Category Archives: Family

Happy Birthday, Erin!

Erin Danielle Lawler turns 25 today. My niece is actually down in Florida with her mom (my sister) and grandmother (my mom). Erin graduated from Ramapo State College of New Jersey, with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design.

She blogs (of course she does – she’s 25) but she asks that family members not read her blog. I find that strange and funny, but then I remember that I don’t even tell my family that I blog. Well, except for my wife. In fact, she’s the only person who’s invited and therefore able to read the thing. (Hi, Dawn). So I kinda understand Erin’s viewpoint as well.

So then that makes me wonder why I’m writing this and to whom. And the why is because it’s more like a diary, and I decided that it would be fun to try to keep a diary for a year. So that’s why each entry is dated, although astute readers will notice that the date of the entry and the date it’s actually posted rarely match. And to whom is that I imagine that I’m writing for a readership, although I know that I’m not. (Again, hi, Dawn).

Maybe I think I’ll let somebody else read it someday? Maybe I should invite someone now? Maybe Gordon?

But then I wonder about burdening someone with the task of reading my blog. Like I don’t especially like reading my brother’s blog, because it’s a vile rant o’ hate, but I sometimes check in with it. But he’s sometimes disappointed in me for not reading it. And so I’d hate to ask Gordon, Did you read such and such entry, and find out that I’m just not that interesting and no, he hasn’t seen it.

And then there’s the fact that I know my neice has a blog and I don’t read it. Not because she’s asked me not to read it, but because I don’t really think to read it. I mean, I actively avoid my brother’s blog, but I just don’t think that much about Erin’s blog. I remember it every so often and then dip in and read a bit, and then I’m off again. It was only today that I noticed the banner that asked family members and co-workers not to read it. And then that makes me feel guilty, like I’m not interested enough in my niece’s life.

But then again I’m really not that interested in her life. I mean, I’m interested, but not like these really private thoughts, every day, interested. And mostly her blog is, generally, to me, somewhat incomprehensibe. There are a lot of lyrics to songs I don’t know from bands I don’t know. And stylistically she’s often dense and elliptical, deliberately so, no doubt, but I just don’t understand it a lot of the time. In general, it’s not for me, not for my understanding.

Oh, I don’t know. It’s a complicated and weird subject, actually. She doesn’t want me to read it, but I do, but then I don’t, and then I feel guilty, when I shouldn’t. Crazy, huh?

UPDATE: Now that I’ve transferred this year’s posts to Blogger, some of the above no longer really applies. Anyone can read it, and the date stamping is different here. But there’s like millions of blogs here, so no one does read it. I don’t think. Or I don’t know.
3/28/2006 4:20 p.m.

First Date

Dawn and I had our first official date on February 28, 2002.

I had been dating this woman Laura, and we broke up on Sunday night, the 24th, just after getting back to my place from the opera. Macbeth was the opera, but I don’t remember the opera company that did it. Some Russian company usually famous for ballet, I think. Kirov or Bolshoi. Bolshoi probably.

Dawn and I had been having lunch a lot. I had been trying to figure out some way of screwing up the courage to break up with Laura, but I wasn’t especially finding the courage. Then, quite handily, she broke up with me. We talked it over and she was trying to let me down easy, and then at one point she seemed to be having second thoughts. So I assured her that she should really trust her first instinct, and that I would be okay.

So that was Sunday night, and I waited until Tuesday to tell Dawn. I was savoring it, like you do with wine. Like swirling and tootling it around your mouth. I finally casually mentioned it to her in an email on like Tuesday afternoon. And then I just as casually asked her if she’d like to have dinner or go to a movie sometime. She said she just might like that.

Dawn stopped by on Thursday night and we had dinner, before she went to the ballet. That was Thursday, February 28, 2002. We got married the following April. And now we go to the ballet together.

She’s great, that Dawn.

Dad & Rob

I dropped Dawn off at yoga and then went to the Washington Sports Club at Third and D Southeast, figuring parking would be easier there than downtown. Parking wasn’t especially or remarkably good, but I found a space around the corner half a block away. Not bad. But I especially did not like the club itself. It’s all tiny and cramped and they don’t have the right step machines. I don’t want to go back.

Afterwards I went to lunch with my father and brother. We met at Sweetwater Tavern at Rt. 50 and Gallows Rd. We were originally planning to go to Grevey’s there, but they apparently had a fire and are closed for ten days.

We talked to Rob some about his health and his series of recent and upcoming appointments with various medical professionals. Next up is a gastroenterologist in mid-April. Some sort of upper and lower test, esophagal and intesinal. Or, coming from the north and the south, as I call it. Dad talked about some sort of similar test, where he had to drink some sort of shake before the test, and he had the choice of a couple of flavors. He chose banana, and now he can’t stomach eating bananas because they remind him too much of trying to force down this awful shake.

Dad brought up politics, as usual. We talked a little about the Dubai Ports World thing and the Vice-President shooting an elderly man in the face. Rob especially mocked NBC’s David Gregory for his dust up with Scott McClellan, characterizing David Gregory as expecting to have been personally called immediately after the shooting. Dad compared it to Chappaquiddick, noting that in Cheney’s case the proper authorities were notified immediately, Cheney not doing what Dad called “the Kennedy two-step.”

Dad somehow also related this two-step to the “Ginsburg Rule,” which rule is apparently Fox News shorthand for nominees to the Supreme Court not having to answer questions posed by the Judiciary Committee.

Dad also tells us that the oldest guy on the court, whom I noted was John Paul Stevens, wants to retire but only during a Republican presidency, since he was appointed by a Republican. I don’t understand this at all, though, since Stevens is most emphatically not a nutty winger a la Scalia or Thomas. I noted that maybe being appointed by Gerald Ford (Republican lite) has something to do with this. Dad’s vitriol towards Ginsburg and his apparently benign view of Stevens somehow disturbs me.

More Main

My sister had to wash the pots and pans when we were kids.

My brother and I took turns each week setting and clearing the dinner table. Setting the table was by far the preferred chore. Clearing the table afterwards involved trash and scraping the dishes and loading the dishwasher. The pots and pans didn’t ever go in the dishwasher, and Main did those.

I think about this now, in light of the fact that Dawn and I don’t have a dishwasher and I do all of the dishes. Dawn does the cooking, so it’s fair really that I do the dishes. I don’t have the inclination to plan and execute meals anyway, so this works out so much better.

I have something of a system to doing the dishes though, but this really is more indicative of my general preference for routine, rather than exhibiting any sort of planning capabilities. I like to rinse off all the dishes in the sink and stack them in a dishpan. Then, when the sink is empty and itself cleaned, I soap and scrub the dishes, with the water turned off, placing the dishes back in the sink. Then when everything is scrubbed, they all get rinsed off and stacked in the drying rack. Someone came across recently and showed me a picture of me when I must have been like four years old, doing the dishes. I had on an apron and was using a white plastic dishpan just like I use today. The point of the picture was that I was pretending to be my grandmother, my Nana, at the sink with the apron and the dishpan washing the dishes. So even though I don’t have any explicit memory regarding such, I like to think that I do the dishes the way my Nana taught me to do them.

Main tells me that she was happy to do the pots and pans, since there were relatively few of them, compared to the other dishes. I remember one time when I was five or six, so she must have been eight or nine, when she convinced me to help her do the pans. She explained that she could do them in two minutes. So we’d each do half, with her taking the first minute and I would then finish up. She may have been bamboozling me. You think? And I also remember around this same time, she’d do this trick where she’d scoop up a handful of soapy water and suck it into her mouth, without retching or spitting. I remember this specifically as some sort of trick, that she wasn’t really tasting any soapy water, but I couldn’t figure out what she was doing with it otherwise. She doesn’t remember any of this.

Happy Birthday, Main!

My big sister, Marianne Lawler, celebrates her twenty-ninth birthday today. Not for the first time.

She’s so clearly the most together of the three of us kids. She’s helping Mom get her house sold and buy a place down in Florida to which to retire. In fact they leave tomorrow for Florida to pick out colors and patterns and textiles and whatnot other options for the new house. I’m so glad she’s doing this for (and with) Mom. I could never figure all this out.

And I suppose I could never decide what should be done, even if I could even figure out what could be done. And then make it happen. That’s why Main is so great.

She’s pictured above with her daughter, my neice, Erin Danielle Lawler, who will be twenty-nine for the first time in a few years. The picture was taken actually on Rob’s birthday (my older/her younger, brother) in 2003. It was at the big party for his fortieth.

Main describes herself as a practical girl.

Boys Day Out

Dropped Dawn off at a brunch off Van Dorn Street then headed off to my brother’s to meet him and my father to go to the Air & Space Museum out by Dulles Airport. We’re trying to get together every so often without the wives since we get along with each other much better than our wives get along with each other. Beach week every summer is very stressful because of it.

Rob is not in terrific health. (In fact he has an appointment with his doctor on Monday because of it). He does really well, though, helped by the places scattered around the vast museum for sitting and resting.

It’s fun to hear Dad talk about certain pieces. Of the Vietnam-era Huey, he claims it’s the only aircraft in which he felt safe when he was in Vietnam. Any Air Force craft felt like it was going to rattle apart, says he. He identifies a particular jet as having to be a Navy aircraft (and he’s right) because it’s squat and ugly and therefore Air Force officers would refuse to be seen in it. I’m detecting a bit of intra-service rivalry.

He also knows a bit about the missiles in that part of the museum, having worked at Fort Bliss and White Sands. Rob, too, having had some type of missile capability obviously on his ship in the Navy, the Hawes, a guided missile frigate.

I’m of course a big space geek, so I can tell you what’s a Mercury and what’s a Gemini, although it’s not hard to tell them apart. I point out that the Original 7 used to describe the Mercury as not something you piloted so much as something you wore. I think that’s from The Right Stuff.

We have lunch at Damon’s on either 50 or 29 or somewhere. I don’t know. It’s way out of town for me.

It’s great to chat and hang out with the guys.

Dad mentions towards the end how excited he is that soon we’ll have the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court. I note how Clinton appointed Jews while Republicans appoint Catholics. Something going on, you think?

We talk about Roe some, as well as O’Connor’s undue burden test from Casey. Dad thinks the high court pulled privacy out of their asses for Roe. I actually don’t have much problem with Roe, thinking it’s a very logical step after Griswold. Dad thinks it should be left up to the states, which shocks me. Murder is murder, isn’t it, whether it’s federal murder or state murder? I think that there oughta be a constitutional amendment banning abortion, and it should also be a complete ban on the death penalty and nuclear weapons too, and we’ll call it the Life Amendment. Rob too surprises me, expressing his opposition to abortion, but not necessarily calling for a legal ban.

So, oddly, we’re all against abortion, but Dad thinks it should be a state matter and that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe, I think it’s a federal matter and we need to amend the Constitution, and Rob thinks it’s a personal matter and … I don’t know … what can you expect from libertarians.

Later I talk to Dawn and determine that she doesn’t agree with any of us really. She gets annoyed at me for trying to pin her down, but near as I can tell she thinks I’m a barbarian for advocating a total ban. And she thinks I’m slippery on life and health of the mother aspect.

Nana

Happy 96th Birthday, Nana!

Walburga Kolinski was born in Toledo OH on January 10, 1910. She married Edward Wojtkowiak in 1932. Eddie and Wally adopted Judy Jaworski, born in 1939, and re-named her Patricia.

Patricia Wojtkowiak married Robert Bohls in 1960. They had three children: Marianne, born in 1961; Robert Jr., born in 1963; and Edward, born in 1964.

My understanding is that my sister Main had trouble at some precious young age articulating grandpa and grandma, coming up instead with Papa and Nana. These are, of course, not uncommon nicknames for grandparents.

Nana once described herself to me as a hillbilly farmer. Their house included a corner grocery store, the floors of which we were never allowed as kids to walk on barefoot. Papa and Nana owned and ran the store, and Papa was a butcher as well. Later, probably driven out of business by the arrival of supermarkets, Papa worked for a tobacco and candy distributor.

Nana could cook, man. I’ve never ever found pierogis like she used to make. She also used to send us boxes and boxes of Christmas cookies every year.

She died suddenly in 1993. She and Papa had moved in with my mother, staying in the bedroom that we still call the Pink Room. Nana passed away in bed in her room on August 19, 1993.

I think of her often when I recite the Hail Mary. I don’t exactly remember or know where or when it would have been, but I guess she must have helped me learn it. It seemed somewhat spooky and scary to me, the pray for us “at the hour of our death” business.

I should have asked her to teach it to me in Polish too, now that I think about it.

Zdrowas Maryjo,
laskis pelna, Pan z Toba.
Blogoslawionas Ty miedzy
niewiastami i blogoslawiony owoc
zywota Twojego – Jezus.
Swieta Maryjo, Matko Boza,
modl sie za nami grzesznymi,
teraz i w godzine smierci naszej,
Amen.

We love you, Nana. And miss you.

Christmas at Dad’s

We went out to eat with Dad and Sharon, to their favorite restaurant, Paradiso. Dad had the capaesant gratinia and I had the misto di mare. Both dishes had scallops. Dawn and Erin and I shared a bottle of Monte di Torre Pinot Grigio.

Rob hates immigrants who work at McDonald’s and don’t learn English. They apparently don’t know how to toast the muffin of an Egg McMuffin correctly.

I had an awful awkward moment when I opened one gift and it was the same printer that Marianne and John and Erin had given me the day before. Sharon and Main had both bought it off Amazon from my Wish List, but something went wrong. I felt so bad for Dad and Sharon. It’s an expensive and generous gift and I felt like I was disappointing them by already having received it.

Although it’s a sweet sweet piece o’ computer accessory. I had stayed up late the night before setting it up. Dawn and I haven’t had a working printer in months, so it’s a big improvement over the status quo. Plus it’s a copier and scanner. And it’s fast and quiet.

Dad and Sharon also quite generously gave me the Palm Z22 PDA that I was wanting. My Handspring Visor is really old and I’m worried it’s going to die any minute now. I keep so much information in that thing. An old girlfriend of mine used to refer to her purse as her ‘life,’ because everything she needed was in there. I think of that when I think of my old Handspring Visor. Hell, it was like one of the first gifts another old girlfriend, Erin Sellman, gave me, and we broke up in 2001. I think she gave it to me for my birthday in 1999, so it’s coming up on 7 years old.

The biggest treat of the day was getting to see my Dad’s paintings. He’s been learning to oil paint for the last couple of years, but I’d never before seen any of his work. He showed us his little studio in the basement with like a dozen works. Mostly they were studies on paper. But one was a terrific seascape on canvas that he said was his first painting. I figure if that one was his first, then he’s going to do some great stuff. And he says that he’s doing it so he’ll have something to give his children, so I’m all excited about having a painting done by my father.

Actually, something of both an inspiration for him as well as maybe a burden is a painting he has done by his father. It’s a landscape done in watercolors and it’s absolutely amazing. It’s signed and dated, the date being the year 1924, so my grandfather painted it when he was 12. So on the one hand my father treasures this, but on the other hand it’s so unbelievably well done that I would find it incredibly intimidating.

Although I suppose it’s similar to the way that I think of my grandfather when I’m working on the house or making something in the woodshop. Grandpa built his own house and was a master craftsman, and I’ll never be able to do his level of work. But I’m happy being able to do what I can do. My father is confident in what he’s doing and having fun doing it and wanting to learn more, so I’m happy for him.

Christmas at Mom’s

Finally celebrated Christmas with Mom and family.

What with the fractured family of divorces, we’ve always had multiple celebrations at Christmastime. Mostly it stems from the divorces where children were involved, specifically my parents and my sister. My sister Marianne’s daughter, and my niece, Erin has historically spent Christmas day with her dad and her half-sisters. Then she and Main would come down from New Jersey to stay with Mom and we’d celebrate Christmas usually on the Saturday following Christmas. Then we’d have Christmas with Dad on Sunday.

So most years on actual Christmas Day I’d be at a wife’s or girlfriend’s parents. But this year Dawn decided to spend Thanksgiving with her folks instead of Christmas. This was partly to offset the multiple Christmases, that come with being married to me, that are admittedly a little exhausting. Plus this year my brother and his wife didn’t really have the time off and Erin I think had New Year’s Eve plans.

So anyway, we ended up celebrating Epiphany this year. And it was fun.

It’s likely the last Christmas in my Mom’s house in Springfield, as she’s trying to sell it and move to Florida. It was a little odd because her doberman Rolfie died, gosh, before last Christmas even. Plus, since she’s trying to sell it, she’s not smoking inside, and she broke up with Bill so he’s not there smoking and Rob & Carol both quit smoking. So there was nobody smoking, which was good because it bothers Dawn so much. And I’ve been quit so long now that I’m starting really not like it.

Something was wrong with the upstairs toilet. It was knocking weirdly after flushing, like the inlet pipe was banging against the wall or something. John apparently fiddled with it later and fixed it. And Mom said that the washing machine’s hot water inlet hose was blocked with calcium deposits, but Rob couldn’t unscrew the hose from the bibb to fix it. I should have brought my basin wrench.

Mom made these ginormous stuffed pork chops. Normally I’m veggie with Dawn, but I had one, partly out of a When-in-Rome kinda attitude and mostly because they were delicious. Mom didn’t have one. She doesn’t eat much. I’m worried about her.