Andare, Partire, Tornare ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- and on top of it all, the wisdom teeth get pulled in two weeks Haven't written in a few days, mostly because life has been rather hectic. Bemo and I are dog/housesitting, and although the house we're currently occupying is quite nice (although very large: we rattle around inside it like two peas in a giant pod), the computer is not only slow, but hella slow. Glaciers moving across the continent slow. Powered by two mice running in a wheel and connected to the internet by two tin cans and a piece of grubby string slow. I finally got to spend a little time with my sister. It was entertaining, although it involved pushing a dresser up a flight of stairs - it also involved giggling, farting, and bad jokes, so you know we must have been entertaining ourselves. She seems to be having a great time at school, although they're working her hard. Indeed, the only fly in the ointment is mom's insistence that she come home every weekend to do massive chores, which means that she doesn't get much time to herself to relax. And mom is cycling through some pretty interesting moods: normal, panicked, weepy, whiny, cheerful, angry...and whenever a mood shifts, I get a phone call at work. A long phone call. A phone call talking about how she tried to kill a snake that she found in the back yard by spraying it with the hose and then pouring rubbing alcohol on it, but she wasn't sure she actually got it with the alcohol because it was under the pergola and it was probably poisonous and she'll be bitten and die. Except it was probably a garter snake, since I don't think copperheads are taking up residence in her back yard. Hope the poor little thing made it to freedom before the deluge of rubbing alcohol. Listening to Boop's stories about what she's doing and what she plans to do have, naturally, made me start thinking about what I was doing at her age. Frankly, I come out the loser in that comparison! I had been so stupid when it came to choosing colleges, thinking that because for one brief year that I had been fascinated by the ocean, I was cut out to be a marine biologist. If only I had gone through this phase earlier! I would have snapped out of it faster, and my college choices would have made more sense. Instead, I was left with good ole George Mason University, which isn't a bad place to go academically, but is dismal if you want any sort of a traditional college experience. Going to Penn State later made up for some of it, but by that point I was married and the whole thing just wasn't the same. And rereading _Tam Lin_ doesn't help! It's the same way with Bemo - although he didn't mind GMu as much, he does wistfully wish he had gotten better grades so he could have taken the scholarship the music department at James Madison wanted to give him. He got the scholarship, but didn't get accepted to the school itself. Blah. Playing what-if eventually just leaves you feeling depressed. But I do think that I'm pretty damn happy where I am *now*, so I try to stifle that sort of thinking. Sometimes. Work was kind of shitty as well. Not work work, but work at the Mart, anyway - things were massively hectic both days, and I had to deal with Insane Woman, aka the Serial Returner. Woman buys massive amounts of stuff, then tries to return it over a period of months, most of it dingy and reeking of cigarette smoke by this point. She must smoke twelve packs a day to deliver the full nicotine goodness into every single object she touches. I'd better pack this in - I should try to call the Diva again, and see if I can catch him in his office. 10:51 a.m. - 2003-09-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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