o-h-i-o!

I'm insanely busy with work, school and life in general, which explains the whole 'not blogging' thing. So what's new?

Well, I did go home to visit the family this past weekend, which was quite nice. And my sister and I took a drive out to visit our alma mater. They're changing to many things there, it's kind of weird. Their bicentinnal is coming up in 2009, so they have this big initiative called First in 2009, which apparently involves spending lots and lots of money on new buildings. They built maybe one new building the entire four years I was at Miami, and in the past 3 years, they've built or rebuilt about 5 or 6. I know I sound like an old crank, but it seems like every bit of spare land was being built on. It's just kind of depressing. Though it was good to know that Mac And Joe's was still serving awesome burgers.

dinner with Republicans

you know what's scary - having to do math to figure out your own age, because you honestly can't remember what it is. I'm 28, and I think for the last couple of weeks, I've thought I was 27.

I've been thinking about a discussion/argument I had with some family members while I was at home over Christmas.

I have three Republican family members. My cousin, Jamie, is a single, 33 year old UPS driver, who goes hunting on weekends, drives a really big truck, and enjoys NASCAR. He believes government should butt the hell out of most everything, and that includes deciding who can get married and who can get abortions. Quote: "Why the hell should I care if gays get married? It doesn't affect me!"

The other two are my aunt and uncle, who are extremely religious and conservative. They believe Bush is mostly on the right track in Iraq, and have sent me email forwards that advocate that the problems in the Middle East are all the fault of the Jews. Their daughter is a rebel who is currently single, 24, and has two children under 5 and several thousand dollars worth of tattoos, and is on welfare while getting an associate's degree.

During a "discussion" on Christmas Day of the problems of the world, we came to talk about poverty and such. I forwarded the opinion that large corporations who make a huge profit, which mostly goes to shareholders and CEOs, need to be paying their low-level employees a higher wage that will at least get them up above the poverty line (since the poverty line for a family of three is $16,090 (in 2005), and the federal minimum wage of $5.15 (in 2007) equals an income of $10,712 (before taxes)).

My aunt and uncle thought this was ridiculous, that people who can't make enough money should be taken care of through government programs. I said "How can you be Republicans if you believe that the government should be responsible for taking care of people? You understand that Republicans want smaller government and lower taxes, right?" They laughed at me like I had no idea what I was talking about. They then proceeded to tell me that some people just naturally deserve to make more money than other people. When I tried to explain that people who make more money are usually able to do so because they grow up in a naturally advantagous situation (supportive family, educational opportunties, etc), they still insisted that some people are just more deserving, and that corporations don't have to pay people any more than the market requires, and if those people can't get jobs that pay more, then they should just get government help, but they see no problem with the fact that these large corporations can make record profits, but not pay their employees a living wage or provide adequate health care.

My cousin is of the opinion that most people are just lazy and don't work hard enough, but that most people are capable of working and making more money, they just choose not to. As much as his attitude annoys me, I respect it much more than I respect my aunt and uncle's, because at least it shows a recognition that those people are deserving of having more - I told my aunt that I thought her attitude completely lacked humanity, for her to think that some people are just better than others, by accident of birth or situation.

My family often mocks my cousin for his out-there views and his very loud way of expressing them, but I think at the deeper levels, he and I are not so dissimilar - we just have different ways of approaching things. He is, I think, an old-school Republican - the type that believe that less government is better government, and less taxes are better. My aunt and uncle represent the new, neo-con Republicans that have taken over the party in the last 15 years or so, who are extremely religious, morally judgemental and classist.

I know which ones I prefer.

you can pick your nose...

every holiday season, i go through the same mental back-and-forth regarding my relationship with my father (or lack thereof). I haven't spoken to him in at least 3 years now.

he's not a bad person, in that he isn't abusive or dangerous, or even really mean. it's more that he's so completely self-absorbed and thoughtless, that he has no sense of responsibility to others or recognition of how his actions affect others.

my parents divorced when i was 6, and as I was growing up, I saw my father every other weekend. my parents were polite to each other, but as i grew older, both of them had plenty of bad things to say about the other. My father and I were a lot alike when i was a young teenager, and we got along really well. He and my sister never really connected, maybe because they were so different, maybe because she was only 3 at the time of the divorce, whatever. as i went through my rebellious "i hate my mother" stage, my dad and i were great friends.

As an adult, I grew to see more and more that my Dad is incredibly self-absorbed. He would promise to help me with money for school, and then not follow through (one part of the reason I was several thousand dollars in debt was that he promised to help me with money for textbooks, and then didn't, so I bought them with credit cards because I didn't want to tell my mother). He was rude or dismissive of my sister, because they just didn't get each other. He often forgot events I had, and especially events for my sister, or else wouldn't come because he freaked out in crowds.

That gets to the crux of it - he had bipolar disorder that wasn't treated for a while, and then once it was, he went on and off his medication. For a while when I was in college and after I moved to Chicago, he was an alcoholic. By this point, I was having less and less to do with him, but every few months or so, I'd do my duty and call him, or he'd call me, and he'd be on the phone drunk, telling me how proud he was of me, how great i am and how much he loves me. However, he couldn't tell you my job, or probably what my college degree was in, or really anything about my life at all.

My sister and I would go to see him at Christmas, and it would be incredibly awkward, and he'd treat my sister really shabbily, and usually he'd either be drunk or well on his way, and all we could do was try to get away. The last time we visited at Christmas, about three years ago, he was a complete asshole to my sister the minute we walked in the door (who at that point was STILL trying to talk to him now and then - she's a much better and more forgiving person than I). She didn't have her coat off yet, and he was berating her about not giving our grandmother her current address or something. She barely spoke to him the rest of the day, and the rest of the day, whenever he could pin me down, he kept asking me why my sister hated him. At this point, we both wrote him off. I haven't spoken to him since, and I don't know if she has.

Part of me feels like I should talk to him, and say "do you realize what a complete tool you've been?" but he's infamous for not recognizing his own responsibility in any problem. Even when I was in college and my sister in high school, he would berate us for not calling him often enough, nevermind that he never called us himself, and always sent birthday cards late or not at all, had no pictures of us up in his house, didn't come to my sister's high school graduation or my college graduation.

Four years ago (before the final break up), he had a heart attack (and surgery, I think), and we found out because his wife's sister's cousin (or something like that) works with my mom. Not because anyone bothered to call and tell us. I still don't know all that happened. Two years ago was my great-grandmother's 90th birthday party. Neither I, nor my sister who lives in the area, got an invite (we're close with our great grandmother, and only her, but she didn't plan the party).

Part of me thinks I should just let it go. There's nothing that I need from him. If he cared, he'd do something about it. And another part of me thinks "well, he's my father. I should have a relationship with him."

Another part of me sees him as "there but for the grace of god go I." A lot of the things I don't like about myself are things I don't like about him, and I feel like being around him would bring those traits out more, as it did when I was younger.

This is pretty rambling, because there's so much backstory and so many angry, annoyed, bitter and conflicted feelings. Any comments are welcome.

random thoughts

It's almost dark outside. This is a rather depressing state of life in Chicago, which is on the eastern side of the Central time zone. It's dark at 4:00 in the winter.

This week, I'm almost too busy to think straight. I'm pretty sure next week will be no better. Thankfully, the quarter ends in two weeks and I'll have a month-long break. But I will miss the hilarity of kindergarten (where i'm told my hair is pretty several times a day).

It looks like the Democrats might win back the House, but the real question is "Will they do anything with it?" Like, say, take Bush to task? Work on fixing the budget or even better, No Child Left Behind? I'm hopeful, but I can only have my heart broken so many times.

I'm discovering that the longer I live in the city, the more I am completely unlike my family. I'm sure that being the black sheep is the reason I ended up here in the first place, but every time I see them, I feel like we get each other a little bit less.