Thursday at work I suddenly felt like I needed music to complete the task of writing the master schedule for an event that happens at the end of August when I’m not at work anymore, but … um, it’s still my job to do it so I did it. (If you think I am just sitting around twiddling my thumbs at work until next Friday you’d be wrong.) I had one whole song on the hard drive, Milk and Cereal by G Love and Special Sauce, but I felt I needed more to get me through to the end of the scheduling project. I remembered how much I enjoyed Mercy by Duffy in the contemporary dance piece choreographed by Mia Michaels so I went to iTunes and listened to a few more songs from that album and decided I liked it enough to buy it.

Then I clicked on the New Releases page and bought the new Booka Shade and CSS albums.

“What am I doing? I’m bingeing on music!”

And then I realized what I was actually doing: I was buying myself birthday presents. This tradition is handed down to me from my maternal grandmother who buys most of her Christmas and birthday presents for herself months in advance, then has her children pay her for the gifts, wrap the gifts, and give them to her. I am my grandmother’s granddaughter.

Other things my grandmother does or has done that are endearing to me:
1. She used to smoke one cigarette a week on a rock at a local bay to clear her head.
2. She has not been with a man since she divorced my grandfather in (some year before he died, which was before I was born) but she has a 6-foot-tall poster of John Wayne in her bedroom — hubba hubba!
3. She randomly brings up the topic of sex with my cousin who is 6-ish years my junior. If you met my grandmother you totally wouldn’t expect that word to come out of her mouth, let alone that entire topic.
4. She loves animals as much as I do.
5. She has a nickname for each of her kids and grandkids. Mine’s just “Steffie” but the way she says it is priceless.
6. She used to clean the museum I grew up going to. I love that museum. I am proud that my grandmother is a part of that memory for me, that history for everyone.
7. She makes me cakes for my birfdy, and she tells me there’s a present for me in the back room. She gives the most random presents of anyone I’ve ever known, and I that about her!
8. She used to go for rides with her dog Sundown to watch the buffalo roam. She can’t drive now so she has my uncle take her.
9. She can get very feisty about topics for which feist doesn’t generally seem necessary. (Sound familiar? *pointing at self*)
10. Her favorite game to play is Sorry!.