Today has been quite surreal. I've been up since 2am mountain time. It's 11 eastern time now. I'm too tired to do the math but I'm pretty sure it adds up to me being awake for 37 hours now. Luckily my flight was on time, it went smoothly, I got a window seat in the third row, and the plane didn't crash.
My dad picked me up, in a fury both over Orlando traffic and the fact that my mom had been written out of my grandfather's will. We bitched about it the entire time back to Melbourne and felt a tiny bit better. There's nothing anyone can do about it now. We got some local BBQ at a drive thru that reminded me oddly of a 30 Rock episode, and arrived at my grandfather's double-wide trailer. This is the queen of all double-wides. It has four bedrooms, two baths, a screened porch with a jacuzzi and it's all handicap accessible since my grandpa has been ridin around on a scooter for the past few years. It doesn't feel like a trailer. I'm staying in the office, my parents are in Wilma's bedroom, my uncle and his wife are in my grandpa's bedroom (which they are extremely unhappy about. And creeped out about) and Wilma has a tiny bedroom of her own that's just big enough for a twin bed and a TV. She's asleep in there now and I heard the book-on-tape she fell asleep to. It had something about "creamy love juice," so I'm assuming it's Shakespeare.
Tomorrow's the funeral and we may be staying in a hotel after my mom and her brother confront my grandpa's wife about the change in the will. Maybe we will get to hit the beach after all.
We went to dinner at my grandpa's favorite place and all the waitresses cameup and toldhis wife how sorry they are, and how they enjoyed my grandpa. I am having trouble with this - because they'd nicknamed him "Grumpy," which is understating, but he was endearing to them. He was not endearing to me. The actions that he took over the course of my short life greatly affected my mom and she does not deserve to be treated so cruelly. I'm pretty angry that both she and my uncle were disinherited, after all they went through. My poor uncle. It's really unfair. I actually read the will myself and there's a clause in there that stipulates that if his wife were gone, and my uncle and my mom gone, the next in line for the inheritance were his wife's grandkids. Not his biological blood-related grandkids.
So basically it turns out he is just the same asshole in death as he was in life. It's not like there was a lot of money, or even any stuff worth having. It's the thought he put into taking my mom and her brother out of his estate altogether. His wife has been saying that we can take whatever we want, so I'm taking his military medals and maybe his military plaques. There are a ton of plaques.
Also, the fucker stopped writing my birthday in his yearly planner after I turned 15 and didn't send him a thank-you card.
I went to the trailer community's pool with my parents tonight and my mom was almost giddy. Watching her play in the pool reverted me back to childhood, to my memories of spending hours in the pool with her. I think as mad as she is, she is relieved to be done with him, although there's still much to do. She said when this all actually sinks in back at home she may need some counseling for her rage. But I really think she feels like a weight has lifted from her shoulders, and that feels good for me too. The dynamics of her relationship are way more complicated even than I know, much less what I can and have written about, and with him gone, it takes away the stress and worry of the anticipation of his death and all it would bring. She's furious, but also okay I think.
Also, I had scallops and shrimp for dinner and they were glorious. We also decided that I should have been born to my uncle instead of my mom for how alike we are.
I miss my puppy.
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