duck-shaped pain

Z. and I went out drinking last night. I was all willing and ready to go, even though I would only be able to drink one beer (or glass of wine, if the place had half-decent glasses of wine. It didn't. Beer it was.). [1]

Before entering the bar, we spent some time wandering around downtown, looking at some of the new art My town has this thing where they display a bunch of sculpture all around the main street downtown, and every year, they take out the old and put in some new art, and there's a big ceremony and festival, complete with funnel cakes and corn on the cob. I hadn't seen the new art yet, but it seemed like more of the same -- heavy on the representational works, most of which were of wild animals. This year, there's a polar bear, several mountain lions, an elk, an antelope, an otter, and some more bison. We already had a bison, a vaguely famous one, made out of old car bumpers, but now we have three of varying materials. There were several long white marble pieces. with odd clitoric bumps in the middle of them (the first thing that comes to mind when seeing the sculptures is rub the bump. Rub the friendly, welcoming bump. Go ahead. It likes it.). Some big seven-foot metal columbines. Some sort of vague, abstract generic sculpture that seemed to be about progress -- it looked like it belonged in front of a bank or a real estate office instead of right by the thrift store. The only thing that seemed really out of place was this odd little sculpture of a fairy sitting on a lily pad, reading a book -- the face on the fairly was really creepy, frog-like and crudely done, so we couldn't figure out why it had been chosen. It didn't even engender good feelings, let alone complex ones.

We went to the bar, and ran into one of Z.'s cousins. This is not a rare occurrence. He has a lot of cousins here in town. He's a part of this fairly well-known clan here in town, one that has more than its share of branches, members and drama. He's the only person in the family that I know personally (besides his parents and brother), but people with his last name (Miracle) pop all over town. They're in the paper, on the news, all over the place.

I can sort of relate to this. Not from my father's side of the family -- generation after generation of only children means that there's not much in the way of cousins or other family -- but from my mother's. There's a large amount of family on that side -- both my grandma and my grandpa had a lot in the way of brothers and sisters, so keeping track of them all is a challenge.

What makes it sort of amusing is that there's a large clan bunkered up in the eastern end of the valley that shares the last name (Derryberry) as my mother's side of the family (or, to be specific, my grandfather's side of the family). It's a fairly uncommon name, so everyone that shares it is related somehow, but we're not closely related to these folk. But that doesn't keep the questions from coming. Every time my grandfather buys something at a yard sale or when my mom tells people her maiden name, the reply is, "Derryberry, eh? I know a bunch of them folk out there in Palisade. You come from them?" "Uh, not really�E"

So Z. and his cousin and her man were talking last night about The Clan As Whole, and Z. let slip that I sort of understood, since I was sort of related [2] to the Derryberrys over in Palisade. "Oh," Z.'s cousin replied, "one of my aunt's (I think she said aunt, she could have also said mom) ex-husbands was a Derryberry."

Familial connection, however distant or tenuous, between me and Z. established. Life here gets odder by the second.

[1] This is because the strange blood-sugar problems I had last summer and fall seem to have come back, worse this time. I missed two days of work this week because I had absolutely no energy, was thirsty enough to drink the entire Colorado River, and (this is a fun new twist) was completely disoriented. I have a doctor's appointment this Tuesday, and maybe something will come of it. I specifically requested someone different than the guy I usually go to -- while he was an okay doctor when I had pneumonia and the flu, when I went to him last summer with the same symptoms, he suggested I was just depressed rather than there being anything physically wrong with me. Look here fucker, I've been depressed, and this is something completely different. I know there's something wrong with me, so don't give that "it's all in your head" crap, buddy. Found out later he's not even a real doctor -- just a physician's assistant.

[2] Best guess as to the connection between our branch of the family and theirs that I've heard is that each is descended from brothers about five generations back.

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