When I got down off Monteagle Mountain, there was a haze of smoke in the valley. I thought there might be some controlled burning somewhere, but Mom said they'd been having wildfires because of the drought lately.

Time at my grandmother's was okay. I got to see one of my sisters and her family, whom I hadn't seen in about a year. My grandmother told me I looked "like something the dogs dragged in," asked me if I was "part Jew," and loudly slurred something about a 10� can of dishes for a while. Mom says she can't recall my grandmother ever mentioning Jews in her life before that particular comment. Other than that she didn't bitch and scream much. I did have to help clean her up when she dropped a load of baby-type shit in her panties. Man, I don't know how my mom stands it.

I can let the mean stuff she says roll off my back, but I can understand how it's more hurtful to mom when I imagine what it would be like if when Mom got older she was saying the same type of things to me. I hope Deb just smothers me with a pillow if I inherit this same strain of meanness alzheimers.

If you're wondering, my mother doesn't put her in a home because there's not a place that she can find where she would trust an overworked staff not to just let my grandmother stew in her own feces for days. Psychotropic drugs tried so far seem to just make her behavior worse. Unfortunately, other than being insane, she seems to be very healthy and could live to be a hundred.

Luckily, mom and I got a kitchen pass to go to Mom's house and spend the night there on Friday. A kitchen pass means that a couple of the women who help Mom take care of my grandmother were available to watch her and Mom got to go do something normal for a day. We went to see "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on Friday afternoon and afterward ate dinner at the restaurant next to a trout farm that Mom and Dad used to go to every week like clockwork.

My sister's friend, Joan, sent me her grandfather's camera, a Nikon F, and all the attachments and lenses he had with it. She just didn't have any use for it herself and wanted someone who would use it to have it. That's pretty cool. I've got a roll of film in it now, planning to test it to see if it's still light tight. The back seems a teensy bit loose. A set of batteries corroded in the off camera flash, so I doubt that it will work anymore. It's got a 50mm and a 135mm lens�that rocks�and the funkiest light meter attachment you've ever seen.

Well, it's about time for my sweetie to be coming home. I'll probably post some pictures tomorrow, relate some more hometown gossip, and talk about the mini-date we had on Wednesday night. Ohhh. And don't let me forget to tell you about my mom's opinion of my lesbian sister's girlfriend Tammy.