(no subject)

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED.



I suspect my Notepad issues may now stem from my flashdrive where I keep all my work starting to fail -- I go through about one every two years so it's due for a replacement -- but I'm not ruling out that my flashdrive may be possessed.

(What you're seeing is a Darcy/Coulson fanfic I've been working on; the gibberish replaced a scene with Captain America, which is suspicious. It also moved the scene currently below the random gibberish, which actually comes before the part that's now above the random gibberish. Not sure how that happened.)

(no subject)

This funeral business is all very interesting and strange.

I've never been "the bereaved" as an adult, in terms of having a job and having to inform coworkers and such that I'm leaving for a funeral. It's immensely awkward; I've been on the other side many times and it's oddly comforting watching them flail for how to say things the same way I have in the past. Tomorrow I go to Texas and become the outsider again, because really the rest of them are mourning more than I am, or deeper anyway. It's a surreal experience.

There's a narrative aspect to it, too. Because the estate is paying for our travel, everyone can come home; the only one who won't be there is Bernard, who couldn't get here in time and probaby wouldn't come anyway. Plus Mama Tickey made her displeasure with him very clear when he left for Australia. The other grandkids once joked with me and Emmy that we all had quite a lot of leeway to screw up before any of us managed to beat him out for Most Disgraceful.

It's going to be probably the biggest family reunion in years, in a family that was not small to start with. My blood family inherited this enormous clan when Mum married Lucky, and having been a very small unit, we never quite know how to cope. Plus there's an entire Eastern Star chapter, several members of Mama Ticky's church Women's Board, and three lawyers involved. And Crazy Aunt M, one of Mama Tickey's daughters-in-law, who insists on setting everything up (she did cede "memorial donations and charitable notifications" to me; horse for courses, I suppose) and who definitely wants to get the funeral out of the way so we can get to the will.

I don't know much about the will, but it's bound to be complex, given Mama Tickey's vast charitable, real estate, and investment interests. I don't know if they're going to read it after the funeral or what, and I have no idea what she thought ought to be left to me, though she's told me I'm in it. For all I know, it's her largish library of history books, which wouldn't in any way displease.

I won't say I'm looking forward to the funeral, but it certainly won't be boring. Plus I get to meet Other Favourite Grandchild; my stepcousin E and myself are the oldest of the grandchildren and I'm reliably informed the best-liked, but since we both live out of state we've never properly met. He's an artist, so I'm inclined to like him already.

And we all come back to the ranch (literally, there's a ranch) to pay our respects to the Last of the Southern Belles.