Happy Birthday Brother

Today is my birthday. It is also my older brother's birthday. We are exactly three years apart. Sometimes I feel like we are twins and I miss him terribly. He will be home for the holidays and I'm hoping I can convince my little brother and sister to go with us to the bar and sing karaoke. And by that I mean I hope my brothers and sister will sing. There's no way I'm doing that.

Happy Birthday

Today is Eric and the little sister's birthday. I love them both and hope I go before them both.

Insanity Defense

There are many reasons why I fully expect to experience a psychotic break at some point in my life. The mental stability of some members of my immediate family being the main reason. This is not a very good example, but it is the most recent so it will do for now.

When I got home from work today my mom and dad are standing in the kitchen and the conversation is as follows:



Dad (in thick country accent): Hey Gabie, what is the gestational period of a squirrel?

Me: I don't know. Why would I know something like that?

Dad: I don't know, just thought you might. Well, maybe you can tell me the capitol of Alaska.

Me (Ashamed I did not know): ANCHORAGE!

Mom: Nooo...

Gabie (phone ringing): Let's see if Eric knows (anwers phone). Hey, what's the capitol of Alaska?

Eric: Juneau.

Gabie (to parents): Juneau.

Mom: That's what I thought.

Dad: That's what we thought.

Gabie (to eric): Do you know the gestational period of a squirrel?

Eric: No.

Gabie: Me neither. He doesn't know.

Dad: Get on that computer and look it up for me.

Gabie: Why didn't you just look in the encyclopedia?

Dad: I did, couldn't find it.



So, I looked it up and it varies, but approximately 40 days. I learned at least two things today when I got home from work so I'm not complaining. My dad asks me alot of very random questions thinking I will know the answer because I have a masters degree. About a month ago dad asked, "What's the melting point of copper?" I said, "I have no idea dad. Why would I know something like that?" He replied, "You went to college, I thought you might have learned that along the way." To which I reminded him, "I have a master's degree in Social Work dad. I don't remember learning the melting point of any metals in any of my social work classes."

Hospital Heaven

Occasionally while I am working a dead body will be rolled past me. Later the family comes to say goodbye and cry. I always think about what that family must be feeling because I have no idea. I have never lost anyone who was really close to me and I fear the day that happens (excluding my grandparents but I was so young I don't remember the feeling). My grandfather and his siblings have died in order of birth so far. My great aunt and her sister are the only remaining siblings. I guess that's how it should be. Happy Birthday little brother. I hope I go before you.

Grey skys with 100% chance of crazy

When I walked outside to get into my car this morning I was surrounded by an alarming color. I don't know if I should say the outside of my house, the world, mississippi, or what, but everything was blue/grey. When I looked at my skin in this light it was very very pale which isn't suprising if you know me, but was alarming to me nonetheless. It was a very calming, soothing color that was partnered with really shitty weather. Then my thoughts went to the psychiatric patients I work with everyday. Interesting how our thougth processes work isn't it? I was thinking they go through all those medications and all that talking and poking and proding and all they really need is laughter. In some cases laughter is the best medicine I think. Most of the patients are sad. Really fucking sad. And maybe if they had something and someone in their life to make them laugh they wouldn't be so sad. Or maybe not. I don't know. I just know they don't laugh very much when they are here and probably not much at all and that really fucking sucks cause I laugh alot. I laugh with my family and with my friends and with my co-workers. I'm not suggesting that this is all it takes. There are many other things that can be wrong besides just being really fucking sad but I think there should be laughter and music.

Self restraint

I dreamed about them again last night. The retards. I don't remember the actual clients I was dreaming about, but I've only ever known certain retards so it had to be them. In my dream I was the only staff watching the entire female cottage (26 people) when one of the ladies began to get out of hand and wouldn't self restrain (lay on the floor face down with hands behind back) so I had to leave them all to run over to the male cottage to get help. This is just all so silly really. I dream about them so often and never remember dreaming about the psychiatric patients I see although I'm sure that I do.

Holidays.

So, parts of that last post came true. Others did not. I stayed at E's place the night before so I didn't really wake up early. I went home and began cleaning and making the shit that I was responsible for. Mom had already made hers. Went to gather my ingredients and noticed one very important thing was missing. I knew Dad had taken it even though he would have had to look over the one that he had purchased in order to find mine. I yelled at Dad for being inconsiderate and forgetful which, looking back, was completely mean and unnecessary. Then I made a drink. The night before I made little brother clean some things and bring the fake christmas tree in from outside as I knew my mother would want us to begin decorating soon. My sister came in at some point and made her dish which consisted of alot of garlic. Then something amazing happened. I finished making my thing and cleaning what I could and started dragging out decorations (the stuff is cooking, things have been cleaned, there is nothing else to do) when my sister offered to do the dragging out of shit instead. I couldn't believe it. So she was doing that and I was doing something else and although the little brother didn't really do anything he sat in the living room and looked at pictures and said funny things while we did. E came over during all of this and contributed to the entertainment. We ate, we cleaned, we continued decorating. I'm really glad E was there and we had a good time just being together. He left a while later and I took a nap. My friend Dana and I went out that night for drinks and a good time was had by all.

Holidays?

The holidays always seem a bit depressing to me. Mostly because just being around my family stresses me out and this year I am living with my family once again. Bring it on depression! I vow to never be living at my parents house during the holidays again. Another depressing thing is I don't have alot of extended family so it's usually just me, mom dad, brother(s), sister, and great aunt. This year great aunt and older brother are in California but we will have the addition of E and possibly sister's boyfriend. This is how things will go: (Are you ready E? I'm predicting the future. He loves it when I do this.) I will wake up early, go downstairs, and view the mess that has become the kitchen over the past two days as my dad has begun to prepare the food and not clean up anything as he goes. My mood immediately becomes bitter because I will have to start cleaning becasue noone else is going to do it. I will also begin to prepare the one and only casserole I am in charge of making. My mother and sister will enter the kitchen at some point and begin preparing the casseroles or other food stuff they are in charge of making. My little brother will probably be sleeping or in his room watching TV because he never has to do anything inside of the house (bitter just thinking about it). The remainder of the morning will be spent cleaning up after everyone until it is time to eat. Eating will take approximately 20 minutes after the hours of preparation. Then there is more cleaning and putting stuff away into the refridgerator where there is no room for all the stuff. This will require more cleaning. Then? Mom and Dad will go sit in their recliners in the living room and fall asleep, little brother will go back up to his room, and sister will go to her boyfriend's house. This leaves me and E. E will go to New Orleans at some point and I will be left alone with the dog and the mess and my misery.

Things I loathe. People version.

People who stand on stairs or in entrance ways and chat.

People who walk on the left hand side of hallways or sidewalks.

People who try to get into an elevator before the people in it can get out.

Non-disabled people who take the elevator one floor up or down.

The neighborhood

So, I was going through some of the books at my parents house yesterday and discovered "The World According to Mister Rogers." How amazing does that sound? The vast amount of books inside my parents house is a frequent source of contention between myself and my mother. There are hundreds of books in that house. There are books on bookshelves, books in cabinets, books on tables, books in every bathroom, books in every room, and books stacked on the floor and in the corners. I moved back in with my parents at the end of August and have decided to do something about all the books. This makes my mother sad. There are, however, some amazing books and those will be taken with me when I move because I love those books. I love all the books really. Or maybe I love that my mother loves all those books and I love reading good books. I don't really know why my mother has collected so many books and why she has a hard time parting with them. Some of them, like the one by Mister Rogers, are just little readers that might take you an hour and might make a good gift. Others are hundreds of pages long and about subjects I couldn't be any less interested in reading about. My mother hasn't read all of the books either. She just likes to have them around I think. But there are definately, on average, more books coming in to the house than going out of the house. Something I always notice about other peoples' homes is whether or not there are any books. There will always be lots of books in mine.

Confessions

I am not a christian. I used to be until about 8 years ago. This is hard for some people to accept considering we are in Mississippi, but the hardest thing for me to accept is the assuming. People often assume that I am a christian, and are shocked when they discover I am not. Then there is a whole conversation consisting of me defending my beliefs, or lack thereof. I'm not shocked to discover someone is a christian and when I do, I do not ask them to explain to me why.
I changed my mind about chrisitianity for a number of reasons. The main reason being it just didn't make sense to me anymore. I was growing up and learning new things and decided I didn't want to be associated with such a hypocritical religion, or any religion for that matter. I think that if someone needs religion to be a part of their life then that is their business, but I don't need it to be a part of mine and I don't need people to tell me this is wrong and that I am going to hell or as one woman put it "your soul is already dead."

Bad boys

I was watching TV with my dad last night and lately that will consist of Tru TV or Cops or something like that. This brings up memories for my dad from when he was a cop and it is really interesting for me to hear these stoies because I have no recollection of him actually being a cop. It seems as if he had lived three or more different lives before becoming my dad. The same goes for my mother but she's not as into the storytelling. I wonder if I will tell my children (if I have children) stories about my life now.

Love life

E and I met over 10 years ago and neither of us will ever be able to pinpoint the exact date because, I suppose, it was nothing special at the time. Just another guy. Just another girl. Although he may tell it differently but I don't think he will. I know we knew each other fairly well in 1996 because his father recently gave me a picture of myself to give to E that I had initially given to him in 1996. It was not, however, the picture with the crimped hair that E had requested which was later given to him by my mother much to my dismay. I had written him a clever little note on the back and everything. I will have to check my old diary for the exact date but somewhere around this time, although I believe it was a year or so later, was when I had a short-lived crush on him but couldn't act on it because he was with another girl (not that my acting would have amounted to anything more than laughing at his jokes or batting my eyes). Later on when I was about a sophomore or Junior in high school E and I "dated" for about one month before I decided to call it off because it was getting to "serious." And by "dated" I mean made out with each other. Turns out this was a good move on my part because we had our first real grown up date on September 5th of this year. I am 26 and he is 28. Over the years we have been in and out of touch like good friends do when they go to college then move away for more college then get involved in other serious adult relationships. I moved back to this city at the end of August of this year and gave in to his many requests for a date. It's over two months later and we're in love. And I'm glad we didn't take things any further 10 years ago because it may have just fucked everything up. That was one of the first of many times my flighty, compulsive behavior led to things working out for the better.

People with Mental Retardation

I dreamed about the retards last night. I know I call them retards and tell funny stories, but those people changed me for the better I think. They creep into my dreams from time to time and I love that. Some of them would be so fucking happy to see me everyday even if it was only because I had something they wanted(usually mail). Sometimes I would just stare at them and wonder what the hell they were thinking about when they were staring off into space because it had to be something but they just didn't have the ability to explain. And, god, were they funny. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Also in my dream somebody died but was resusitated. I was watching it happen through a window where a blind had been closed but not all the way and I was peeping through the space. I tend to believe that dreams are subconsious thoughts playing out, but I don't even remember thinking about the retards at all yesterday.