December 2002 Archives

Coming home at holidays feels a bit to me like stalking the ghosts of my past. I lived in this town for eighteen years, if you count the tiny town across the bay as being part of this one. I grew up with the salt air and humidity curling waves into my hair -- it wasn't until college that I learned that I actually have straight hair.

I always feel a bit tense when I leave the house in this town, nervous that I'll run into someone who knew me back when. I seldom do.

...a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

So Claudia and I found a great deal on flights to Europe -- two for the price of one, even -- but she's being difficult and saying it wouldn't be financially responsible of her to go with me.

I -want- to go backpacking in Europe -- even if it's in March. Why the hell is it so hard to find someone else who wants to do that, too?

I was fixing to write, "How could it only be Wednesday?" when I realized that it is actually Tuesday.

Hey, how's it going?

Yeah, yeah, I missed you, too.

Me, I've been busy rearranging my computer life. For my birthday/Christmas present from my mom, I got most of the money I needed for a new iMac, which I've been coveting since they were first announced. I only just now added my weblog entry page back to my bookmarks.

I've been playing with Sims and kittens, mostly, and watching DVDs. Most of them have been fairly unnotable, with the exception of "Before Sunrise," which is a Richard Linklater film. If you know anything about Richard Linklater films, you'll know that this is a movie driven completely by dialogue, with nothing even approaching conflict/resolution. The movie itself was good, but perhaps not great, but it put me back into my minor backpacking-in-Europe obsession.

How old is too old, exactly, to take a couple of months to wander around Europe and see what there is to see? I'm hoping the number is something higher than 28 or 29, because I'm not sure when I'll have time (or money) before then.

(I -do- have a voucher for a ticket on AirCanada. I suppose one could backpack Canada, although the summer might be better suited for that than the springtime would be.)

It all bears a bit of thought.

Friday was my birthday. You can only turn 26 once, right?

I was really looking forward to having my birthday off from work, home in Corpus Christi with my family around. I have a great family, really. We're almost all female, so my mom and my aunts and I do a lot of hard work. This birthday, the project was building a path in my grandmother's backyard (for her birthday, which is coming up in a couple of weeks).

So we were working outside, which was fine, since the weather was beautiful, but I spent the whole day worrying about Ani, who had a fever of 106F (!!) when we took her to the vet that morning. She'd been lethargic for a couple of days by then, and her appetite was waning, and we very quickly became oncerned. Losing a kitten can make you very gun-shy when another kitty gets sick.

So most of the afternoon was spent at my grandmother's house, with me worried about my kitten. Between the stress and the previous night's turkey, I spent most of the day nauseous and not terribly hungry. That evening, though, I was rather dismayed to find out that no one was allowed to eat the left-over mashed potatoes. Everyone else (vegetarians excluded) was eating turkey sandwiches, cauliflower, and peas. Since the turkey made me queasy, I had cauliflower and peas for my birthday dinner.

I don't even like peas.

Yeah, I'm pitiful.

That night started another round of force-feeding for poor Ani, who got skinnier and weaker as the day went by, and then I sat around and played computer games to distract me.

It was around 10:30 when we heard the distinctive glub glub that made us rush to the bathroom to see what was up. What was up was the sewage from the lines, which was flooding the bathtub.

It was awful.

There was raw sewage filling up both bathrooms, and it started to flow onto the floor of my mom's bathroom. One emergency plumber and two hours later, it was finally all fixed and cleaned up -- but not soon enough to prevent me from finishing my birthday up to my elbows in shit.

Literally.

I'm just hoping it's not an omen for the year to come. As a precautionary measure, I've decided to ask for a replay. I'll be re-celebrating my birthday this Friday, eating sushi with friends. If anything can make amends for a shitty birthday, sushi can.

It makes perfect sense to me.