Dante comes for 2 days: Ethan to be here for lunch

I am always glad to have grandsons pay a visit. Dante's mother has gone to work and was also moving, so was very harassed as she has been trying to work double shifts to get the extra money she needed. Her BF, father of her two younger children, is not working and his unemployment benefits have run out, so he is not contributing other than taking care of the children while she works at the moment. The real estate bust in Phoenix has hit them hard because her BF was a heavy equipment operator, and it is hard to tell when there might be work for him again. He has been running a big machine for some years so he is very reluctant to take just any job. I think all these financial problems are causing her to think of separating from him. She is moving to where her best friend will be able to take care of her children while she works. She wants Dante to wait until after his birthday on June 28 to go to California for the summer.
Dante is computer starved since he is a great lover of the computer and video games and gets to go on it when he visits his dad. His mother doesn't have online, naturally, right now. I don't even know if she has a working computer.
Raymond needed Dan to get to Utah as soon as possible to help him with the set and special effects for his show Saturday night. Since Dan's employment at the Sheraton hotel running entertainment equipment was dropping greatly for the summer, he hopped a ride to St. George with someone he found on Craig's List offering a ride for less money than the bus costs for sure and fast. His cousin Cheryl picked him up and took him to Boulder where she now lives. The latest entry in Cowboys and Bohemians on my blog list is an entertaining account of what they have accomplished in just two days, which was quite a bit. They will have a lot to do with the festival coming up in July and one more date for his show at the Hills and Hollows. The first one is on top of Thompson's Ledge.
My daughter Ronda called this morning and is going to bring her son Ethan over for lunch. He has not seen Dante for a long time. She is picking up pizza. Dante has crashed in my recliner and new ottoman which has now become his bed when he visits. We tried to make a video but the battery went low. Doc changed it this morning, but I don't know whether Dante will get one made or not. I want him to get used to having a plan and thinking about what he wants to say.
My daughter is having a struggle with a very demanding nurse's job. She still hasn't gotten used to going so fast and getting as much done as required. She says having to chart everything takes so much time. This is all a new kind of work for her, so she is is still having adjustment problems. I told her she is a perfectionist, and can't stand making any mistakes, besides with patients just out of intensive care, mistakes are not to be desired, so she also feels tension and anxiety. I hope as she does it more, things will get better for her. Or atleast she will feel more at ease and sure she can do the tasks required.
I always feel more useful when I can help out with my grandsons once in a while. More like there is a good reason for living. As you get more feeble with age, you tend to feel more useless.
P.S. On a funny note, I said to Dante, are you putting on weight, you look kind of fat around the middle. He said oh no, that is muscle. I said, oh, I'll bet, so he let me feel and sure enough his torso and arm muscles are hard as can be. A few years ago my son Dan had him doing a lot of push-ups every day to play basketball, saying if he did not have upper body strength he would never be good at it. So Dante still does his push-ups every day! Amazing. Even though he did not go out for basketball. He says he plays now and then.

Grandson Dante, his dad Dan, and I go to the movies and lunch

Dante will be going to California at the end of the school year to stay with his Aunt Stephanie as his mother struggles with the bad economy. Dan's employer told him that work would be very slow if not non existent from about the middle of July into September, then business is expected to pick back up. There are a lot of jobs in Arizona centered around the season of good weather which draws many visitors, conventions, etc, to Arizona. So I invited them over before he leaves. He said he might come next weekend, too.
We went to see Night in the Museum subtitled Battle in the Smithsonian, which is about what we expected, lots of startling special effects and a somewhat lightweight story. But we knew what to expect so we were satisfied. Dan and Dante went to see the new Terminator movie out the week before.
Dante wanted to come over and make a video as we had not made one for a long time. So we did. I think he was mostly wanting to register his different look. He does not look like a child anymore, and his hair has turned curly. And gotten darker. I thought the above was a great photo of him and his dad together I took at Subway, as well as the one I took of him. I decided not to post the one of him and me together, as my wrinkles are really showing closeup.
Tomorrow I will upload his video called Dante's Summer Plans. I never miss a chance to do a video of him, especially if he asks if we can make one. Then he's happy and I am happy. I don't worry about the content so much, but am just letting him get used to the camera. He still turns shy when the camera is on him, but he is getting more comfortable all the time. There is a lot to getting used to in being the subject of a video. Doc couldn't see what this video was about, but Dante looked startling on Doc's big screen TV. I am for letting him grow into the idea of what he can do.
At first he wanted to make it alone, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt he was not ready to make something up on his own, so he asked me to interrogate him again as I always do when he comes to visit. I ask him about his life. Some stuff I asked him about today was rather sad and I could not put it in the video. Dante has always dealt with tough stuff in his family. He is a child raised in considerable crisis, but I think he's doing pretty darn well.

Extra Terrestrial Blue visits Gerry

Great Day with Raymond at the Farmer's Market...

Here we are at the Farmer's Market across the street where we drank coffee and visited. After an hour there he asked me if I wanted to drive out to my daughter Ronda's house for lunch. I was happy to say yes, so we got to visit with Chad, Ronda, and my grandchildren, Jamal and Ethan, who are always happy to see their Uncle Raymond.

Jamal is enrolled in ASU already in the business college for next year. He starts tennis at the beginning of the year at his high school in Happy Valley. I hope we can all take in some of his matches.

Raymond was having a meeting last night with the cast of Caffeine to talk about filming a second season of this Internet mini-series. They are going to film very short commercials this time to sell to interested parties. Raymond is going to take a load of his belongings back to Utah in a few days, but depending on the weather, may return soon. This is when the snowbirds fly in from the cold places. Boulder is cooling off fast.

I have been so up in the air and upset over 'the worst week on Wall Street' for many a year I have not been able to visit journals a whole lot yet. I talked to my sister Linda who says she does not know what move to make, leave her house to foreclosure, leave town, move to SF, so she is in a quandry as I am sure a lot of others are who are having trouble paying their mortgage. She says there are no jobs to be had for a woman 68 years old at this time in Phoenix. She was one who took equity out of her house in a 'restructured' deal which actually upped her mortage beyond her means to pay. She said those who convinced her to do it made money, but now she is finding it hard to leave her house. She is getting to an age where she might have had to leave it anyway. And she probably won't be able to afford a car either, which is always an adjustment. I stopped being able to afford car insurance without a job. But I have very good bus service where I live so now I don't miss the car at all. I was always worried about it and I like company and someone else to do the driving. In fact, we are getting fast transit just outside my door in a couple of months.

The election has also had me in a tizzy. I am glad that McCain cooled some of his rhetoric. I think he got alarmed about setting off a firestorm of racist reactions as well he should worry. I am glad that he had enough character to assure his supporters they did not need to fear having Obama in the white house should he win. I think his negative campaign implying Obama ties to terrorists, etc, backfired on him. So I am keeping close track of what is going on there. I hate negative campaigning. It is so hard to listen to. So I will be glad when the election is over. How about you?