When I got out of college I moved to DC to get away from my family ... and a few years later, my father died and my mother and sister moved to Maryland. They've now moved away, but not quite far enough. I'm expected to rent a car and drive up there for Christmas, they occasionally come down here for a day. I STILL get lectures on how to live my life. (I'll be 55 on my next birthday.)

Thinking about describing my relationship with my family makes my head hurt, and I do that every week in therapy anyway!

I have instigated Phase I of the Nora Rest Plan and must implement it by getting off the internet and into bed.

Wow. Y'all were chatty today, and I wasn't at work very long.

but she she kind of jumped when she saw me sitting on my porch and the asking for a smoke seemed like a "Fuck. Got caught sneaking around. Must cover ass."

She may have been looking to poke around in the garages, or even more harmlessly, she may regularly go dig around for bottles in the recycling back there, and nobody's caught her yet. So even with a "FUCK. Got caught sneaking reaction," it may have been mostly harmless. Also homeless people sometimes just have that kind of reaction to anybody they encounter unexpectedly.

But it's a weird cultural divide in some ways. JZ's parents are convinced I dislike them because I don't want to see them every weekend. Whereas from my perspective I spend 10x more time seeing them than I do my own family, and that's Quite Enough. Shit I've seen JZ's brothers (who both live in other states) far more often than my own family.

OTOH, I fully expect Emmett to call me weekly when he's in college and I'll undoubtedly have opinions about his and Matilda's life choices.

This whole post made me laugh and laugh, David.

I'm actually pretty close to my family, love them dearly, have never particularly gotten any drama from them (though I may have given some in my time), and I still moved thousands of miles away from my mom and hundreds away from my dad (actually the move brought me colser to him, but whatever), and wasn't all that communicative with them until S came into my life. When we first got together, I thought she talked to her family way too much (sometimes once a day), and she was surprised at how little I called them (though I call much more often now).

And as close as she is with her family, she's also still glad to be thousands of miles away from them.

I miss mine a bunch, particularly K. That period of time when she was in Florida, then D.C., then Seattle sucked. I have an aunt and six cousins up here though. Sometimes I go see one of my cousin's twins play football. They are all waaaaaaaay the frack up near Denton though.

So hey! Dancing was great, and I had a wonderful time.

However, I apparently set myself on fire.

This is not nearly as bad as it sounds, as my companions freaked out and started patting down my head, putting the fire out before we got to the pour-beer-and-tea-on-her stage. But I'm still pulling bits of char out of my head.

I bet this is going to make a great story one day! Hell, it makes a great story now.

NO SETTING YOUR LOVELY HAIR ON FIRE, SA!

Heh. I did that once. It didn't look really noticably bad. Of course my hairdresser freaked the fuck out.

Back when I had long hippie hair, I set my bangs on fire more than once.

Hey, it was an accident! I was having a very engrossing conversation on the possibility of god.

Anyway, it was only a big of a singe. I was due for a quick snip anyhow. *grin*

When you set yourself on fire - pour tea, but PLEASE DON'T throw alcohol on yourself!!!

I'm glad you're okay and that you were having fun.

Also, the Easter Aisle in my local Walgreen's captured me and forced me to buy a bag of regular Cadbury mini-eggs and Royal Dark Cadbury mini-eggs and two Royal Dark Bunnies with Raspberry Filling. (I wonder if Clovis has a dark choco bunny evil initiative?)