I hope you all aren't too tired hearing me talk about all that's going on out here right now.

Today was a really, really hard day. About 4:20 p.m. this afternoon I got a call telling me that the death certificates were ready. Grandma and I hopped in the car and headed over (we hurried because they closed at 5.)

When we got there the funeral director person handed us the death certificates and the nuts and bolts from dads ankle (my brother wanted those - dad broke his ankle in several places 20 odd years ago body surfing in Hawaii.) I realized that neither my brother nor I had settled on what we were going to use for "keepsakes" for the portion of ashes we each wanted. So I asked the fd person if he could put aside a small portion for once we did have the keepsakes ready. He did so, but this took about 20 minutes.

The whole time grandma and I sat in the lobby waiting (and I filled out the acknowledgment form for the certificates) it was just ... hard. In a way it was worse than when we went there for seeing dads body. It was way worse than when we first went there to make the cremation arrangements.

Tomorrow I am going to start making the phone calls - making sure before I do any visits that ALL they need is the death certificate. I don't want to have to do more than one visit per place.

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The day wasn't totally hard. Earlier in the afternoon I took my grandma to the mall to get her walking done. On our second trip around the mall I realized that one of the food court shops had bubble tea (or boboa) which one of my co-workers in NM had introduced me to. I had looked forward to introducing it to my dad ... but instead today introduced it to my grandma. She liked the drink part, but didn't care too much for the "bubbles."

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I also went to the fitness center this morning in an attempt to make use of my membership. I used one of their elliptical machines. Yuck. I know how to change settings on a machine (I worked at a gym for nearly 16 months! I should know!) but these ellipticals were old and cheap. The angle the feet were at made my toes get all scrunched up. That was two times using that machine. (first and last!)

As much as it pains me to not use my membership, I think that unless I oversleep the cool part of the morning for jogging, that I'm going to just jog every day (except my rest days.) Boring, yes, but at least I know my toes won't get scrunched! If I do miss the cool part of the day, then I can use the fitness center's indoor jogging/walking track.