despite the title I'm not feeling really down. Maybe a little sad, but only a little.

Molasses had to head out on a business trip to DC and we got up at the butt crack of dawn for it. I got back at nine thirty and was thinking of going back to sleep and though I'm tired I just couldn't bring myself to lay down and let go. I kept puttering around, reading a play, putting things away, reading a Dave Barry book, surfing porn as well as journals, etc, trying not to feel lonely.

I feel like I'm being dumb. People deal with this stuff all the time, for longer amounts of time. We don't even live together, in fact I have plans this evening to get dinner with a friend.... So why do I feel so lost? Mostly I hope he travels safely, but he'll be back in two days. sheesh...

I pride myself on doing things myself for myself and not really needing anyone but sometimes people move in and make me so comfortable with their presence, that just a little change in our fairs tends to throw me. Although sometimes it's my own damned fault. In the past I've found myself not only getting used to someone's presence but relying on it heavily for my self-worth. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all I've hated those times in my life and have tried not lean so heavily on Molasses.

Anyway, onward and upward.... It's not like I don't have plenty of stuff to do on my own time. In fact there are projects and personal internal-type bits of work I've been meaning to get to but haven't because I tend to spend my weekends kicking it with Molasses instead of reading or hunched over a computer.

Yesterday we had a really nice day, saw Panic Room, which wasn't quite as intense as people had indicated but was still really fun and very well thought-out. And, dang that Forest Whitaker guy is good. }:> Went and spent an hour and half at Barnes and Noble, killing my need to spend my bonus }:D My arms were literally aching by the time I made it to the casheir, and man, it's been *way* too long since that's happened. Bought: Dave Barry's book Big Trouble, a bit fat copy of HarperCollins' Spanish/English Dictionary, Midshipman Bolitho - a maritime novel for my dad for Father's Day (he's insanely easy to shop for), Life's Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom for Mom on (you guessed it) Mother's Day, The Everything Pregnancy for my sister, three books on directing theatre, And three CDs - "Verve Masters"Django Reinhart, Mad About Guitars (which I hope will have a lot of Spanish guitar since that's what I asked for) and the soundtrack to Y tu Mama, Tambien.

Today I think I'll run up to my parents house and get my mail that's been piling up there, go by Auto Zone and get a new head lamp for my car(the passenger-side one burned out), and swing by The Game Castle and see what's what. Then head back to my place and settle in to wait until Space Dog is available.

*sighs* Now I'm thinking about my sister. silly, foolish little girl. I want to protect her of course, but there's just no saving a girl from herself. When my mom approached me on her (my mom's) birthday about my sister and how she wished we'd talk to each other like real sisters and have a real sisterly relationship (to which I responded by biting back a laugh and trying gently to explain that we *did* have a sisterly relationship based primarily on tolerance and secondarily on ignoring each others' existence) I was worried that she might be driving at trying to get me to convince Ana to ditch her no-account disrespectful boyfriend. My mom is far too direct and stubborn to meddle, so it didn't seem likely then and seems even less so now. And I would have hated to entertain the thought then, but now I wish that that had been the extent of it. *sighs*

All of my thoughts revolve around how this is going to muck up my sister's life, how her seemingly unhappy relationship is going to be extended even longer now, and especially how this is new ammo in my mother's holster whenever she feels like she doesn't want to trust us. When I spoke with my mom yesterday they still hadn't given the keys to my sister's car back to her (my sister) because my mom wanted some kind of proof that they could trust her again. Because she might screw up again if she had the freedom of her car again...like i don't know... get pregnant some more or something.

seriously, people

I vaguely want to be on my sister's side because I totally understand the pressure of living with the family and just how nuts that place can drive a person, and it's not like I didn't have my fair share of my mom yelling at me for the impropriety staying out late and coming home at all hours and sleeping over at guy's apartments and such. It's not like I don't know what it's like to lie right to my parent's faces just to get them off my back. I mean things could have easily gotten screwed up for me. *very* easily. I think the only reason I didn't completely screw up was that the thought of disease scares the holy living crap out of me.

There are some good parts though, when I was eleven my mom explained sex to me (there were no birds and bees, I still don't know what the reference is, and neither does my mom). But it also came with several stern warnings, not the least of which was that if she ever knew I was sleeping around, she promised, I'd get kicked out of the house and out of the family. She'd never acknowledge me or take me back. She said this when I was eleven. That kept me scared till I was twenty. Then I had friends' couches to crash on.... But the fact that she has continued to let Ana live at home more or less rent-free is a good sign, even if that has had the side-effect of elliciting more emotional abuse from dear old Mom.

And I also want to be on Ana's because life is cruel enough, and one of it's cruel jokes is the fact that my mom think's she is helping by saying things like, "Well yes, in fact we do think you are a failure, but you are still family and you might have turned your back on our morals but we won't turn our backs on you."

*grinds teeth* god, Mom must get a thrill looking at having nine month's worth of field days.

But then again Ana can really tick me off. My parents told her to clean her (nee our) room and she came back with telling them to get me to clean out my half of the bookcase. Hearing this made me mad and then my mom got upset cause I was getting upset. I tried to make it clear that I was upset that a) Ana wanted all vestiges of me out of the house and b) Ana couldn't tell me her own damned self. But I don't think I quite achieved that. The bookcase is quite majestic as it goes from the floor to the ceiling, is about five feet across, partitioned in the middle into two bookcases, has a center compartment with a door that can swing down and hang from cords or fold up and lock onto a magnet and has effectively seven shelves. You can't buy this bookcase anywhere because my dad built it for us. When I lived was in high school the top three shelves and the very bottom one were filled with books and I even had to use the top-most shelf on Ana's side. Right before going off to college I cleared out the shelves of several books I had bought over the years that were geared for readers from grade four to roughly junior high and gave them to the Children's Hospital of Orange County. That brought me down to about two and a half shelves and has hovered around there, increasing slightly with gaming books. I have plenty of other books that were bought since heading off to college and they live with me at my apartment taking up the whole of a three-shelf bookcase from Ikea and another book/CD/VHS shelved-holder type thing purchased at Best Buy. Inferior products both, but I don't like making my dad labor overmuch. His hobby is his hobby and I don't like assigning him work.

So anyway, I don't really have room at the moment for all the books at my parents' house that are mine and making room would not be easy, mostly because there is none, unless I upgraded one of the bookcases or moved on into the closet or kitchen.

*sigh*

"Life is what happens when you're making other plans."
--John Lennon

"If you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans."
--Jewish Saying