Its 52 degrees and raining outside

So this morning i called my girls to pester them again about making Christmas lists for me. I woke Chelsea up at 10:30, 5 minutes before her alarm was set to go off, I robbed her of her last 5 minutes of sleep! :)

I'm sitting here now with my hair soaking in nasty dye, I've had the stuff fer awhile but found that i was intrigued with all the new grey I have now and was letting it grow out. The night before last Gordy was hugging me and said "EW, looks like it is time for a touch up on your color!" So what the heck, I like the red, cover me I'm going in again. Funny how I am not much for artificial stuff and yet I sport my own fair share of it. Also funny how often I get compliments on my hair color from stangers - they tell me how much they like my red hair, old men in particular will make comments to the tune of "My how I like red-headed women!" I always feel the need to explain that it is not natural and I would be happy to hand over the dye name and number so they could sport their very own.

on a more somber note...Today is the Life Celebration/Memorial service for Rex Bass. I like very much the whole idea of celebrating a life rather than focusing on the sadness of losing a loved one or friend. You know those scenes in movies, where the parade of people walk through the streets of New Orleans, playing music and holding the coffin above their heads? I don't know if that ever happens now-a-days, but the concept fascinates me.

When Rudy died I found the most comforting part of accepting the loss was when I sat around with old hippy friends, some of whom i had not seen in a long time, some i had never met, telling stories about the wonderful-happy-joking man we all knew and loved, and for those moments we were all connected in a way that was much deeper than any other time i had spent with friends.

I recall sitting in the funeral home making arrangements for his cremation, the juxtoposition of his death being one of the saddest things i had ever known at the time against sudden outbursts of the jovial shenanagans his wife, his "connection" and myself participated in was so surreal... but we KNEW that Rudy would have adored such shenanagans and most assuredly been heading the silliness up. At one point while waiting for the funeral arranger to rejoin us in the break room and finalize the arrangements I lifted my shirt and flashed a gardner working outside the window... i thought when I did it that the glass was reflective and he could not see me, minutes after I had displayed myself to his unresponsiveness he stopped what he was doing, set down his tools, grinned and waved hello to me.

We roared with laughter and swore we heard Rudy laughing with us.