Nastia on vacation and saying good bye to Uncle Tonny.

Maybe it’s me, or maybe it’s an age, her’s or mine, I don’t know. Nastia seems to not be able to stand still. She is either working or looking to do something when she is not. It’s almost like she is afraid she’ll miss something if she doesn’t keep moving. Sean took a week off. They went camping up past the Roscoe Diner, I think in Mongap? It was 100 degrees during the day here and no lower than 75-80 at night. Up there, I’m sure it was cooler, but you’re upstate and it's cooler. I texted her, asking how she slept the first night. It took a couple of days for her to reply, “It was fine, why?” I didn’t hear much about their camping trip, and there were no pictures. They then went to the shore and there were also no pictures. I assume they had a good time. As Jone turned to July I looked forward to our annual fishing trip to Moriches Bay on Long Island. For the past two years I’ve cancelled the trip because of the weather. This year we were going come hell or high water. Elena’s new job gives her off Tuesdays and Sean has had Tuesdays of forever, so instead of Thursdays, we were going on a Tuesday. I figured it would be slow, and because of the weather I didn’t reserve a boat until that Monday night. Actually I forgot about it until everyone had gone to bed. I went on their website and to my horror, they had no boats for rent. I thought a Tuesday before the 4th of July must be a big rental day. I was flogging myself for not renting a boat earlier when I realized they are closed on Tuesday. IT’S THEIR SEASON TO MAKE MONEY!! WHY THE HELL ARE THEY CLOSED!! The guy who ran it before them, Gary, never closed in season. I was heartbroken when I told the girls and Sean. Nastia immediately said, “Okay, we’ll go to the beach, want to come?” I couldn’t go and leave Teri, who was watching KJ, that day, and Elena, skipped to sleep in. My biggest fear happened on Tuesday and hopefully will inspire me to keep working for a while. I experienced babysitting JK. It got to the point around Noon or so after I’d had a fight with Teri and KJ and I exchanged throwing toys at each other that I felt it was time to go to ‘Home Depot’ to get something, anything. I came back around 5-6 o’clock. I got a heart cut, walked up five flight of stairs to donate blood to find out they closed the location. Next I went to see my mom. I did something else and figured about 5-6 pm was a safe time to return.

We went to Pearl River to see the fireworks. There was a Four Seasons tribute band that I had to be reminded we were seeing for free. The fireworks started around 9:20. The band was nearing the end of their second set when they played that awful song by Lee Greenwood. In these overly divisive political days one side has sort of adopted that song. There was a story going around that the US government was paying him when they used it when they swear in new citizens, but that was not true as far as I can tell. The song has all of the words to make a MAGA man cry, but it is truly a very poor song. The band wanted to end with ‘God Bless America’, but they were told they’d run out of time.

The night had started to get cold and the quicker it ended, the happier I was. My mom and Bruce went with us. Nancy and KJ were there too. KJ being a handful, but with four people to watch him and no toys to launch, it went off without a hit. The nation is 249, I remember when it turned 200, it seems like just yesterday.

On June 16th, my mom turned 91. We took her out to Sangria's for dinner. She had a good time. I'm not really sure she enjoyed the food. She took most of it home. A few days late we got word that my Uncle Tonny, aged 94 had died. They had a wake for him in Bedford Massachusetts where he spent the better part of 40 years. He’d only recently moved to the panhandle of Florida to be near his kids, grandkids, and I think great grandkids. I met several people I didn’t know when Karl and I went up there to represent our side of the family. My mom said she didn’t want to go, because she didn’t want to see him in a coffin.I can’t blame her. He was buried on Thursday, which would have been his 95th birthday. At the wake they told the story of how his family lied about his age so he could enlist. According to the Air Force he was 16 when he enlisted,not 15, like he was.

One of my favorite stories about him is when he was stationed in New Mexico during all of the UFO hoopla. There was this building that if you got too close to it, crossed a certain line, you’d get shot. Was there a UFO in that building? I guess we’ll never know