This brings me to my own near-death experiences. Robyn Wright Penn handed over her car keys to car-jackers (after pleading for them to let her first remove her and Sean Penn's two children from the backseat) who claimed to have guns. It isn't clear if they did. Well, I actually had a guy pull a real gun in front of me. I was seventeen and cutting school with a motley crew of other metalheads and this one guy was driving us back to school where whe could board the school bus home but on the way there, a guy pulled up next to us and brandished a firearm and he yelled at our friend driving, "You cut me off, man! You cut me off!" My friend apologized and said he didn't realize it. We were almost the victims of road rage. About a year or two later another friend was driving us around Hollywood when a guy came out of his apartment and pointed a gun at us. Prior to that I'd had other near-death experiences. I'd survived a war, for one thing. I'd also survived measles and two bouts of malaria as a young child. I also had a bad touch of bronchitis. This was before age eight. During my eighth year I again faced death when I was hit by a car. I continued to do stupid things during high school which could have gotten me killed but I won't count them. But I will definitely count when I had my spleen ruptured and nearly bled to death internally. I guess much like Steven Segall, I'm hard to kill.
The wedding itself was nice. I liked my cousin's dress and the setting was pretty. What was even better, though, was seeing family I had not seen in years. For example, the bride herself is someone I had not seen in about three years. I also met some cousing from Miami for the first time, as well as the bride's brother's little son. They'd flown in from El Paso. My aunt from San Francisco flew in with her husband and son. Her daughter couldn't make it- she's in New York. The son is someone I held in my arms when he was a baby and now he's an eighteen-year-old young man who is six feet tall. He was easily the most handsome guy there. The last time I saw him was my grandfather's funeral when he'd looked about the same except that he had a lot of baby fat. Now he's quite thin. His sister is also very good looking but as I said she wasn't there. They are all a very handsome family- my tiny aunt being cute and chic and her husband having a resemblance to Christopher Reeve. (I told him so and he said, "You're my favorite neice!") One of my cousins there is an Iraq veteran and I'd never met him before but his sisters insisted I go and stay with them in Miami one of these days. I was also invited to San Francisco and told I should stay with my New York cousin when I fly east for Walter's wedding in New Jersey.
I'm watching E's countdown of 25 Celebrity Near-Death experiences. Everything that could have brought you to your grave (or actually dying clinically) counts, including Mark Walhberg's missing his flight on September 11, 2001- a flight which we all know ended in horrible tragedy for thousands of people. The countdown also featured Eric Estrada's stunt gone wrong on CHiPs and the fact that his partner Larry Wilcox said, "He had that death look in his eyes I'd seen in Vietnam and in the hospital, a priest read him Last Rites." It also had the near-fatal multiple stabbing of an actress by her stalker over at Los Angeles City College, a college I attended.
This brings me to my own near-death experiences. Robyn Wright Penn handed over her car keys to car-jackers (after pleading for them to let her first remove her and Sean Penn's two children from the backseat) who claimed to have guns. It isn't clear if they did. Well, I actually had a guy pull a real gun in front of me. I was seventeen and cutting school with a motley crew of other metalheads and this one guy was driving us back to school where whe could board the school bus home but on the way there, a guy pulled up next to us and brandished a firearm and he yelled at our friend driving, "You cut me off, man! You cut me off!" My friend apologized and said he didn't realize it. We were almost the victims of road rage. About a year or two later another friend was driving us around Hollywood when a guy came out of his apartment and pointed a gun at us. Prior to that I'd had other near-death experiences. I'd survived a war, for one thing. I'd also survived measles and two bouts of malaria as a young child. I also had a bad touch of bronchitis. This was before age eight. During my eighth year I again faced death when I was hit by a car. I continued to do stupid things during high school which could have gotten me killed but I won't count them. But I will definitely count when I had my spleen ruptured and nearly bled to death internally. I guess much like Steven Segall, I'm hard to kill.
posted by Spleengrrl @ 3:26 PM
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