Mi Casa

After meeting up with Amy for a chat and lunch, I came home to my house and called James while swinging on my hammock in my new backyard. I still can't believe I live here, but it's definitely looking more and more like me as I roll out my old rugs, unpack my books, hang up my paintings, find new nesting spots for each of my owls who have been stuck in boxes for way too long, and keep forcing more and more people to let me play host to them now that I finally have a hang-out of my own.

Mom finally came over the weekend and helped me hang up my orange CD shelves. She brought her old records and we decided to use my lime green rolling side table as a stand for my old record player and for storing my records under the CD shelves, making a nice music station in the corner by my couch. She also reminded me of something only Mom would remember-- to lay down cute blue and white contact paper under the blue and white dishes that I haven't been able to use since my mom gave them to me for Christmas before the wedding that never happened with Charles, so we worked on that together, too.

It's still hard to hear her talk so much about her boyfriend, but I tried to show more patience and we managed to have some good mother/daughter time. I keep forgetting she needs to be reminded that I love her as much as I keep hoping to see or hear signs of it from her. At one point, I talked about another errand I needed to run while we were getting some supplies at Home Depot. She asked if I wanted to take her to my house so she could start working on things while I went to get the second errand done, at which point I said, "No, I want you to come with me. I don't know why you don't seem to get this concept, but I've been wanting your COMPANY more than your labor..." Her reaction of surprised relief and giddiness made me feel a little sad that it took me spelling it out for her to feel what I thought was obvious in all of my concerns.

I do love my home, though. It's going to be such a nice place to come home to when things at school get busy again...

Defeated Expectations

Trying to be grateful for my beautiful new home with the killer yard at a killer price, but I'm just sad. When I moved out to California from D.C., I had fears about leaving a city I loved for a state where I knew I really didn't fit in, even though I grew up here, but the things I thought I could count on to be great assets were:
1) I'd be close to family.
2) That meant, first of all, that we could work through some of our sadness and be there for each other.
3) I also figured we'd save a lot of money in flying me home for Christmas.
4) I imagined having my mom there to help me decorate my new apartment when I finally got one and helping me create works of art for my students in my classroom.

All of those things have been defeated:
1) We're spread out through the state in ways I never thought we would: Jon is in a halfway house in El Monte, Mom is living with a boyfriend who seems to be a royal scam artist and I can't bear to watch the shit hit the fan, Dad is in the house alone, and Matt is planning a move to New York, or Florida, or San Francisco, depending on the week-- anywhere far away from here.
2) We can't seem to sit in the same room together, let alone work through sadness.
3) We've stopped observing Christmas.
4) Mom is too busy with the new boyfriend mentioned above to help-- she had to work Tuesday, naturally, but she planned a trip to Phoenix to meet Mark's parents this weekend instead of helping me get the apartment in order as we had planned.

Dad got Jon out of his house for a few days to help us with the move, and I kept noticing how intricate the designs were and kept telling him how delightful they were. I just found it on my couch and found this written on the top: "Love should be forever; I die alone."

We're either royally good at putting on the emo act, or we're truly tragic.