I am baking chocolate gooey butter cake. Once it's out of the oven I need to take a shower and figure out what I'm wearing to the club. Also I've had a couple glasses of wine--this bottle of vinho verde is much better than the other one I bought recently. Mm.

We love to do Ghost Walks! We've done them in Boston, San Francisco, Charleston, Wilmington (NC), London (Jack the Ripper tour), Key West. So fun (and we're total non-believers)!

I am either going to buy myself a custom eshakti dress or a something off my polyvore page for my trip to NYC, but I am not going to do it until time is closer. If I keep losing weight I might be a size smaller. motivation.

Good plan, msbelle!

It took me until the canes were down to their last inch or so, but I finally tweaked the improvised windscreen into reasonable effectiveness. I am so my father's daughter sometimes.

Pretty sure a second glass of wine is a bad idea and dinner is a good idea. Better make that happen...

I have to take Noah to Boy Scouts. DO NOT WANT.

Does Gary give brother lessons? Cause I swear, I'm about ready to move and not tell mine where I am.

So here's some of the story on my older brother, word vomit, tl;dr, and inappropriate humor (I feel that I am channelling Onision at the end but I *can't* get it out of my head):

A year and a half ago he had a job, a house, a fiancé, a wedding date, and a car suitable for future babies.

He lost it all by getting a DUI while working. So, things had not been awesome even when he had it "all".

He'd been living with our parents in my old room for the past year and a half. Somehow in all of this he still had his drivers license. He accrued another DUI with an impending yet repeatedly delayed court date, and another pending date for shoplifting. He'd been pretty much consistently drunk for eighteen months. He'd been robbing my parents and brother, stealing their cars, stealing more liquor and hiding it around the house. He's been too drunk to get into rehab. He showed up on the first day hallucinating and then sent him to detox at the hospital. He spent a week out of it and then tricked my dad into taking him home by saying the clinic gave his bed away, which turned out to be untrue. So his entry got delayed another week. He was due to go in this past Tuesday. At some point in all of this my dad had shooed him out of the garage playing with a length of rope. (Months prior to this he'd gotten a hold of one of families many hand guns, and sat out in the rain contemplating using it. My parents didn't find out until he came inside and put the gun on the coffee table and confessed his intentions. I got the call from my mom that he was "gone" and my first thought was that he'd gone on the lam again.

He had hung himself under the tree he "loved so much" (which is also where he'd sat with the gun). Dad found him. He'd left a note that mom summarized as there being nothing left for him to live for.

She'd changed the sheets on my bed, but a lot of his things are still in the room, including one if his duicide notes (they'd been finding them off and on over the months) and a bunch of love sonnets to his ex-fiancé. In the note he apologized to my parents and brother. I was strangely absent. Either because his brain was so fried by then that he'd actually forgotten me, or he gave as much of a shit about me as I him and/or was quite aware of my avoidance of him in how I planned my family visits.

Two weeks ago his ex got married, my parents think this was his last straw.

Mum told my little brother, who works at a restaurant that the ex's parent frequent to not say a word to them, and if he has to, to not tell their daughter for as long as possible. No time is a good time, but mom doesn't want to tarnish the event of her wedding and honeymoon with that kind of burden.

In other awfulness, my moms best friend couldn't help but share the juicy details of the suicide with a neighbor, at her place of employ, whose own son had hung himself ten months prior. So then the poor woman ends up crying at work. So inappropriate. But this is also the woman who got me in trouble at work by gossiping. This was another person my mom didn't want to tell as long as possible. She came over to offer her condolences and was more messed up about her own son than my mom was about hers.

I don't know what makes my mom so stoic, that she knew this was coming, was unavoidable, and also relieved, or her career working in nursing homes. Or as she called them "places you send your parents to die".

Also, I am getting annoyed at flood of "if there's anything I can do, just let me know". I want F to make me tiramisu for my birthday, I want ED to give me a raise. I want J to buy me beer. I want to be cooked steak and given a gift certificate for a massage. I feel like I need to send them on quests "find the feather of a golden swan born under a blue moon". "Capture the tears of a Wiener schnitzel after it's been cooked".

And I have tell these two terrible jokes so that I can ensure my place in hell: Mom wants to cut down the hemlock out back now. Hey! That tree never hurt nobody! Gallows humor, I know.

Julie, that's so much to deal with. Take care of your own self first and foremost.I MEAN THAT!!!

Juliebird, how awful. What a clusterfuck. I feel for you and your family

Julie, sorry for what you and your family are going through. We're here for you. And hey, we like gallows humor if it works for you ;)