[Nov. 19th, 2006|09:50 pm]
I woke up this morning, [which was really this afternoon] and I didn't want to get out bed.
I didn't want to get up because I realise that every time I get out of bed, I end up making some kind of weird drama in my life, in my friend's lives. Pretty much everyday.
I got up, I made eggs and tea for Katie and myself.
I then got on my computer, [to delay doing homework.] I read Whitney's entry about going down to Fl. recently, and her thoughts on growing up and out, and change. I won't talk explicitly about Whitney's entry, because that's her entry, and I'm sure if you wanted to read what she had to write on her lj, you'd be friends with her yourself.
But it got me thinking. It pulled me back to a comment I made to Nicole and Katie last night. About how I worry about friends and the loss of because I am so far from home, and because thus my friends are a family structure, [whether they like it or not.] It got me thinking about my actual family structure.
I have excellent parents. Accepting, understanding individuals. I've had some problems with my father in the past, but it's gotten much better since I moved away. So much that I wouldn't consider them problems anymore. Admitadly we did have a fight last summer, but seriously, it's not really a problem. I have very ideal parents.
However, I have pretty much no extended family. My father neither has paitence for his mother, or his brother or his brother's family. [Or actually anyone else on Earth, except myself, my mother and anyone who will buy a car from him.] My paternal grandfather died when I was 5, I don't really remember the incident, what I know of it, is that my grandmother thinks she killed him. [She didn't like him smoking, so he used to walk down the road in Bulawayo, and smoke ciggarettes with an Indian shopkeeper in the afternoons and then bring milk and eggs home, (yes, life in post-colonial Zimbabwe was this idealistic for my family.) and one day while he was walking to the shop, he got hit by a car, and died. My grandmother believes that because she wouldn't let him be himself and smoke in the back garden, he died. (What I always found to be tragic about this story, was that my dad's family are German Jews, and they managed to survive in Germany during WWII and make it out to Africa, and then after surviving Nazis, he got hit by a car. What a waste.)]
Pretty much since then, my father has no paitence for his mother. Mostly because even after this point she still doesn't let people be themselves, and she uses classic jewish-mom-knife-in-back-slow-turn tactics. She also doesn't know that he doesn't like spaghetti after being his mother for 62 years, this really annoys him. It would annoy me if my mother didn't know my favourite food, (she does, and in turn I know hers - scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast.)
My mother's family are an equally peculiar situation. My mother is the strangest woman you will ever have the misfortune of meeting. I'm fairly confident no one in the entire world, except possibly me, understands her. (and even I wonder sometimes, but it's a fair trade, she understands me as explicitly as I understand her.) I have a tremendous amount of respect for my mother, due in no small part to the fact that I am convinced she knows the meaning of life. In either way, her incredibly 'difference' means that similarly to my father, she doesn't get along with people. She has time for people, but doesn't make friends, because she's emotionally self-suffcient. She disowned her family. Shortly after my grandmother suffered a stroke and was reduced from the Most Evil Human Being Ever To Walk The Face Of The Earth, to an angry old woman in a wheelchair squeezing a tennis ball and wishing she was dead, my mother ceased to want her family. She's one of four children, a sister - whom I have met once, and two brothers - both of whom she refuses to speak with. They are all reletively normal people, marriages, divorces, children, etc. my mother just doesn't like them. My maternal grandfather was the only member of her family she really liked, and I am fairly convinced that I was cheated by life because I never really knew him. [My entire relationship with my Grandpa Frank revolved around my mother taking me to his shop (he was an inventor, and a engineer and ran a hardware store.) where I would sit on the floor, in the dirty and put nuts and bolts and plugs in my mouth, while he asked "Curly, where's your school report?"] He died of a stomach cancer he didn't tell anyone about before I even started school.
So, that puts my little family structure at the grand count of: 3. Three people, my father: Harry, my mother: Karyn, and myself. They live in a big, empty house. Which is located on a dirt road in a shitty neighborhood in Lusaka, in the bottom of a garden that mostly resembles a rainforest. It has magnificent features, like an alge-riddled swimming pool, a dusty guest cottage, 7 different species of tropical palms, and an automatic washing line, which my mother constructed. They live there with two dogs: an overindulged shar-pei, named Ozzy, and a doe-eyed german shephard, named Maddie, and three cats; a bad-tempered fatty named, Chelsea, a self-important little princess, named Mergatrout, and Houdini-like Siamese named Snowy. I recall they had two fish, Benji and Frodo - but I think my mother gave them away. There are also a host of people who bustle around keeping the empty house clean and the ugly garden pruned.
But all of this is about 10,000 miles away in Africa. I am here in Virginia. I have reconciled with this.
When I moved to Virignia my parents made me promise I wasn't just on holiday, they wanted me to have a real home, in a country where I could get an education, a job and have future. I did just that. I am as dedicated as someone with no actual connection to place could be to DC/VA.
I have to go home for Christmas. I want to go home.
The weather will be splendid. The food will be phenominal. I will spend two weeks without email, or my cellphone, I will spend two weeks with my parents, my pets and my dear friend Rachel.
She and I will continue our long celebrated tradition of sitting around, drinking cold coca-colas, and never having a single serious converstation. [We had one serious converstation once, it ended in a fight, we have not done it since. Sometimes I think I should apply this theory with other friends, but I don't know if it would work as well as it does with Rachel.] I will also see Bwalya - who is one of my best friends from highschool - and someone I haven't seen in over a year. We will probably watch movies, talk about college, and I will try my best not to cry - I will fail.
From this it's fair to say there are just a handfull of things which make this place my home, it's really just my vacation spot. Virginia is my home.
My 10X10 half a bedroom at GMU is my home.
My handfull of close friends are my family [though I am not nearly theirs.]
My classes, and mind-numbing job - get me out of bed each day.
And the thought that I can get online, on Facebook or Myspace and possibly interact with everyone I left behind in Africa [who have now been scattered all over the globe.] really keeps me sane.
Whitney talked in her entry about 'growing up' and that moment where you go from being a child to being an adult. I don't think it has anything to do with moving out of your parents house, or paying your own bills, [abeit no nessecerly with your own money, but you have to physically 'do it'.] I did these things two and a half years ago. I don't know where the line between child and adult is. I don't know if I've crossed it. I know I'm certainly far-flung and having to sort through a lot of things without the help of two people who would be happy to help me.
[Last night, in various incarnations, it was pinpointed that I am idealistic [the converstation was about love - but I think it carries over into a whole vairety of life-issues] and thus foolish. I would concur, I'm very foolish - I say silly, thoughtless things - but then I am a fairly silly, thoughtless girl, with surprizingly little consideration for those around her, and I almost never look both ways when I cross the street, foolish.
Idealistic - incredibly - I mean, I am a pretty horrible bitch - quietly, in perhaps the worst way. But I have tremendous faith in others, and in the wonders of the world.
I really shouldn't be wasting my time writing this entry. I should be working, I have a lot of stuff to do. A big anthropolgy test - I am no where near ready for, and an English paper - which I am not in the mood for.
It's really not that much work, compared to those around me, but in my usually melodramatic way, I will make so much more of a big deal out of it than it is...obviously.]
(Note: the last two paragraphs utilize 'sarcasm' quite extensively. This is the ideal application of sarcasm, it should be almost undetectable...it's sutble nature is what makes is such a popular form. I just thought I'd, you know, point it out.]
- I'm an obnoxious sucker for trouble.
I woke up this morning, [which was really this afternoon] and I didn't want to get out bed.
I didn't want to get up because I realise that every time I get out of bed, I end up making some kind of weird drama in my life, in my friend's lives. Pretty much everyday.
I got up, I made eggs and tea for Katie and myself.
I then got on my computer, [to delay doing homework.] I read Whitney's entry about going down to Fl. recently, and her thoughts on growing up and out, and change. I won't talk explicitly about Whitney's entry, because that's her entry, and I'm sure if you wanted to read what she had to write on her lj, you'd be friends with her yourself.
But it got me thinking. It pulled me back to a comment I made to Nicole and Katie last night. About how I worry about friends and the loss of because I am so far from home, and because thus my friends are a family structure, [whether they like it or not.] It got me thinking about my actual family structure.
I have excellent parents. Accepting, understanding individuals. I've had some problems with my father in the past, but it's gotten much better since I moved away. So much that I wouldn't consider them problems anymore. Admitadly we did have a fight last summer, but seriously, it's not really a problem. I have very ideal parents.
However, I have pretty much no extended family. My father neither has paitence for his mother, or his brother or his brother's family. [Or actually anyone else on Earth, except myself, my mother and anyone who will buy a car from him.] My paternal grandfather died when I was 5, I don't really remember the incident, what I know of it, is that my grandmother thinks she killed him. [She didn't like him smoking, so he used to walk down the road in Bulawayo, and smoke ciggarettes with an Indian shopkeeper in the afternoons and then bring milk and eggs home, (yes, life in post-colonial Zimbabwe was this idealistic for my family.) and one day while he was walking to the shop, he got hit by a car, and died. My grandmother believes that because she wouldn't let him be himself and smoke in the back garden, he died. (What I always found to be tragic about this story, was that my dad's family are German Jews, and they managed to survive in Germany during WWII and make it out to Africa, and then after surviving Nazis, he got hit by a car. What a waste.)]
Pretty much since then, my father has no paitence for his mother. Mostly because even after this point she still doesn't let people be themselves, and she uses classic jewish-mom-knife-in-back-slow-turn tactics. She also doesn't know that he doesn't like spaghetti after being his mother for 62 years, this really annoys him. It would annoy me if my mother didn't know my favourite food, (she does, and in turn I know hers - scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast.)
My mother's family are an equally peculiar situation. My mother is the strangest woman you will ever have the misfortune of meeting. I'm fairly confident no one in the entire world, except possibly me, understands her. (and even I wonder sometimes, but it's a fair trade, she understands me as explicitly as I understand her.) I have a tremendous amount of respect for my mother, due in no small part to the fact that I am convinced she knows the meaning of life. In either way, her incredibly 'difference' means that similarly to my father, she doesn't get along with people. She has time for people, but doesn't make friends, because she's emotionally self-suffcient. She disowned her family. Shortly after my grandmother suffered a stroke and was reduced from the Most Evil Human Being Ever To Walk The Face Of The Earth, to an angry old woman in a wheelchair squeezing a tennis ball and wishing she was dead, my mother ceased to want her family. She's one of four children, a sister - whom I have met once, and two brothers - both of whom she refuses to speak with. They are all reletively normal people, marriages, divorces, children, etc. my mother just doesn't like them. My maternal grandfather was the only member of her family she really liked, and I am fairly convinced that I was cheated by life because I never really knew him. [My entire relationship with my Grandpa Frank revolved around my mother taking me to his shop (he was an inventor, and a engineer and ran a hardware store.) where I would sit on the floor, in the dirty and put nuts and bolts and plugs in my mouth, while he asked "Curly, where's your school report?"] He died of a stomach cancer he didn't tell anyone about before I even started school.
So, that puts my little family structure at the grand count of: 3. Three people, my father: Harry, my mother: Karyn, and myself. They live in a big, empty house. Which is located on a dirt road in a shitty neighborhood in Lusaka, in the bottom of a garden that mostly resembles a rainforest. It has magnificent features, like an alge-riddled swimming pool, a dusty guest cottage, 7 different species of tropical palms, and an automatic washing line, which my mother constructed. They live there with two dogs: an overindulged shar-pei, named Ozzy, and a doe-eyed german shephard, named Maddie, and three cats; a bad-tempered fatty named, Chelsea, a self-important little princess, named Mergatrout, and Houdini-like Siamese named Snowy. I recall they had two fish, Benji and Frodo - but I think my mother gave them away. There are also a host of people who bustle around keeping the empty house clean and the ugly garden pruned.
But all of this is about 10,000 miles away in Africa. I am here in Virginia. I have reconciled with this.
When I moved to Virignia my parents made me promise I wasn't just on holiday, they wanted me to have a real home, in a country where I could get an education, a job and have future. I did just that. I am as dedicated as someone with no actual connection to place could be to DC/VA.
I have to go home for Christmas. I want to go home.
The weather will be splendid. The food will be phenominal. I will spend two weeks without email, or my cellphone, I will spend two weeks with my parents, my pets and my dear friend Rachel.
She and I will continue our long celebrated tradition of sitting around, drinking cold coca-colas, and never having a single serious converstation. [We had one serious converstation once, it ended in a fight, we have not done it since. Sometimes I think I should apply this theory with other friends, but I don't know if it would work as well as it does with Rachel.] I will also see Bwalya - who is one of my best friends from highschool - and someone I haven't seen in over a year. We will probably watch movies, talk about college, and I will try my best not to cry - I will fail.
From this it's fair to say there are just a handfull of things which make this place my home, it's really just my vacation spot. Virginia is my home.
My 10X10 half a bedroom at GMU is my home.
My handfull of close friends are my family [though I am not nearly theirs.]
My classes, and mind-numbing job - get me out of bed each day.
And the thought that I can get online, on Facebook or Myspace and possibly interact with everyone I left behind in Africa [who have now been scattered all over the globe.] really keeps me sane.
Whitney talked in her entry about 'growing up' and that moment where you go from being a child to being an adult. I don't think it has anything to do with moving out of your parents house, or paying your own bills, [abeit no nessecerly with your own money, but you have to physically 'do it'.] I did these things two and a half years ago. I don't know where the line between child and adult is. I don't know if I've crossed it. I know I'm certainly far-flung and having to sort through a lot of things without the help of two people who would be happy to help me.
[Last night, in various incarnations, it was pinpointed that I am idealistic [the converstation was about love - but I think it carries over into a whole vairety of life-issues] and thus foolish. I would concur, I'm very foolish - I say silly, thoughtless things - but then I am a fairly silly, thoughtless girl, with surprizingly little consideration for those around her, and I almost never look both ways when I cross the street, foolish.
Idealistic - incredibly - I mean, I am a pretty horrible bitch - quietly, in perhaps the worst way. But I have tremendous faith in others, and in the wonders of the world.
I really shouldn't be wasting my time writing this entry. I should be working, I have a lot of stuff to do. A big anthropolgy test - I am no where near ready for, and an English paper - which I am not in the mood for.
It's really not that much work, compared to those around me, but in my usually melodramatic way, I will make so much more of a big deal out of it than it is...obviously.]
(Note: the last two paragraphs utilize 'sarcasm' quite extensively. This is the ideal application of sarcasm, it should be almost undetectable...it's sutble nature is what makes is such a popular form. I just thought I'd, you know, point it out.]
- I'm an obnoxious sucker for trouble.