HistoryDiva's "Vacation": Day Three

Monday (day three) was my grandmother’s 89^th birthday. In honor of the auspicious occasion she refrained from making a snide remark about my weight until 2:47 pm. Yep, she’s really happy I’m here.

It took most of the day for her to decide that she did in fact want to go out to dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant and reader; I wish you could have been there to see this place. Now, the food is okay, not great…but these are members of the geriatric set and apparently that makes them a lot less picky. But it is the décor that makes this such a memorable place to dine, and I don’t mean that in a good way. In all honesty it looks like the 1980s threw up in this place. The walls have pink striped paper on them, the carpet is forest green, and the chairs are bent white metal with pink pleather coverings. The tables have white metal legs and pink tabletops. There are gigantic mirror mosaics on two of the walls, which sets of the track lighting beautifully. Ah…atmosphere.

The evening was capped off with another round of family slides. The night’s selections included “Christmas through the years” and “Elderly family members visiting an Ohio state park.” Riveting stuff that.

So, in an attempt to stave off the mind numbing boredom which is rapidly setting in I have begun to covertly sneak photos of the house. Just go with it…I’m dying here.

This is the bedroom I slept in every time we visited until we began staying in a hotel. To the right you will see the corner of the twin bed. The door is resting against the desk which is sitting under the window. There is nothing more to the room. It is small, airless, and VERY warm in the summer.

The door to the right leads to the room my mother and aunt shared when they lived in the house. I couldn’t sneak a picture of it yet because everyone was home.

This is the view out of the window in the bedroom. My grandfather used to have a large garden which took up much of the grassy lawn. Now that he is older and can no longer comfortably garden he has let the grass reclaim the yard. You will also notice that all of the houses in the neighborhood are nearly identical. This is a very confusing neighborhood to get lost in as a child.

This is the one and only bathroom in the house. There is no ventilation fan in this bathroom…which means that you have to take a shower that is cold or else you steam up the bathroom and it warps the door and you can’t get out. Did you catch that? COLD SHOWERS.

The door on the right is the linen closet…which smells like fifty years of shampoos, soaps, clean towels and aqua net hairspray. The door on the left is the door to my grandparent’s bedroom…another room I could not sneak a picture of.

This is the ceramic frog (painted to match the bathroom) that my aunt made for my grandparents to use a door stop. He’s been in that bathroom for decades. And when I was little I would turn him around and make him face the wall while I used the bathroom. I was convinced that he was staring at me.

And these are violets.