Mobius trip
Song of the Hour: Please Don’t Pass Me By, my baby Cohen
Okkervil River (I just can’t stop….)
Dear. It’s been so long, I don’t know where to begin.
1. Lots of personal-stuff changes I don’t really want to get into here… hard, but in the end, for the best.
2. Lots of school issues– I’m unhappy with my grades(B’s), and I’ve got 3 term papers to do and I’ve never done one before (you know, where they just expect you to be working on it). I have no topics for any of them.
3. I registered for classes yesterday, realizing that if I don’t get them all just right, I won’t graduate next December and I can’t get an appointment with an advisor until next month. Right now I’ve got 3 literature classes, Math for Idiots II, the hardest psych class in the program, and to top it off, a P.E. class. UNC is like high school- you have to take 2 physical activities to graduate. As I senior, I was firts in line and signed up for horseback riding. Horseback riding. In winter. Secretly, I worry for the horse that has to carry me around; I’m not exactly a lightweight, on the other hand, I can’t really weigh more than John Wayne. So we’ll see. Anyway, that’s 17 hours and a shitload of reading. But I want out, and that’s what I’ll have to do.
4. It’s odd, having quit my job, I seem to be having an even harder time getting my work done. Maybe I don’t feel the pressure as much and that’s bad for me. Maybe it’s something else. Regardless, I have a current discipline problem. Midterms start next week, so I should probably get over that ASAP.
5. On the other hand, I’ve been able to spend a lot more time with joss. He’s consistently amazing. He has his moments, don’t get me wrong, stubborn as a goddamn mule. But he calls me all the time just to say he loves me; he makes me little presents; and has started really, really trying to be good in school. He’s gotten mostly good conduct reports, and the best sign of all, seems really proud of that. He used to not care so much, shrugging and blaming everyone else in the world until I was pulling my hair out and yelling at him to take some responsibility. But he’s growing up mentally and asking more mature questions about stories and life and seriously wants to understand things. (I tried to explain the periodic table of the elements on the way to school [missed bus #457] and how everything is made out of the same 120 types of atoms and he totally didn’t believe me 
How cute is that?)
Brian had to teach a class in Wilmington on a saturday a couple weeks ago, and Joss and I went him for a day at the beach. I’ll post a few pics at the end, because such adorability must be shared.
6. My one true love is getting married in just two weeks, which will put me in Boston for the weekend of the 20th. I am so excited to see my Sara I can hardly contain myself. Sure, there will be lots of stuff going on, but this is not the point. As a demonstration of my undying devotion, I even went so far as to go shopping in the women’s section of clothes. I haven’t done that in years, and frankly, it was a little traumatizing. But nothing’s too good for my baby girl. 2 weeks!
7. I am incredibly worried about my brother’s kid. Trent’s a year and a half older than Joss, maybe an inch taller, and essentially a shaking pile of skin and bone. He’s always been incredibly skinny, but my dad told me he’s lost a lot of weight, and there was NOWHERE to lose it from. He chews around his fingernails until they bleed, and laughs like a hyena at nothing. He’s so disturbed I can’t even talk to my brother about it, wouldn’t know where to begin. I know Jimmy’s gotten better with his child-rearing techniques, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s just too late for Trent. If you can think of any tactful ways to address it, let me know. My brother and his wife are still living together, but from what I can tell, as far as she’s concerned the marraige is still over. Ugh, be glad you’re you and not them.
8. On a happier note, I think I’ve finally reached some kind of reconcilliation with the nihilistic meaninglessness of life and how to live. I’m still not ready to break it down into a communicable fashion, but I’m done with the ambivalence at least. Although, ironically enough, as soon as I hit a comfortable place, my personality teacher gave a lecture on the PEA hormone, and how it’s been identified as the chemical responsible for "falling in love". If you’re interested, an academic look is available, as is the more practical side . Essentially, it’s only produced for a few years, and then trails off to other hormone productions that produce more level-headed feelings. Anyway, in a single class he undermined some of my reasoning– but instead of starting over, I’m trying to incorporate. If you’ve been in a long term relationship, I think it’s definitely worth looking at. Seriously. The articles I linked to are straight-forward and mostly jargon free.
9. The beach:
Joss on the windy pier at Kure Beach.
Joss being "cool", as per his tough-guy exterior.
Joss playing "Dance, Dance Revolution" which I had never seen him do before, and was absolutly worth 10 times the $.75 it cost me. For real, he was either perfect, or disatrously wrong. There was no in between.
Can you see my hair? It was so windy I had to put it up with a hinged paper clip. I think I got paper cuts on my eyes.
Baby Bit finally getting out of the water after having drifted like a mile from where he got in. Did he even notice we were becoming specs on the horizon? of course not. Nor did it register that he moved through and played with 4 different families in the water, and that that was some kind of guage of distance. Attentive, that one.
I gave him the camera on the way back, and he, of his own creative volition, took pictures that told a little story. He also discovered the zoom. As you can see, this story is about getting hit in the face:
OK. So it’s a little bizarre, but you have to admit, precious.
there’s one more I took later, and it’s the only one I’ve ever taken where you can see the two-tone color of his eyes. You’ll probably have to click on it to see, but really– how does that happen?
That’s all the news that’s fit to print. Christ, I have GOT to study. I’ll try not to wait so long next time, keep it shorter.
Love.
