After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 3

Sometimes I tell you that we play obnoxiously loud music to wake you up, to help you, whether you're hitting a wall overnight at work or if you're driving. Of course that's dangerous if you're driving and you're tired. So we want to help you to stay awake or if you happen to set your alarm to think with the top of the hour and some of the music that we play can be jarring.

Maybe you're annoyed at us when we do that because just now hearing that music that makes you want to bang your head against the wall made me want to bang my head against the wall. But it's been just a couple of days that I've been here in Wisconsin, but the days have been jammed full. And I will say that at some point in my life, maybe you're going to get too old to do this travel with no sleep thing and to flip my schedule around every which way but loose. And it's definitely catching up with me a little bit because I know that I said on last night's show that I was feeling delirious after the long day of football prep and then being at Lambeau and then getting out of Lambeau and getting back here to do a show. And I'm not looking for your sympathy or even your empathy really because I choose to do this.

But to be up from Monday afternoon until I get back into New Jersey and back home and take care of the pets and everything until I can finally sleep say around dinner time on on Tuesdays. I'm trying not to think about it. I'm trying to conserve as much energy as possible and that music did I don't know why that rubbed me the wrong way. It's not your fault though producer J don't worry. It's just it's loud and and you know, I'm borderline cranky but you'll never know it here on the show.

I'm just giving you a little peek behind the curtain. Sometimes I get a little wild and wacky with my travel schedule, but this was an important trip a trip that I needed to make and as I head home from Wisconsin not knowing when I'll be back. I've always had another trip plans and another trip planned as long as my Grammy Helen was here.

Of course, I knew I was coming back at least once a year and now that I don't know when I'm coming back and don't know if I'll ever see her little town again. It was really critical that I get up here and then to be able to go through some of the belongings that my uncle and aunt set aside was also really special to me. As I say I found some jewelry that I was able to pack away and that I'll take back with me but also photos hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos. Now some of them I had copies of but I also found photos of me with my Grammy or my brother and I as babies that had my mom's handwriting on the back of the photo which of course would have meant that my mom sent her these photos. So that was really amazing to see baby pictures of my brother and I stashed in with all of her stuff and so a lot of them I'd seen again but some of them I'd never seen before and they're very precious to me and then in addition to that photos even black and white photos of my Grammy when she was a baby with her parents when she was a young girl a teenager before she got married after she got married and all the photos of her wedding which took place in let's see my uncle told me 1946 she got married in 1946 and get this so scandalous my grandmother was five years older than her husband. So I think we determined at that point let's see my grandmother was born in 22 she got married in 1922 she got married in 1946 so she was 24 and her husband my grandfather had gotten home from the service he served in the army and actually their their grave site has a separate plaque that has my grandfather's name on it as well as his rank and his dates when he served in the army and then there's a special flag there because he's a veteran or he was a veteran anyway so they waited until he got home from serving and they got married so she would have been 24 and he would have been 19 what what wow never had a chance to ask her about that I didn't realize that she was five years older until I saw the dates on their headstone at the cemetery there are a lot of things I've learned about my Grammy that I didn't know but the photos were phenomenal I mean again going back to when she was a baby so photos that are a hundred years old and being able to see then really the progression of her life and the joy on her face how beautiful she always was even until the end but when her hair was not white when she had reddish hair actually it had a reddish hue to it and her with her friends and the styles of the day and then to see her on the farm there was a photo of my grandmother on her farm in overalls overalls never ever ever could I have imagined my grandmother in overalls but she was adorable there were a few photos of her with some cows and not only did she grow up on a farm but then she raised her four children on a farm as well and so it was just really sweet it was it was a bit of a walk down memory lane there were some tears of course and I was almost afraid to ask my uncle for the one photo that I really wanted he ended up telling me I could take whatever I wanted and there turned out to be some repeats but the one photo I wanted and if for those of you who follow me on social media or my blog you'll know that I shared a bunch of photos at her 100th birthday because they brought out a box that included a lot of photos that most of us had never seen and one that I absolutely adore that I did share on Twitter I know for sure and probably on Facebook was one that was taken when she was 19 years old and I remember her telling me at her birthday party that she knew exactly what she was wearing it was a black and white photo but she could recall the dress that she was wearing going back to those days when she was a teenager and so that memory and talking about that and her very vividly recalling when that photo was taken this again at her 100th birthday she was so beautiful and she was so alive and her smile is well it's a lot like mine which is funny because I'd never seen that before and so that was the one that was a professionally done photo and it's actually in a cardboard holder the kind that you can fold and it stands up and so I really wanted that photo and I was almost afraid to ask but I did and my uncle said please take it if you want it take it so that was that was really special and I think because I'm such a sentimental sap and because I love photos I think I ended up filling a couple envelopes worth though probably 200 photos to take back with me now I won't keep them all because some of them I'll share with my family at Christmas time and I know my brother's gonna want some of these baby photos and we'll laugh at those and then there were also a lot of photos of my nieces when they were younger because we sent pictures mostly me actually sent pictures to my grandmother so she could see my brother's kiddos so yeah it was it was special and I got lost for about two hours in those walks down memory lane so some smiles some laughs also a lot of tears and honestly that's what this weekend has been like not the working part because I can click into work mode but an emotional mix so many different emotions and they come in waves and sometimes it's joy but sometimes it's grief because I still miss her so much and to that end it was really good to be here these last couple days and I do hope to come back to Wisconsin.