work & family

I seem to have gotten the hang of my p.m.'s,* finally, but my a.m.'s are a mess.  In the afternoon and early evening I work and work; in the morning I tend to wander around my apartment confusedly like an animal with part of its brain experimentally removed—set the alarm for 8 a.m., get out of bed 2½ hours later, don't go to the gym, don't do the laundry, don't get an earlier start this time, don't read my friend's novel or my other friend's screenplay,** don't clean the apartment, don't go for a nice walk...

Today I'm not going to get any work done at all, ante- or post-meridiem, because I'm picking up my grandmother from her brother's place in Brooklyn and driving her to Pennsylvania in my parents' car.  I don't mind, though: I get a kick out of my grandmother.  Here she is with one of my parents, one of my cousins' parents,*** and one of my grandfathers—the one who was her husband.  He died last year in July.

(click to enlarge, nosy)

* Leaving out the apostrophe would result in unacceptable ambiguity,^a as does sometimes happen when you want to make a letter or an initialism plural—but still I cringe every time I have to do this.

** I have two friends.

*** I'm being vague about my biographical information, but I don't want you to feel slighted, so here are a couple of very specific personal facts: (1) I'm 1.9 meters tall and weigh 81 kilograms. (2) I do not in fact use the metric system.

^a I have not gotten the hang of my PMS.