life b.i.s. (before idiot stepdad)

do i even remember what life pre-patrick was like? vaguely.

tonight it was on my mind more than it usually is when i'm home as i laid on the couch, holding my mother's hand watching muppet family christmas [which, by the way, is only the best christmas movie ever!]. we talked and quoted fozzie bear and laughed and ate sushi. this is the way mothers and daughters should interact. i'm just sure of it.

it seems to me that since the addition to our "family" 3 years ago, she is more weary trying to make everyone fit together. it's like she's got two puzzles and she's trying to make them into one, lovely picture. i don't think it's working very well. on top of that aspect, i look around our house, and there are things that should have been repaired years ago. like, when they first broke. pre-patrick, my mother simply would have called someone to fix it, and that would have been that. but now there is a hole in our ceiling in the walkway to the living room from the kitchen that is covered over with a page from a magazine and some duct tape [i suppose it sounds worse than it is]. our dishwasher hasn't worked since he moved in, and he managed to convince my mother that we don't need to fix it/get a new one/just get rid of it [not that we're allergic to doing dishes here...but seriously]. we used to have real greens on our banister coming down the stairs at christmas [i'm allowed to want nostalgic things at christmas. and plastic greens are tacky]. i had to remind my family to get a decent christmas tree this year [as last year's specimen literally made me cry it was so ugly].

patrick is impractical and rarely sober. i feel like he has worn my poor mother out as she tries to love him as he is. which is a wreck. he tries to be some philosophical musician, but it is a facade. and he doesn't fool me.

eff you patrick. eff you. *edited 1/21*

tonight on his way home, driving his rover with a bac of apparently .2, he totaled his car, broke his collarbone and his left tibia or something, and is in the hospital at present. i am sure the appropriate response in this matter would be to have some kind of sympathy for him, and hope for him to get better as soon as possible, but i am just pissed off. i'm only going to be home for a week, which i'm sure now is going to be filled with taking care of this big baby instead of spending as much time with my mother as i can bear. selfish as it is, more than anything i'm mad that he is ruining christmas. ok, so i'm melodramatic.

but seriously, what will this mean for my mom now? as a framing contractor, he can't work when half his bones are snapped in half. ugh. i am disgusted with his lack of responsibility for his actions. driving home after drinking so much [or at all, really] is a ridiculous action for a 50-year old man [or anyone] to take. you have to be an idiot to be so wasted and think it's a good idea to drive home. i know exactly when i should not drive if i'm drinking. i would just think some people would have better sense.

sorry this is the worst, most disjunctive post ever. i suck at blogging.

thank God for friends who call at exactly the right moment about something completely random and end up entertaining me for 45 minutes to make me feel better.

being home makes me thoughtful

allow me to begin this post by letting everyone know that today i bought pants that were a size smaller than i have bought in 3 years. thank you dancing and never having time for a proper meal. and there was much rejoicing.

for some reason i always seem to do inordinate amounts of thinking while i'm at home. my first thought when i arrived in the q on wednesday afternoon was how i was already ready to leave again. the q is busier and more densely packed than last i remember, as it always is, and i must fight the urge to turn my car around and head back toward the turnpike. i got home and spent the evening with my mother and stepdad. they listened to my pre-screening cd, and stepdad insisted i let him call the music director at our church so i could sing sunday. whatever. mom and i watched the holiday, which is delightful, but...i don't know, but sometimes she just rubs me the wrong way. it always becomes very clear to me very quickly that i can never live here again. i can already foresee that christmas break is going to be a considerable hardship in some ways. i just don't live here anymore. things that i once found endearing now repel me.

on the upside, i do enjoy my mother's company most of the time, and it is nice to see her after months of being in the roc.

another thing that has recently come to my attention is that my very best friends here, "the beautifuls," and i have grown into completely different women with completely different lives. katy is off in dc working at an aids hospice and living in community. betsy is learning how to spend her day with seven-year-olds in central pa. melissa is practically engaged to her farmer-type boyfriend and is finishing a degree in literature of some sort near philadelphia. it's certainly not a bad thing that we are growing up, and differently, but...we are disjunctive now somehow.
melissa doesn't understand betsy's lifestyle choices (nothing crazy, but we are all old enough to drink now...), and katy seems distant (or maybe just tired?), as her life in dc is much richer than our night out in the q. even wife and i, who have had sympathetic growing pains for the past 3 years, are now on markedly different paths.

i love these girls, and thankfully, we can usually pick up where we left off, but there was something different in our meeting tonight. no longer are we high school friends whose friendship carried into college. now we are these independent, nearly adult women who were, in another life, inseparable.

i'll be back with more thoughts i'm sure.