the voices dying with a dying fall

Song of the Hour: Trouble by Elliott Smith; The Red Walls

I’ve
been a mess this month. Trudging through finals, figuring out how to
graduate, waking up and realizing I had like 3 days to do all my
Christmas shopping, scrambling to get Joss’ gifts together (half of
which are already destroyed), going to Kinston to see my brother and
his fam (a whole different nightmare), and then helping my dad get
ready for a month in China– it’s been busy.

My dad left
Friday night, driving to new york with his future (step)son-in-law, and
went through a typical  holiday traveling nightmare.  waiting in the
airport 6 hours, getting on the plane, some kind of fuel leak, wait
another 3 hours in the terminal, get on another plane, the bathrooms
don’t work or something, get off again, wait for a 3rd plane, get on,
leave– having spent roughly 15 hours on the airport grounds. I think
he’s at the Great Wall right now, eating holiday fudge made by my
godmother. It’s soooo surreal I don’t quite know what to do with
myself. I mean, my dad’s in China. Getting married.
Does that blow anyone else’s mind? It’ll take a year for her to move to
the states… maybe I’ll figure this out by then. Perhaps "My Chinese
Step-Mom" will make a good novel.

Christmas dinner at my
sister-in-law’s grandmother’s house was even more traumatizing this
year. Oh, in case I didn’t mention it, Terry left my brother. By "left"
I mean moved in with her mother, who lives across the street. That way
my brother can look out the window every few hours at night and see
that she doesn’t get home until 4 in the morning. I don’t think much
has been officially filed yet, but it’s a matter of time. The boys (12
and 5) are staying with my brother, though they have a time-share
going. Christmas morning involved the kids waking up at 8, and my
brother insisting that no one open presents until Terry got there. And
she showed up at 10. So picture 3 rowdy young boys on Christmas morning
having to sit on their hands for 2 hours. It was ugly. Jimmy tried to
pass the time by reading the damn nativity story, which of course made
it worse. By noon, when we left to go to Terry’s grandmother’s house,
it was tense to say the least.
Terry has like 5 aunts. One of them
is the bane of my existence. Loud, outspoken, nosy and domineering.
Terry’s family gets serious kicks out of what they consider to be
subtle sexual innuendo. They literally "rib" each other. They’re
breathing southern stereotypes, as much as I hate to say it. I’ve
always minded my P’s and Q’s with these people, because they’re not
going to go away, you know? But with about 18 people in a 20×20 room,
asking my dad about his trip to China and impending marriage, I hear
the banal Aunt ask my dad, "You gonna get yourself some sponge baths,
Mr. Jimmy? (giggle giggle) This Chinese lady gonna give you some sponge
baths?" I snapped. She was maybe 5 feet from me, and I stared at her
until she looked at me and I asked, "What the hell is wrong with you?"
As much as I HATE making people uncomfortable, I did get a tiny amount
of satisfaction watching her squirm and realize that I didn’t find her
comments appropriate. I ignored her for about an hour, but guilt got to
me and I was nice to her the rest of the afternoon. I can only hope
there will come a holiday when I don’t have to talk to Those People.
One year where I don’t have to listen to why there needs to be a wall
around south Texas, or how a Clinton is an anti-christ. 17 years I’ve
seen these people every goddamn christmas.
Well, at least we didn’t have to sing happy birthday to baby jesus this year. No, I’m not kidding.

Brian
got me season 1 of MacGyver  for Christmas, and I’ve been having a lot
of fun watching it with Joss. I think he’s getting into the science stuff
a little bit, which of course makes me happy. He’s full of interesting
observations– "Mom, Macgyver kisses a lot of different girls, but he
doesn’t marry  any of them!"
No, sweety, no he doesn’t.  I really loved the show when I was little,
and it’s cool to watch Joss try to figure out exactly what that man is
going to do with a bucket, a towel, a swiss army knife, and match to
get those gypsies out of prison. It’s a kid-friendly show, which is
refreshing. There’s still violence, but it’s manageable.

I’ve
got to see a lot of friends this holiday, though it hasn’t been the
same without DD. Andy’s back from London, I had lunch with Amanda, I
got to have lunch with Sara and her fam, and to catch up with Suzy.
It’s been great. I do wonder what’s happened to Chrissy, David K., and
Owen– but I just assume that if they’re around they’ll let me know.

Andy
and I had lunch at my old Waffle house stomping ground. We’re half-way
into some dissection of the life of Jesus or something, when I happen
to get a good look at the cook, and have a freakin’ heart attack. Joss’
grandmother still works there. My mind shut down for a few minutes. She
either didn’t see me, didn’t recognize me, or didn’t acknowledge me– I
don’t know. Joss has her eyes– it’s a little scary, really. By the
time I worked up the nerve to talk to her, she had left. The doorway to
the only half of Joss’ medical history I’ll ever have, and I can’t work
up the nerve to talk to her. I don’t know if any of you remember her,
but she’s pretty intimidating. Didn’t she threatened to kill me a
couple times? I think the last time I spoke her, I had let her babysit
an infant Joss. I can’t remember what happened after that… I had seen
her and she wouldn’t talk to me. Damn, this is years ago and my memory
is shit. I’m a neurotic mess. I need get over it and just ask her a few
questions– that’s not hard, right? The worst that can happen is that
she won’t talk to me again. I have no idea why I’m so anxious. I just
am. Maybe I’ll try again this weekend…

As a Joss side note, he has confessed that he is in love with Ms. Miley Cyrus, aka Hanna Montana.

How cute is that?  He says that the age difference (she’s 15) won’t be
a problem. He’s very confident. As entertaining as his marrying into
the Cyrus family would be, I hope this phase passes soon.

Ok, I’m done. I forgot anything else I was going to tell you.
I’ll leave you with some pics, and write again should I remember the rest.

   
usually Joss/Andy rough-housing

My nephews, the matching set.

If I’ve told you anything about Trent, this one says it all…

My favorite part of this post-grad picture is how Joss’ mouth is crammed full of cookies.

Happy New Year!!

Song of the hour: Closing down my house by Will Johnson

My work is done.
I don’t know how I did it exactly, but it’s done. All the papers. All the reading. All the scrambling. The last week is a bit of a blur, but I have about 40 pages of written essays to show for it, and few more wrinkles about the eyes. It’s now Check For Grades Obsessively Time, which is going ok so far with an A posted for 20th century American Lit. Slightly surprising since I got a B on the midterm. I can only assume that my paper on black masculinity in Beloved was pleasing to my prof. and weighted heavily.

Brian reminded me last night of the moment 4 1/2 years ago in cup a joe when I was looking through the want ads, bitching about how I was never going to get a decent job, when I said "Fuck it, I’m going back to college"  and despite my extreme aversion to paperwork I found myself in English 101 exactly 2 weeks later. 
Four and a half years.
Is that a long time? It certainly feels like a long time. An eternity, really.  In that time I’ve been to two weddings; made 5 friends I’ll be keeping and lost 2 others; raised my GPA from 2.25 to 3.7something; Joss has gone from kindergarten to 4th grade; I’ve read 28 textbooks 40 novels 17 plays and have written more papers than I could possibly count; I have given exactly 4 oral reports and escaped 6 others; have driven over 20,000 miles commuting; cut open 2 fetal pigs and an octopus; became an atheist, a nihilist, and settled for some abstract existentialism; and I have to say, I have learned a whole hell of a lot.

I want to write more, but I really need to go buy that cap and gown and stuff.
I’ll write again when it’s official.

love.

If anyone is interested, my graduation ceremony will be held at The Dean Smith Center at 2:00 on Sunday, December 16th.
Since
it’s a mid-year graduation, there’s plenty of space and there’s no need
for tickets. It’s an hour long speech and then some standing or
something, so really, I don’t even want to sit through it– but I’m
going to. It certainly isn’t anything I’d inflict on my friends, unless
they have a deep down love of The Dull or have masochistic tendencies.
My main focus is to show Joss how much fun it is to graduate from college:
"See? Mommy’s wearing a funny hat!"

But Andy guilted me into mentioning it, so there. It is mentioned.

I have 7 more nightmarish days in front of me. Tuesday, I have both of my English exams– at 8 am and at noon. 8 am people. For a 3 hour Shakespeare essay. Followed by 3 hours of Pynchon & Beloved and post-modernism, which I still can’t define.

eh. I have 30 more pages to write.
much love…

(please deposit your explanations of Post-Modernism in the comments. Thank you.)