Stranger than Fiction

That's my family! I think this is where I say, "bless their hearts."

My brother saw my dad for dinner last night. "That's not so odd," you say. It was a nice three hour visit. What *is* odd about it: my dad lives in Minnesota and my brother lives in Texas. Bro just got a new car and offered the 'rents his used Toyota. So dad flew in, had dinner, picked up my brother's old car, got ansty, and took off. It kind of made sense because he wanted to be north of the Dallas/FW area before rush hour, so if he drove at night, he'd get a jump the next morning. But it still almost made me snarf my cereal when my brother said that dad came to Texas for just a couple of hours.

My brother also managed to split his forehead open taking SCUBA lessons. Suave and coordinated, that's us! Apparently he was doing the remove and replace the BC(D) maneuver where you somersault back into the vest. It looks cool and I think it's the easiest way to get back in without wrestling. (That and I like doing somersaults in water.) Well, my brother somersaulted his forehead into the bottom of his tank. CLANG He gets in smoothly on the second try. Usually, he is the smooth operator of the family. Just every so often 'blood will out'.

He wasn't worried until he got out of the pool and someone rushed over with a ginormous pile of paper towels. He hadn't even realized he was bleeding. He's fine; it was just a flesh wound. And since he sells medical equipment to hospitals, he's already had a couple offers to get stitched or stapled up, gratis, but apparently a bandaid did the trick. And to top it off, he's learning to dive so he can take his sort of ex-girlfriend diving before she deploys. Odd. They're currently "friends" which is cool. I've gone on a scuba vacation with a friend who was not a date and that worked out, so I can see that it will be fine. But didn't she try to break up with him 3 months ago? Yeah, she's just preemptively dissociating, but still. Odd.

My mom is still working at the library. This would be a dream job - close to home, good hours, good benefits, work stays at work, it's a library - except that her boss is pure poison and my mother has this odd need to prove to [I don't know who] that she can tough this out. But it's been seven, eight years now! There are other jobs with benefits! She has the highest seniority because most people quit after three months and everyone else with sense has transfered or retired. I don't know why someone with plenty of skills and an outgoing personality who works hard and gets stuff done is so set on staying in a lousy job. We can't really talk about it any more. For a while, I didn't have much of a leg to stand on, but I did go out, figure out how to get a better job, and got one.

Not that I am trouble free. I'm headed to the acupunturist tomorrow to see if I can get my sleep back under control. I had another couch nap today. My East Coast time shift only worked until Sunday. Saturday, I sprang out of bed, cleaned the bathroom, exercised, hung out with a couple friends. Sunday, I slept allllll damn day. Don't know why. Saturday's efforts didn't require 24 hours of recovery. Now I'm messed up again. Speaking of which, it's bedtime. And I can't type much longer without coming up with an embarrassing example of why I'm just like the rest of my family.