So I have to say that I was in porn title mode until I found out last night that my Grandma died. It was past due, and the first words out of my mouth were "well, good for her!", since she had been on the path for some time. Her body refused to give out on her for years after her stroke, so she spent a fair amount of time being frustrated by her own speech. I hope I am in as fine a form as she was at her age. She was 93 and still strong and quite good-looking. She once told the doctor she wanted to die and he pretty much told her to give up that idea, that except for the stroke she was fit as a fiddle.

My Grandma, Florence, played a great part in my upbringing. I spent much of my toddler-hood and almost every summer until I was 16 (once we had moved to California) at one or another of her homes. Most of my toddlerhood memories are in her house in Wadsworth, Ohio, and I cannot smell a daffodil without blasting right back into that yard. It was she who had to cope with me ripping open the roof of my mouth with a wooden flute, and she who tended my first bee sting. She made me a box kite one spring, and flew it. She and my Grandpa also fed me beer and ice cream until I spewed forth like Mount Vesuvius on my home doorstep, so she wasn't exactly a saint. She was an alcoholic until an ulcer stopped that activity, and replaced the beer with ice cream and chocolate "dope", and bottles of Pepsi. After my Grandpa died, she married her sister's widower, and after he died, she moved to California. She took to drinking whisky again, which improved her temperament.

She always had a special place in her heart for me, since we spent so much time together. I found out recently that she thought my cousin was a lying bitch, so maybe that's why she liked me. She read bodice-rippers but couldn't tolerate sex on screen, loved See's chocolates and sweets in general, could do that thing with one eyebrow going up and down, was incredibly racist and used the "n" word even when she had friends who were African-American, was the only one worried about me in the 1989 earthquake, had these ice-blue eyes that could bore into you like a drill, and hated anyone to see her without her teeth even in the nursing home.

So, no porn title this week, but thank you for letting me tell you a little about Florence Johnston Blough Shriener.