Today marks one year since my grandmother passed away. Some of my family took my grandfather up to Rose Hills to visit her crypt. It was a good trip up to the top of the hill and to be able to spend some time with my family. Afterwards we took grandpa home so he could take a nap and we went to lunch.

Today obviously brings back a flood of memories. As I look back at the last year I’m reminded of some of the things which are lacking.

I’m sad she’s not around physically here. I miss her so much. I still think of her often. I find it hard to be and my grandparent’s house because I still expect her to come walking out of the kitchen and sit down next to me on the couch. I miss her cooking. I miss her advice. I miss her voice. I’m sad she is not going to be apart of our son’s life…

Reading these back one thing is obvious, I still hurt and will probably still hurt for a long time.

Being just past easter and *celebrating* her passing (and seeing the irony in the situation of her passing and the timing)… instead of focusing on things which encourage sorrow, when I think of my grandmother I’ve been trying to think of the legacy she has left with us.

Love. A grandmother’s love is amazing. It’s like a mother’s love on steroids. I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandparents and they did help raise me. Her love was strong, unconditional and accepting, no matter how many times you messed up or were wrong, she just LOVED you.

Generosity. I’ve been told on many occasions that I’m generous, or that I have a generous heart. Those words are nice but I can’t take credit. It’s obvious I learned this from her. I’ve never witnessed someone be as generous in all that they did, give and serve people as much as my grandmother did.

Strength and Sacrifice. My grandparents have a traditional ethnic emigration story. They both worked hard to do the best they could for their children and grandchildren. My grandmother did all that work plus raise children, grandchildren and battle illness. Her strength and will to move forward despite all the hurdles and continue to improve herself and provide for her children is amazing. I will never fully understand how she did it.

Encouragement. She just always seemed to have the right encouragement for me when when I was confused or unsure. She was honest and always encouraged us to do the same thing. I wouldn’t have graduated college it it wasn’t for her encouragement and help.

Intelligence. This one is eye opening. You see my grandmother never did schooling past the 3rd grade in Italy, yet she was one of the smartest persons I’ve ever encountered. It just goes to show you that being good at memorizing times tables, knowing historical facts/trivia, knowing how to read or spell properly doesn’t make you Intelligent. Though she only made it to 3rd grade due to circumstances in Italy at the time, she still encouraged ME to get an education and it wasn’t to become smart, it was to allow myself more opportunities in life.

Faith. Knowing her life story, you can see that faith was a HUGE part of her life. She went to church, she believed in Jesus and she served people.

Food and Entertainment/Welcome. No one can cook like my grandmother could. This is a fact, if you’ve eaten at the restaurant and liked it, you’ve really only taste maybe 25% of her cooking knowledge. She also loved to entertain and host people and would always welcome the ever so popular *uninvited guests* as if they were invited. I never understood it but it must’ve been the right thing to do.

I find it amazing that her passing came as a result of doing something she loved, she was serving spaghetti at her church, something she did every year and she happened to slip, fall and break her femur. She laid in a hospital for a week and that was the end. She died serving food! She LOVED to make people happy!

I can go on… and while tears come out I’m also beginning to feel much better. I want to not forget the many good and positive things Giuseppina (Teti) Persico, my grandmother, has done in and for my life. I will make sure our son knows about her and I hope to instill some of these qualities in his life.

BEGIN LONG POST:

Yesterday was a busy day for Lori and I.

We started the day at 9am with our Tax appointment. I always feel stressed and unprepared going into my tax appointments… though my tax lady always assures me I’ve done well preparing paperwork. We ended up skating by this year thanks large in part to me bumping up my 401K contributions in the last 3 months of the year. So we end up getting breadcrumbs from the state and a few slices of bread from the Federal. What a relief, we get money back after all and I’m glad we don’t OWE any taxes! I can’t wait until next year… bring on the “little” dependent!

Next stop was Babies ‘R Us to register for little “guido”. That took about an hour and a half and by the end of it my mind was NUMB and I wanted to just leave the store! I thought we registered for a lot of stuff but apparently there are things we missed so Lori’s going back to add stuff probably on a daily basis! Though, on the way out I saw the coolest/cutest little Hawaiian shirt and I nearly cried. I shot it with the register gun I can’t wait to put our little guy in his first Hawaiian shirt!!

Next we headed to Whittier to a baby furniture store to look and or buy. Before arriving, we stopped for lunch at the El Pollo Loco and sat near some CHiPs who were telling some pretty crazy stories. They kind of helped us to end our lunch early and move on.

We arrived at the store looked around and saw stuff we liked. We knew going into this place that their prices and quality were better than Babies R Us and other larger/chain stores, also if you spent over $1000 they’d throw in a free (almost $40 value) mattress for the crib and that most of their stuff is available for pickup pretty quickly.

The owner guy came up and asked if we had any questions and since we were already well informed and the prices were clearly indicated, the only question I had for the guy was, “what kind of cash discount do you offer.” He played confused and I explained it again, “If I bring you 100 dollar bills, what kind of price can you give me?” His eyes light up and he said “oh yes, we can definitely save you money because then we, uh don’t have to pay credit card processing fees…”

So we had him put together a quote on and armoire, dresser/changing table, adjustable 4-in-1 crib and a glider. He ended up upgrading our “free” mattress to the second best one they offered ($110 value) and also gave us a good discount which just so happened to round down to a multiple of 100 :)

I said OK and I told him I’d be back in 10 minutes after I hit up the BofA down the street. Quick withdrawal there, came back and paid for it all and loaded up the dresser and crib and then made an appointment to pick up the glider and armoire for the following Thursday.

Next we headed home and I began to re-arrange the second bedroom. The plan is to move my computer into the corner of our bedroom. Since I had the second bedroom setup as an office, this also meant router and coax had to move. Luckily when I first setup the network I had most of the distribution running from the living room to the other rooms so It really was just a matter of moving the FIOS coax from the 2nd bedroom to the living room and then moving the existing sat/tv coax and ethernet to another spot in our bedroom.

My dad came over to help move stuff and (since I have a touch of claustrophobia) he happily climbed under the house and helped re-route the coax and ethernet. It only took us about 15 minutes to do so and re-terminate.

After this was done we loaded up our dining table, chairs and couch chair to bring over to my dad’s house. Our dining table has always been too large for the two of us and we decided to get a more reasonable sized table and set of chairs. The couch chair and ottoman we haven’t used since we’ve moved so it was in the way. I dropped off that stuff and headed home.

On my way home I got a call from Keith inviting me along with a few other guys from church, to celebrate his birthday at the TGI Friday’s. It seemed that first rounds *had* to be black and tans, which was fine by me. I ended up having two and they were quite refreshing. After the first round a “blue” something was ordered which just looked like a LARGE chick drink. It was passed around I snapped a few photos of people posing with the large effeminate drink. Overall it was a It was a fun evening which ended with a few challenges. The first was to eat 6 Saltine crackers in a minute. The second was to eat a teaspoon full of cinnamon. Both challenges disallowed water and were pretty funny to watch. I capped some photos and video on my crappy camera phone, I’ll post them if they turned out half way decent.

Long day, Long Post, if you made it this far you win the prize! Press the red button to find out what it is!

Happy Anniversary Lori! I can’t believe it’s been 3 Years already!

I love you even more and I can’t wait to share our love with our baby!