Entertainment for free

I've dicovered my new favorite hobby, watching people in a grocery store. If you want great, hilarious, and free entertainment just go to your local store. Holy cow!! It's the greatest thing ever. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the pleasures of seeing people get so frustrated with having to be at one end of the store and have to go to the complete other end to get the next item on their list. Or watch as they carefully stare down two aisle's trying to figure out if the specific kind of beans they want are in the "Beans" section or the "Chili" section. Or, if you're really lucky, you'll get to see somebody carefully and slowly look down an ailse, realize it's not the right one and quickly look away as to not let anyone know they almost went down the wrong path. It's great! It's like a time warp too. You go in at noon for an item or two and when you make it out, it's 7 pm and you've spent $300 on nothing but snacks and fillers, absolutely nothing you can have a decent dinner with AND you didn't even get the item you originally came in for. Plus, I haven't even gotten to the experiance of the check out line either. UNBELIEVABLE is the only way to describe it. Mostly because that's the only word you hear people say when they're in line. Old lady wants to pay with exact change but is $1.57 short because they raised the price of her beloved Ensure AND the city tax increased by a quarter of a percent...UNBELIEVABEL! Welfare lady wants to pay in food stamps but her specific brand of alcohol (which she'll drink while watching her plasma t.v.) isn't covered by food stamps...UNBELIEVABLE! Middle-aged man won't calm down because th EPT test that he's buying for his 20-something year old mistress scanned in at $18.99 when in reality the sticker price is $16.99...it's $2 and you're having an affair...UNBELIEVABLE! Or...wait for it...wait for it...the person in front of you at the express line has 32 items instead of the necassary 20 or less but he think's it's okay because he'll just buy 20 with one purchase and the other 12 with another swipe of his card, sorry dude, buy your 20 items and jump back in line...UNBELIEVABLE! So if you're looking for something to do on a random night and re-runs of "BONES" aren't cutting it...check out you local grocery store and realize your life really isn't that bad!

Too much on my mind

After a very long, tiring, stressful, yet almost soothing week, I'm back. As many of you know, my Grandma Beerman passed away suddenly last Friday, the 19th. I'd like to take this moment to thank all of you who sent their sympathies/condolences or even just checked to see if I needed anything. I'd also like to say how unbelievably blessed I was to be able to see Grandma one last time, even though I didn't know it would be the last time, a couple of weeks ago when Erin and I made an unschedualed stop by her and Gramps place. I've had about a thousand ideas on what I wanted to write on here over the last week so this post may be one of many coming in the next few days. Someboday says it everytime the entire Beerman family gets together but it really hit me last week...my Beerman cousins are the greatest! I'm speaking specificaly of my immediate cousins but you could say the same thing about my 2nd and 3rd cousins as well. This is a group that includes 11 of us. 9 of us are between the ages of 24 and 37 and then there are two younger ones too. We are close and really that's an understatement. Even though we're spread throughout the country (Chicago, Nashville, Austin, Kansas City, and Concordia) we seem to always stay in contact and the once, possibly twice, that we get to all be together every year is more than great! We're there to lean on each other, pick on each other, joke around, talk seriously, and have a few high balls together. Whenever we all are in the same area we always make it a point to get together for a night and talk and hang out. I don't know of many families that are as bonded and close as we are. I love it. As we sat in church at the funeral, all in one pew, I couldn't help but think, "Grandma, this is because of you. You taught all that family is the most important thing behind our faith. You taught your children that and they've passed it to us." And as we all sat on Grandma and Gramps patio after the funeral, a huge game of baseball broke out in their backyard, just like it had for the past 20 to 30 years. All us cousins playing baseball, using the clothes line pole for first base, the elm tree for second, the corner of the patio and the sidewalk for third, and the old hole from an uprooted tree for home base. Just like we always had. No steals or lead-offs, the ball is always live no matter if it comes off the roof or coming out of the tree's, and hitting the shed without a bounce is a homerun. Grandkids and great-grandkids all playing together, ages 2 to 36. All of us Beerman cousins together again...because of Grandma.

Growing up with siblings

For the first time in a very long time, all the Beerman siblings were together without Mom and Dad this past weekend. My brothers, Jason and Trey, came up to Julie's (our sister) for the weekend. We haven't all been together without our parents for a couple years at least. It was a blast! Jason is 36, Julie is 32, I'm 27, and Trey is 8. As we sat around the table Saturday night playing a heated game of Spades, I couldn't help but think of how far we've come from the days of giving each other hell growing up. I remember Jason and Julie always fighting and Jason chasing Julie around the house because Julie would take one of Jason's sweatshirts without asking and not return it. Or we'd be downstairs watching t.v. all calm and quiet and Mom would be upstairs all of a sudden Julie would shrill out of nowhere and yell to Mom that Jason had hit her when in fact Jason was just minding his own business...and Jason would still get in trouble. Of course there was the time Jason rubbed my head in the carpet and literally burned the front part of my hair off, the day before school pictures. Man, Mom was UPSET! Or when Julie would dig into the edge of my fingernail in order to get me to do whatever she wanted me too. Then there was the neighborhood gang. I remember when one boy hit Julie in the nose so she gave him a black eye. Or when Jason and Cort hung me up by my belt loop from the top of the swing set. It was awesome to think of all torture we'd do to each other for so long and now we're all sitting around the table, talking about jobs, married life, and whatnot. I think it all started changing when Julie and I were in high school. Mostly because we could call Jason and ask him out to get out of trouble or get away with something because we knew he'd done it all before. Whether it was Julie calling him to find out how to break into the house after she broke curfew or me calling him to find out how to handle mom and dad when I got my first speeding ticket. Of course, once we all were out of high school, we took it another notch up. Julie and I went to same college and lived about 8 blocks from each other. We spent the night of 9/11 at her apartment just watching. Jason called me with re-assurance when mom and dad busted me with alcohol. Jason and I lived together for a year and half when I moved back from River Forest. Whether it was Jason trying to teach me how to budget, me giving him rides when his license was suspended, or working out...that was our bonding time. Then when Trey came along, it all changed again. When our parents were going through the court process with Trey's biological father, we three older siblings had a sit down and pretty much said, "this is our brother no matter what and we will do anything necessary to care for him". It didn't matter that he wasn't a true blood brother, he's a love brother and love is always thicker than blood. And I'd like to think we've done that to the best of our abilities. Although it is fun to give it to mom and dad about how much softer they've gotten since we grew up...Trey gets away with everything!!! J/K, but it's fun! Now that Erin and I live in Bourbonnais, it's fun to get to see Julie (and Mike) all the time. Julie and I are getting that closeness that Jason and I got when we were living together. I can talk to her about being married and what to expect and also family. It's great! It was just awesome to be sitting there, enjoying each other's company, playing cards, watching Trey play with Jaydon (our nephew). And then Julie said something interesting. As we were playing Spades, Jaydon and Trey kept coming up and interupting for one thing or another and Julie was trying to feed Carter (our other nephew) and she said, "now we know how mom and dad felt when they were trying to play cards with the Pointers" (our neighbors growing up). Holy cow, I never realized it till then, WE ARE OUR PARENTS!!!! But they raised, what I think, are 3 great kids and are raising a fourth and if I can be half the parents they are, I'd be beyond happy! Thanks Mom and Dad!!!

Gramps and Grandma time

Erin and I spent last weekend on a whirlwind trip to Missouri visiting family. We spent all of Saturday with Erin's family for our niece's 2nd birthday. It was exciting as always! We spent alot of time playing with Bella and hanging out with Erin's sister's and her mom. Whether we're eating, watching sports, giving each other a hard time, or playing cards (I almost won our "Apples to Apples" game)...I love hanging out with my in-laws. But on Sunday we made a couple quick stops on the way back to Bourbonnais to see my grandparents and my parents. I hadn't seen Gramps and Grandma for awhile because Erin and I didn't make it back in time for Christmas Eve at their house. I'm always amazed at them...even at their age and their health issues, they're always ready for company. My Beerman cousins and I are very lucky to have grandparents who have been alert, healthy, and able enough to see us all grow up to be adults. I've noticed that's kind of an oddity. Erin and I sat and talked with them for about 45 minutes but I could've stayed all day and listened to their stories. Gramps was talking about Uncle Donald (Grandma's sisters' husband) and how many stamps he's collected over the years, "I don't know why he needs them, they just sit 12 security boxes in the bank." And Grandma was talking about how everytime they got a new vehicle it always seemed like Gramps got a new truck and she never got a new car. I love listening to them! We talked about how Gramps used to smoke a pipe and why he quit...Grandma thinks he just got bored and quit cold turkey one day, Gramps thinks it's because Grandma made him! We also talked about how whenever Grandma would make chocolate milk shakes for us, it would scramble the tv whenever she turned the blender on (which Gramps swears was only during a Chicago Cubs game). Unfortunatley we had to hit the road so we couldn't stay longer but I can't wait to get back there and have some more conversations and for Gramps to say "Jared, sit down and tell me a story."