maybe it’s because yesterday was the 8th anniversary of alan’s death and we spent yesterday at the fair and i distinctly remember the fair trip 8 years ago. a trip to the fair i didn’t want to take but my dad made me, and i weeped through the corndogs and nearly threw up with grief in front of the house of La Choy because seeing it reminded me of that year at the fair where alan came up behind me out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me, because i hadn’t expected to see him there.

maybe it’s because i spent most of all this day reading Liars and Saints, the whole book. i just finished it. it’s a beautiful book about a fucked up family who somehow despite all sorts of bad things and melodramatic things still is a family.

maybe it’s because i spent the time i wasn’t reading the book helping sister #2 and her family move into their beautiful new house, and being around my family sometimes is just the warm kind of comfort i need.

maybe it was because i read about how another poster on a message board was going to spend the night playing UNO with his kids.

anyway, it got me to thinking of grammu. i’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. probably because we’ve just passed the year mark. we found out just over a year ago that we were going to lose grammu. i just went back and read all those entries and it still makes me cry.

but i’m not here to ruminate on the loss of my grammu. nope, i was gonna talk about UNO. my grammu loved to play cards. she taught all of us to play cards when we were really quite young. i remember being all of 10 years old when my grandpa taught me how to shuffle cards. after he died, i spent the summer i was 13 sitting the basement with aunt cathy (who was 15) playing rummy 500, drinking pepsi, and eating doritos until the sun came up.

we’re a family that plays game. always have. still do.

but UNO was a family favorite, because everyone could play it, even the little kids. we liked to trash talk during our UNO too. things like “certainly glad i can read because all these cards have words.” we all say SKEEEEP when we lay a Skip card down. it’s a weird family thing.

the christmas before grammu died, my mamala bought tiffany and jerry (the kids of aunt cathy) UNO Attack, a new-fangled version of UNO. it had this card-spitting machine. the card spitting machine was random and had no mercy. sometimes it’d spit 2 cards at you, sometimes 20. we loved playing it, laughing so loud we’d be afraid the neighbors would complain.

but grammu, she loved it most of all. she’d sit there crying, from laughing so hard, calling the card-spitter an asshole, whenever it puked a bunch of cards at her. i can still see her sitting at the table with the tears in her eyes.

i miss her.