Tag Archives: family

sharon west


Sharon West : November 17, 1945 – April 13, 2012

Kevin’s mother and I met when we flew to Ohio for Chirstmas in 1999.

She was the mother of my at that time new serious boyfriend.
I was the guy her son decided to put roots down in Saint Louis for.

This relation would keep us at a respectful arm’s length from each other for the rest of her life.

Mothers and the spouses of their baby boys, (I suspect gay ones especially), enjoy a certain respectful resentment. (With possibly the only exception being my porn-star ex who I think *still* exchanges Christmas cards with my mom).

Sharon and I were no different. Our opinions about one another, no matter how scathing, would never break the surface of what could be called a genuine, caring civility.

The woman could make one mean lasagna – still to date – the best I’d ever had.

Meaner still would be our gossiping when I’d slip off to the kitchen over holidays to chat with her as she’d whip up family favorites. Birds of a feather… Both scorpios… I reckon she knew she had a neutral, sympathetic, yet darkly sardonic ear to chew.

Our secret bitch sessions would be punctuated by culinary secrets and pointers:

“Campbell’s Chicken Gumbo”… she’d say… “that’s the secret ingredient to my Sloppy Joes”

I understand now that our distance was our closeness… It couldn’t have been any other way…

Happy journey ya old bird… It was a neither a pleasure… nor a burden to know you… But certainly an acquaintance I’ll never forget and will always be grateful for.

peace

2008


New Years… Same as we do every year… w/ the VanCrips.

Differences this year:

Worrying about Dad.

The boy, (Andrew), is growing freakishly big… I wager next year he’ll be looking us square in the eye and saying “happy new year!”

The whole bathroom upheaval… no… still not done yet… more on that later if I can summarize it all without blowing the blood vessels in my eyes.

sorry – gotta go poop.

mursemade

Click here for a picture of the bag inserts.

That small garage called back… Car’s going to cost $1500… (better than $2300 at least) 🙂

Packaging up our first year of school care package for Chase.. (Chad’s sisters’ first-born).

We’ve been having entirely too much fun stuffing it full of cool stuff… colored pencils… construction paper… plastic bugs.

Chase is really into space and astronaut stuff so it fell to me to customize it accordingly.

I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about my bag fetish… it makes this gift particularly personal.

Anyway – those bags are on sale for 20 bucks – get ’em while they’re hot if you’ve got a little fella in your life who’s a candidate for “my first manbagâ„¢”.

1200 square foot house w/ beer hall


Andrew (godchild) knows we’re getting ready to have some work done to the house… So he sent over his floorplan for the back room…. umm.. I mean “Dart (and Beer) Hall”.

I don’t think we have the square footage in the back for bar… but still – I’m sticking this in with my plans / notes / archive for the house.

such a cool kid.