Oh Lord am I down tongiht

I am very melancholy tonight.

For one thing the kids are going back to school on Monday. [Well, not Smiley, he starts the 2nd of September, but the girls restart the daily grind at the conclusion of this weekend]. It's ridiculous really. They ended school midway through June and they're going back nearly a week before August ends. That's a miscarriage of childhood, and I'm not being facetious.

I had so many worries going into this summer and yet it turned out to be a great experience. It was jam packed with activity without coming off as forced or overdone, and I had a blast. There's so many things I haven't even had a chance to blog about yet and I hope to get to them soon.

Meanwhile I look at the kids and I already miss them, troublemakers though they may be. To compound this mood  I've seen a lot of 'old' photos recently and their similarites just jump out at me. YaYa's baby pictures could pass for Lump, and she and Smiley share so many features and expressions, while LuLu shares traits with them all.

Appearances aside you can look at the pics and never doubt which child is which. In each of their photos there'sa ray of their personality shining through. There are  many traits and expressions that are there right out of the gate and come through every day even now, so many that you will never fully convince me that 'nuture' overcomes 'nature' in a human being.

Gawd, I'm down.

* * * *

You may recall that quite some time ago I mentioned that my parent's were in a legal dispute with my Uncle over my Grandmother's estate. No details here, but suffice it to say they lost and the house was forcibly put on the market. Late last month I got a call saying it had been sold.

This is the house I grew up in from '77 to '96, the house my Mom grew up in, the home where both my Grandpa's passed away, a house where many of the family's memories reside. And in one week it will be gone, in the hands of someone outside the family for the first time in more than a half century (longer, if you count the step-relatives of my Grandfather who lived there prior to them).

In many ways I'm glad to see the family move on. For every good memory, and there are thousands, there is a more recent memory to muddy the waters. Certainly the fierce fight over the house did no favors to thememory of my Grandma and the bad blood it created appears to be permanent.

The neighborhood has also slid downhill. I'm not very suburban, and resided in what many people consider a 'bad' neighborhood for years, but there are times when my Mom's block makes me nervous.

They are also, to my knowledge, the last of the Polish/German families who worked so hard to build the neighborhood (both sides of my family worked on the house and many in the area). With their departure it will be solidly Mexican up and down the block. Not a bad thing, mind you, but a marked departure from the block where my Grandparent's would converse with their neighbors in Polish. The city moved on, and now so will they.

I spent several hours today at the house, and for the first time I started to mourn the building.  I have plans to spend those last hours of the last evening of the last day with my family, sharing a meal in the same place we celebrated so many birthdays and holidays.

Jesus, I'm depressed. I think I may just tear up, and I am not a crier, the last time I shed a tear being when my Grandma passed two plus years ago.

I'm sure I'll write more on this later.