Volcano Girls

Someone out there may wonder how I come up with the titles for these entries. Quite simply, it's whatever song happens to be playing on my launchcast at the time I start writing (this isn't across the board, sometimes I actually think up a title). So now you may be thinking to yourself, what would she do if the song is completely inappropriate for a title? Well in that case I would most likely just skip the song because if the title is that bad I probably don't want to listen to it anyway.

I thought that for this entry I might tell you a little about my "Pittsburgh" grandparents. Two conservative, hard-working, religious people who are only first generation from Ireland.

My grandfather is just your standard grandfather, held some position that no one is certain of for a major industry in the city. Even my father didn't really know what his father did. He plays golf regularly and plays the violin for the phillharmonic in his community. He also loves to sneak a beer when my grandmother isn't watching and wear his marine cap balanced on the top of his head instead of pulled down like a normal person.

My grandmother, on the other hand. . .her two favorite things are illness and keeping my grandfather from doing anything fun. When we all went out to dinner one night she flipped out on him when he ended up with two orders of potatoes. She is determined that he should not have any form of fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, or meat that is not overcooked. But all that attention is not more fun than her discussions of various people's illnesses. Every conversation with her involves at least two stories of the like. The night before my father's funeral, she regaled us all with the story of how when her brother died no one found him for four days, when my grandfather went over to his house to help him prepare his taxes. Except I'm not sure that's the correct detail. My grandfather might have gone to let the dog out. Either way the story did involve a good death story. My poor father used to spend his conversations with her (even during the months that he was sick with cancer himself) listening to how some person that he met once when he was five has a terminal disease or the neighbor that moved away when he was eleven is having such a difficult time with someone else's illness.

I love my grandparents, and know that they are awesome people. They just have a completely different way of viewing the world then, well then anyone I really know.