1.  this weekend you are going to decatur, illinois, the soybean capital of the world, for your grandmother's eightieth birthday party.  this is your mother's mother, the one who loves the oak ridge boys and gambling on "the boats," the one who greatly disapproves of the x-files because it's gross, and of tiger woods because she doesn't think "coloreds" should be allowed to play golf.  pretty woman is one of the only movies she actually owns, and you wonder sometimes if she thinks hookers should be allowed to play golf, either.

in houston, you are waiting in line to get on the plane when it is announced over the loudspeaker that "boarding will be stopped temporarily because someone has thrown up on the jetway."  you find this extremely funny, and cannot keep yourself from cackling.  because you are standing all by yourself and cackling, everyone turns around and looks at you.

2.  there is no assigned seating on the plane, so you consider yourself lucky to find an aisle seat.  a blond girl in a red t-shirt comes over and asks for the empty seat next to you.  you stand up to let her in when you notice the front of her shirt.  it features a big cartoon drawing of the president giving a thumbs-up, and it says "GEORGE W. BUSH IS MY HOMEBOY."  you are horrified.  george w. bush's homeboy wants to sit next to YOU.

3.  a few rows ahead of you, a cute guy is sitting in one of the seats that faces the back of the plane.  you spend the duration of the flight alternately reading your book and staring at him.  he's got an earring, and nice spiky hair, but he's wearing a polo shirt with a company logo stitched on the pocket.  you wonder if he wears the polo shirt to work and on business trips, saving his thrift-store jeans and ironic t-shirts for the weekends.  when you get off the plane he's walking right behind you, and you want to turn around and say something clever, but you can't think of anything.

4.  your father and sister pick you up from the airport, and then you drive around in circles waiting for your mother's flight to arrive.  the three of you spend the time discussing dangling participles, split infinitives, and the spanish subjunctive versus the english subjunctive, as illustrated in the simpsons episode where bart pretends to go to the national grammar rodeo but instead uses a fake id to rent a car and drive to knoxville for the world's fair and its fabulous sun sphere.

5.  on the two-hour drive to your grandmother's house in decatur, your sister explains the picaresque novel, using moll flanders, fight club, and a clockwork orange as examples.  she also shows you that the best way to re-harden a car-melted york peppermint patty is to hold it in front of the air conditioning vent for a long-ass time.  your family may be full of geeks, but at least you are all minty-fresh.

6.  at your grandmother's house, your seventeen-year-old cousin jacob informs you that his summer job will involve washing hog sheds and baling hay.  "what does that entail, exactly?" you ask.  "i don't really know anything about farm stuff."

"when the hog shed's empty," he says, "i clean it out before the new shipment comes."

"the shipment of hogs or the shipment of sheds?" you ask.

"of hogs!" he says, looking at you like you're insane.

"well, someone has to ship the sheds, don't they?"

"i guess.  anyway, he says it'll take like half an hour to clean each pen."

"how many pens are in a shed?"

"i dunno."

"you don't know how many pens are in a shed?  come on, you have to know.  ten?  a hundred?  ballpark it."

"um, forty."

"and it'll take half an hour for each one?  do you clean them with a pressure hose or, like, a toothbrush?"  now he knows you're insane.

"a pressure washer.  anyway, after that i'm gonna be baling hay."

"square bales or round bales?"

"nevermind."

7.  your grandmother's birthday dinner takes place at a local steakhouse.  you sit with your sister, your two cousins whom you never see, and two second cousins you've never met.  since you had two glasses of wine at the open house earlier and are working on your third glass now, you're a bit on the tipsy side.  this is good, because when you are tipsy you become very talkative, and otherwise none of you would have anything to say to each other.

8.  so you talk to everyone, a lot.  you take pictures of butter, of ceilings, of feet.  your second-cousin amy tells you that you should really know your past-tense spanish verbs because they are, like, so easy.  you think that nobody notices your slight tipsiness, but when you look at your pictures later, your aunt is giving you a disapproving look in every single one of them.

9. when they light the candles on the birthday cake, you lead the singing.  "happy birthday, dear grandma/mom/aunt mary/mary," everyone sings.  your piece of cake has a giant blue frosting rose on it, and your tongue turns blue when you eat it.  when you stir some frosting into your coffee, it turns green.  you take a ribbon decoration from the table and put it on your head.  amy ties one around her neck.  your grandmother calls you "a character, a real pistol."  she says it with pride, so you take it as a compliment.

10.  you've brought along some of the jewelry you've made, so after dinner everyone takes a look at it.  you sell a bracelet to your great-aunt donna, a necklace to your grandmother's former neighbor, and a necklace each to amy and your cousin lara.  this is encouraging.  it turns out that other people actually do like the jewelry you've been making all by yourself in your house for months and months without showing anybody.

11.  the next day, you spend a few hours with your grandfather and your aunt joan, from your dad's side of the family.  the three of you sit on your aunt's back porch, drinking lemonade and watching the birds in her garden.  you and your aunt talk about your jewelry and how you could go about selling it online.  she gives you a few good suggestions.  your grandfather can't hear very well, so eventually he stops paying attention and stares off into the middle distance.  he always does this.  if you look at him and say his name, he'll snap his head up, "YAH?" like you're pulling him out of hypnosis.  you like to think he enjoys just sitting there, hearing his family talk in the background.

12.  later, your aunt hands you a small white box.  "what is it?" you ask, opening it at the same time.  it's the necklace you gave your grandmother for christmas.  you made it out of brown goldstone and black glass beads, strung on an elastic cord so she wouldn't have to get someone to clasp it for her.

when you gave it to her last december, in her fourth and final room at the nursing home, she unwrapped it and said, "oh, look at my pretty beads!  thank you."

"do you want to put it on?" you asked her.

"no," she said.  you put it in her dresser drawer for her, trying not to be too hurt.  she died less than a month later.

you look at the necklace, curled up in the same little white box you put it in six months ago.  "i thought you might want it back," your aunt says.

"oh," you say.