journal17

Sooo�. Today was fun.
I got up bright and late�. Had just enough time to throw on some clothes and wash my face and get to work.   Long day at work with not much to do.
I come home from work eat dinner and leave everyone else at the dinner table to go on the internet to check my mail or maybe go on instant messenger to talk to Kyle or something.   But noooo�. Jack starts some big fuss because he NEEDS to sit there and watch this song download. Of course he couldn�t just ask me to leave or anything� no he had to rip my scarf out of my hair and when I asked him why I couldn�t go on aim (since he usually uses it while he downloads stuff), instead of answering me he knocks me out of my chair. What a swell guy.   Then my mom yells at me about how much she hates the computer and jack yells at me because if I use the internet it will mess up his download but if he uses the internet it wont mess up his download. Okay fine� I can deal with that. So I go to the other room when they are finished yelling and I wait for him to finish quietly, by myself, looking out the window and she has to come back into the room and tell me that I don�t have the abilities to make any marriage work because when I think I�m right, I say so. She proceeded to tell me that I was a �real disappointment� to her� none of which I understand.   I thought I let her have her little hissy fit and that she was done. That re-entry just to tell me how much I suck was really not necessary. So yeah� what a great day so far.
Being home is so hard.

About three hours later that same day:
Well, I wrote a letter after I typed that and I took a nice long shower and I felt better. My mom apologized for what she said as I was typing earlier. I just looked at her and didn�t say anything until she walked away.   But when I went downstairs to have cake and stuff for joey�s birthday I was nice and talked to her and stuff� so I guess it�s all good. It just sucks to hear that sort of thing from your mom.
Onto Peep (uncle pete) stopped by for Joey�s birthday too. That was really nice. I dig that guy. I think he has a lot of the same frustrations with the family that I do, even though we don�t talk about them specifically. It�s cool to know that someone understands.   Plus he�s super rad to talk to. I�ve seen him a lot more this summer than I have seen him in a while� its really nice. I still have to mail that letter�.argh! I�m soo bad with that stuff!

Yesterday I wanted to add more to my journal but my internet was being stupid and I couldn�t access geocities. I wanted to tell you more about my weekend with Kyle and some more of what I had been thinking about that I never got around to typing on Monday night. And then of course recount the loss of my GHHS bingo virginity to two brothers (bow chicka wow wow)

I think I will cover all of these things in reverse order� hehe keep it simple you know.

Bingo:
Hehe� bingo was pretty rad. I went with jeffy and jim lowery and if I had ten bucks to blow every week, I would surely become a junky. It�s more exciting than one would think and those old people are hilarious! But after about an hour, we were getting kinda tired of it. I never thought it was so complicated� Jim and I agreed that it was good to have someone more experienced with us when we lost our virginity, otherwise we would have been lost!
�B1� *cowbell rings* �shut the hell up!�
old people� what a treasure!!!

Helen thinks:

From work yesterday:
*phone rings*
�hello, economy floor and wall covering� �me
�hi Helen. Don�t you ever grow up. Just go find a sandbox somewhere and stay there and play forever. Growing up sucks� is my mom there?� � my 30 year old cousin Kevin

I just thought it was kinda cool to pick up the phone and get that as a sincere greeting. I only wish I could do what he said�

Other thoughts:
On of the reasons that I ended my last journal entry feeling crummy was that I was over analyzing and over thinking things again (shocker) and one of the things that I was over thinking was an especially brilliant thing that I heard in movie that I had seen recently. I was at work the next day thinking about it some more and this was kind of my train of thought:

That part of the movie was really good. It sounded so true. But wait! It was talking about an ideal aspect of life/love/etc. and my life/love/etc. isn�t like that that!
Maybe that means that there is something wrong with what I am doing.
Maybe this or that aspect of life/love/etc. should be changed
But wait a minute
That was a movie� and just like any great passage of any great book or movie, it was written by some dude (or chick) and what do they know.
Not only that, but they are adding this little bit of sentimental �wisdom� because it is nice and poetic and idealistic and fits into the plot
And you know that life is NOT like books or T.V. or movies. Duh.
So why should you try to apply their words to your life and your situations when their story line is different from yours.
And I said to myself �you dumbass, that is common sense� you and your poets and your actors. They aren�t living your life so why should they have any say in how you gauge and part of your life.�
And I smiled to myself and kept vacuuming the floor and rewound the movie that I�ve been living and watched it go by in fast forward and smiled to myself and said �see, your movie is even better than �good will hunting� and you don�t need any one else�s words because you are learning your own.�

Another thought that stemmed from this weekend�s experiences:

You�ve seen Fiddler on the Roof, right? And you know how one of the main themes is tradition and we look at that story and kind of laugh it off and say �thank goodness our society isn�t like that anymore.� Bah! It IS like that. Maybe even more so. I didn�t realize how much of our lives here revolve around the past until kyle came up this weekend. We were in two different social settings (my friends came over and we went to a neighbor�s grad. party) and in both cases pretty much all anyone talked about was the past.
I also noticed how much tradition governs what people here think do and the rules they make and what they allow. Its often not even a question of moral standards or beliefs or doing what we want to do� we just do what has been done, stick to the patterns, keep within the boundaries of the way things used to be since our grandparent�s time, live up to the old expectations, try not to kick up any dust or ruffle any feathers. (I noticed this especially when I had to talk to my parents about kyle staying in our house. Their first thought is that traditionally the boyfriend doesn�t stay in the house with the girlfriend�) There are so many responsibilities that come with the traditions� it weighs you down. I am just used to grinning and bearing it so I don�t even notice. But Kyle was an alien to all of it and that made me see it all differently too.
I wonder why we are all like that. Holding on to it all so much. I mean� most of what we do is reminisce when we get together- my friends, the neighbors, family, everyone� and it seems like we�re reaching some sort of point of stagnation. That�s really sad too because this is the time in our lives when we are capable of the most change and the most excitement and the most building of NEW things. I mean, for as much as I see my family (aunts uncles cousins grandparents etc.)- I don�t think that any of them really know anything that I�m about anymore�remembering is good� but I think that maybe in this area (or maybe its just my family and my town�) we spend more time in the past than we should.
A small example is the was it was on Saturday night when my crew from high school got together and kyle was there. We talked about old times� why is that when we all just spent the last 9 months on our own building new experiences and ideas and making new stories and becoming our own people. It seems like we could share those new stories and grow closer than we could if we just talked about our common past. But we don�t. We picked the past instead. Not only did that alienate kyle, (and paul too for that matter) but we also didn�t really get to know anything about eachother that we didn�t already know. It�s not just like this with my friends. It�s like this everywhere. Why? Hmm�