Consider This

I paid to renew my website so I suppose I should start blogging again. There for awhile, I didn’t know if I was going to actually renew it or if my services would expire before I had the money to pay for it. That’s kind of a shitty place to be, and I’m glad that it all worked out because I’d be so sad if I didn’t have chaostasis.net to kick around and play with and archive all of my writing for the past few years. I love it in this way that I recognize it as something that just simply ties me to my past. And it’s such an evolution. I think I should still attempt to get all of my old entries moved onto this. And maybe that’s an option? Perhaps it’s a project I could start at the Cap-J now that I have a jump drive and they have Microsoft Word. I should get going on that tonight. It would be nice to have all of my blog printable, or perhaps publishable.

I’m glad I’m blogging again because I actually have a lot to say. I’ve thought a lot about family and friendships in the past few days and I think this week, overrall has been a really positive one for me to live through, even though it has been pretty trying.

My brother apparently quit his job this week. The way he went about doing it was pretty terrible and irresponsible and my part in uncovering this has slammed me in the middle of it. Not that I wouldn’t be in the middle of it anyway, but I guess I feel more attached to the situation. So he’s been working at the pool all summer and started out really liking it and then he stopped. Probably somewhere around the point where he realized he’s spent the bulk of the good skating hours of the summer at the pool, in the heat, with not enough days off, he took a week off. And then as of this sunday, he quit showing up. So my dad is leaving for Seattle yesterday and he wants me to take some pictures of Devon at the pool to show his brother. Mom calls Devon on Monday and says I’m going to come up. Immediately, I get a call from Devon saying that he wasn’t scheduled that day and that I shouldn’t come. So I stay home and tell him that I’m going to go the next day. So I go on Tuesday and get there and he’s not there. I talk to Bret and he tells me that Devon just hasn’t shown up in the last few days. This puts me in a really terrible position because I either go home and don’t tell my parents about it and then I get yelled at for not taking the pictures of I go home and do tell my parents and then all hell breaks loose. I’m basically stuck with the last choice so I go home and tell mom who of course flips out. And Devon has to come home from wherever he is and then Dad gets home and they just yell at him a whole lot and end up saying some things which they just outright shouldn’t have said. And I end up yelling at my parents, trying to convince them that they can’t just say these things.

Basically, in the entire conversation, I am the only one who behaves like an adult. And I don’t know what to do. Inside, I turn into a child, basically, because I don’t handle this hostility at home very well and it really returns me to that 5th grade feeling where my dad was leaving and there was a lot of fighting all around me. In so many ways, it’s like that point was just it for me in handling fighting, probably cos it hardly ever happens. My next real memory of it is when mom flipped out (all those times) about my having a girlfriend. And I don’t know what to do. It’s this feeling that just fills all of me and it’s nervous and i get anxious and I don’t know how to release all of the tension. So I cry on my way to work and I get there and I’m late and distraught and ohmymy. It all turned out mostly okay for everyone but my brother though. He’s in a whole lot of trouble. alotalotalot. And that car he’s been driving is no longer considered “his car.” I mean, I’m sure he’ll get it back eventually but until then he’s getting driven to school by mom and dad.

I took Dad to the airport yesterday which was nice. I really like driving in the morning, especially highway driving, and it’s nice to talk to dad. We have such a necessity-only relationship and I know that he loves me, but sometimes I wish we were more talkative with each other. I crave those heart-to-hearts we seem to get so few of.

I’ve also thought a lot about friendships after a conversation about shallow friendships. One of my friends was talking about how a mutual friend of ours only has really shallow friendships. I’m not sure that this is actually the case, and I know there is some deserved bitterness there, but I’m still friends with the other person. And I was thinking about it and realized that I think shallow friendships are okay. I tend to be the kind of person to put everyone else in front of me anyway, whether you are a friend or not. But that outright opening up on really serious personal issues that requires a lot of trust building isn’t necessary, I think. I have a lot of friends that fall into that category, and I hope that they wouldn’t hesitate to open up if they needed to talk, but I think it’s okay that our friendship is built on common interest and good times more than an ability to share advice. I also was realizing that I have a lot more deep friendships than I realized. And I like being able to open up with the people I do trust.

I’m addicted to Flixster.com, in my own way.

I celebrated 1 year with Joe on Monday. We had a fantastic date. He brought me roses, and I dressed all pretty, and we went to Kikus (where he asked me out) which was nice because we were sat at a table (in the same places as last year, actually) with this pretty cute little kid who kept chattering about things his brothers had let him watch on tv or movies that his mom was none-to-happy about him sharing with these non-family members. We also saw A Scanner Darkly. Oh my my, it was fantastic.

• Category: Journal