My husband's Grandpa Buck died last night at 8:00 Pm, a few days after having a stroke at age 99 1/2 .

I can remember a few years ago my mother in law explained to me that it was important for her to keep her widowed mother, and her two parents-in-law alive, because when all 3 of them died, then she and my father-in-law would officially be the "old" generation. Well they all died in the last 18 months. So that moved her up one, but if you think about it that also moves my husband and me up one as well. I lost my last remaining grandparent 2 years ago. So my husband and I are now both officially the 2nd surviving generations of both our families.

The wake will be next Tuesday evening, and the funeral next Wednesday morning. So we'll be driving to Green Bay for that. The very next day , Thursday morning, my husband has that "hot" job interview he's been planning for, we're fudging the funeral dates a little bit, to his bosses at his current McJob, to justify his absence on Thursday morning.

I've run 2K every night for the last 12 nights. On Monday or Tuesday night our dog started acting like she smelled an animal. We were thinking squirrel or rabbit, so we let her go. She ran out of our yard, around the neighbor's fence... and ran right back in to our yard again, being chased by a racoon the size of a bulldog ! My husband, dog and I barely made it back in to the house and that racoon held us hostage, looking helplessly out our own front window for about 10 more minutes.

My 12 year old daughter is so impressed by her new Hatsu-Haru polar fleece hat, based on a Japanese anime character who is posessed by the spirit of the Chinese Zodiac cow, that she wears it all day, even though the temperature outside is in the 90's ! The hat has cow ears on top, one of which has two diamond stud earrings, and is reversable, so that when inside out it is white with black markings, and right side out it is black with white markings. But it's 97 degrees out right now!

So we'll be staying in town this week end. It'll be sad, because we'll be getting ready to go to my kids' great-grandpa's funeral in a few days . Last week on Sunday we had breakfast at the French Meadow Cafe in Uptown Minneapolis, and went to the American Swedish Institute. As I'm sure could be predicted, my husband and I found it fascinating, and our kids were bored, including our 7 year old son who very dramatically laid on the floor and groaned from exagerated boredom in every room. Yes, in front of other people.