Family Secrets

You just never know when a family secret is going to come out. Me and my husband will be married 28 years this coming October. In all this time, my husband has always been the youngest of 4 sons. Or so we thought. While attending our nephew's engagement party last Saturday, our son dropped a bombshell on us. Out of the blue he says that if he ever has a secret he will tell it to Rich's oldest (or so we thought!) brother because "that guy REALLY knows how to keep a secret!" I was intrigued and it didn't take much coaxing for him to tell us what he was talking about. Apparently, my son told us, that my husband has a 68 year old brother named George, who lives in California. Holy Crap! This is better than Dallas or Knot's Landing!! This is real life! AND it turns out that Rich's cousins & other relatives like two of his brothers, knew too. One said he knew for about 15 years, for sure, but had suspected something since childhood. Now ... I thought this brother said that their oldest (or so we thought!) brother knew for four years. I said "He knew this for 4 years and never mentioned it?" His brother then said "Not 4 years -- 40 years!" I almost died right there! So now me and my kids are obsessed with trying to find their newly discovered (or so WE thought!) half-uncle George. My husband never knew any of this, or that his father had been married before marrying Rich's Mom and had a son and got divorced. Too much! We all will be following up on this. When we were leaving the party that night, I asked Rich's former oldest brother about why we never heard about George Haan and this is what he said to me "That's a story for another time." Really? He's known for 40 years and is 62 years old himself, my husband will be 56 in October. Seriously...how much longer do we have to wait for this story? Their father passed away in September 1993 and their mom passed away in November 2011 without ever telling them. Why not? My mother-in-law even had the divorce papers in her belongings. How can people keep such secrets? I hope to find out much more. WOW!

Intentions

I'm not the biggest procrastinator that I know. But...I always have the intention that I'll write in my blog and then I think, nahhhh...I've got nothing, good or bad to say. Which is funny because my brain never stops and there is always a conversation going on in there. I see that it's exactly one month since the last time I blogged. So much happens in a month...attended a fun wedding, 2 graduations, one was my own son Ryan's graduation and the other was Orchard View Alternative High School's, which also was the very last day I worked at Orchard View. After the ceremony we enjoyed a lovely luncheon at St. Andrew's Cafe in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. The next day I hosted a fantastic graduation party at my house for my son. The weather was perfect, the food was plentiful and delicious (hint: aworldoffood.com) and the beer was flowing. It was a great day. I began my new job in a different school in our school district. Now I am the Principal's Secretary at Sheafe Road Elementary School. This is a big change for me, but there may be more changes so I'll try to get back here before another month has elapsed to write about it. We had our CSEA luncheon at Christo's in Poughkeepsie. It's a beautiful catering facility but the food was not up to par. I don't know why. I bought a new gas grill that has an infrared searer. A new grill is just as exciting to me as a new car would be to someone else. I spend a lot of time grilling, so I like my grill to be just so. And it's hunter green, which makes me even happier! I went to the movies and saw "Rock of Ages." I absolutely loved this movie! It was fun and silly and just what my brain needed...a mindless, guilty pleasure. It even made me like Tom Cruise again. The weather has been soooo hot that I've been lazing in my pool every chance I get. I have gotten extremely tan. I'm tanner than people who have spent a week or two in the Bahamas! My glasses broke & I got them fixed. The assisted living facility that kicked my Dad out to a nursing home told my sister that he had clothes that needed to be picked up. So I go and there were 3 humongous and ridiculously heavy bags of clothes I had to drag out of there. My sister Kathy came over yesterday and went through those bags. One sweater was my Dad's and nothing else! Needless to say, those bags are all ready at GoodWill! I BBQ'd and sweated bullets on the 4th of July (yesterday). Finally cooled off in my pool and then hung out on my deck enjoying whoever was shooting off fireworks in our vicinity. It was awesome. I took a vacation day today, tomorrow & Monday. A mini staycation. I cleaned out my old mail, my pocketbook and my bag that I bring to work everyday. And now here I am. I'm getting ready to do some shopping and then we are going to RiverStation on the waterfront in Poughkeepsie for a scrumptious dinner. After dinner we'll sit out and watch the fireflies (biggest I've ever seen in my life) and I'm sure they'll be some remnants of fireworks from yesterday that will light up my night. Tomorrow I have to tackle cleaning out my closet, dresser and bedroom. I've probably left a few things out. The moral to this story is: I must not let a whole month go by without writing down my thoughts!