At Chez Nee

I kind of wish we were recording our home life some way—hidden microphones, live-in camera crew, whatever—because Hannah is constantly saying hilarious stuff, but my mind is too sieve-like to remember it. (Really. Just ask John how successfully I am able to convey the contents of something I just finished reading.)

Hannah seems to be overly concerned with the logistics of death recently. She keeps asking us about inheritance lines in our family, and we finally had to tell her we found it gruesome and to just stop. On the other hand, she has some elaborate plans for her afterlife. She has changed her mind about being “burned up” and thrown in the ocean; now she wants a double-decker casket with tv, internet, fridge, etc., etc. She even wants an international power converter to ensure that her power needs after death will always be met. She thinks of everything! This lead, of course, to a talk about theories of the afterlife. Hannah thinks it would probably be too crowded up in heaven. Anyhow, she seems to have a very ancient-Egyptian mind-set, minus the patience to wait for the afterlife in order to start enjoying her grave goods. I think she is leaning toward voodoo and zombie-ism in her conception of religion and the afterlife.

I don’t know if I have told this story here, but if I have, too bad—here it comes again:
Hannah is keeping a running tab of the various old-folks homes in town, so she can pick a nice one for us when we get old. I think she has her heart set on one near the city library; she keeps mentioning how convenient it will be for me. A while back she asked about how homes are funded. I pointed out that the people have to pay for it themselves with their savings or social security, or their near relatives, like their children. While we were in Italy, Hannah hatched a new and improved plan: if we let her live with us while she finishes cooking school and starts up her restaurant/hotel, she will buy a house and we can live with her until we are too senile to remember who we are or who she is, then she’ll dump us in front of the home and make a get-away. That way we end up well-cared for, and she doesn’t have to pay for it. Sweet, eh?

When we were in Texas, my mom noticed a mole on the inside of my upper arm and suggested I get it looked at. It didn’t look too weird to me, but I made a mental note to get it looked at over the summer. Luckily for me, German insurance companies were required to pay for a skin cancer check once every five years for everyone over 35. Well, what with one thing and another, I haven’t been yet, but I guess it has been praying on my mind more than I had realized, because I recently had a dream where I looked down at my arm and a grey-ish brown mole the size of silver dollar had formed on my upper arm, and it had *tentacles*. I slapped a large band-aid over it and made a bee-line for the doctor, but I kept getting intercepted along the way. (After I told John about my dream, he told me how weird it was to get these insights into my psyche. Thanks, Honey!)