on your journey, i will bless you...

I've got a temporary job, and believe me when I say it's in the sticks. I have to drive through a forest and past a field of cows to reach it, and while I'm there I can't get a signal on my cell phone. The pay is good and the work is easy but monotonous. I don't know what I really want to do, but I do want to interact with people at least once in a while, and in this job I only interact with filing cabinets. It's okay, but it's not worth a ten-hour day (nine hours at work, plus over a half-hour drive each way). I'm planning to keep it just until the end of this week.

But there are unexpected bonuses. It's just down the street from a lovely little cemetery, very secluded, well-maintained, and all smelling of pine trees. I ate my lunch there today and did some research for Find-a-Grave. I'm planning to go back again tomorrow.

Sable and I walked over to Grandma's today, picked six (six!) cucumbers from the garden, and spoke some French. I love speaking French with Grandma.

Oh, history might be in the making right now. My mom is watching CNN and says that Obama has claimed the Democratic nomination but Clinton still refuses to concede. I'm hoping that Obama will win, partially just because his name is the only one that I can really fit in well at the end of my song of the US presidents. Too bad he hasn't made that part of his platform.

A scene from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix made the cover of the entertainment section in the newspaper yesterday. Now is a wonderful time for a Harry Potter fan to be alive – the fifth movie and the seventh book being released within two weeks of each other. BR is hosting a ton of events to celebrate the release of the book next week, and I wish I could stay here and attend them. But Sara and I are going back to LC on Monday, and I’m looking forward to that. My room is so small, and Sara has been staying with me for so long that she’s suffocating me, and she probably feels the same way. And I know LC will be hosting some good events too – some midnight parties, at least. Sara thinks that we should go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the same day that the book is released. July 21!

Mom isn’t going to be there when Sara and I arrive next week. She’s taking a trip to North Carolina to look for a job. She’s been talking about moving there for a while now, but what makes things complicated is that Sara recently told me she might go to graduate school in North Carolina. I’m worried that the two of them (Sara especially) will expect me to follow them there whether I want to or not, and I’m not even sure if I want to leave Louisiana after I get back from France. I know that France feels scary because it’s new and foreign and Louisiana feels safe because it’s old and familiar. I don’t want to stay somewhere just because it feels safe, but I’ve lived my entire life in Louisiana, and my family is here, so a big part of me is always going to be here, too. And if/when Mom does move to North Carolina, she’s going to do two things, one of which I’m really dreading: 1) Have Sable put to sleep. 2) Take Adam with her. #1 is still too terrible to think about, and as for #2, I’d like to know how Adam is going to go to college without TOPS. When Mom gets back, I’m going to try to ask her some serious questions, although that will probably just make her mad. It’s depressing to think how different things might be if Dad was still alive.

SIX … MORE … DAYS!

May 2006.

Lesson Learned: "The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley [go oft awry]." -- Robert Burns. This is lesson comes from Robert Burns's "To a Mouse," which we covered in Dr. Moore's English class, and it is something I wouldn't have minded learning once. But it was frustrating to learn it so well, and on so many separate occassions, all in one month. But perhaps this is lesson that merits repeated learnings, because it essentially teaches you that sometimes things go wrong no matter how hard you try and that it isn't your fault.

Well, as of today, only two weeks left of my junior year. I don't understand it. My last semester dragged on for what felt like years, but this semester seems to have flown by so quickly. I wonder why.

Lesson Learned: Staying focused for the last two weeks for the semester is harder than staying focused for all the other weeks put together.

Lesson Learned: It never rains but it pours. Case in Point: I spent all of this semester and last semester applying and being interviewed for jobs that I never got. Now, after eight months of having no job offers, I suddenly have two!

Of all the aggravating things that Mom does -- and there are many -- the absolute worst is that she starts bawling if anyone within a ten-mile radius of her so much as things about Dad. And she'll probably keep doing this for the rest of her life.

Music of the Month: "Hips Don't Lie," by Shakira with Wyclef Jean; "Where'd You Go?" by Fort Minor; and "Over My Head," by The Fray.

Shakespeare Quote of the Month: Vernon: "As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer." -- King Henry IV.

New Mexico.

Lesson Learned: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Case in Point: As of today, I've been here in New Mexico for exactly one day, and never before have I so missed the humidity, Gulf breezes, green grass, Magnolias, Oaks, and other tall trees of Louisiana.

There is a mountain above Las Cruces, New Mexico, with a big white "A" painted on it. I'm serious! The "A" clearly visible from our hotel window, and from just about everywhere else in town, it seems. Who the hell put it up there? And why? I know it stood for "Adulterer" in Hester Prynne's case, but I can't imagine that's what it's supposed to mean here.

So, after three different people tried to speak to me in Spanish in three days (and someone else probably will tomorrow), majoring in French has never felt so useless.

The coins are brighter here in New Mexico, as if they're newer. I think it's all this sun that makes them so shiny; honestly, I haven't seen shade for a few hundred miles, and I haven't felt a raindrop since before we left Louisiana.

I've never done drugs, but I imagine feeling high must feel similar to standing in the middle of the desert of White Sands, New Mexico. The hot sun beating down in the middle of blindingly-white sand dunes stretching as far as I could see. Easily the most unreal experience of my life. Ever.

Dad's Memorial Service.
(Held May 20, 2006, Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Cruces, NM.)

Dad's memorial service went off beautifully, despite all my worries. Mom and Celeste were both there, and they didn't kill each other. Mom cried so much that we all nearly drowned, but I had expected that. Ben decided not to come at the last minute, but I guess I should have expected that, too (we are talking about Ben, after all). I had promised myself that I wouldn't cry, and I didn't, although I came close. But a lot of people did cry whom I had never seen cry before, including Steve, Mark, and Michael, which was weird.

Everyone who spoke at the memorial service talked about what a wonderful, loving father Dad had been. In fact, it seemed the only people who didn't say he was a great father were his kids. My mom said that Dad never complained that his kids always wanted to eat at McDonald's, never minded eating another meal of chicken and macaroni and cheese. Another relative (I can't remember who exactly) said something to the effect that Dad never uttered a swear word in his life. Both are completely untrue. I am not trying to insult or belittle my father's memory, but nor do I want him to remembered as something he wasn't. He swore often, and I have several memories of him and Mom swearing at each other, repeatedly and loudly (one, for example, was one night when we were driving out of Houston after visiting Mark and Vickie and we got lost). He complained that I watched my "Peter Pan" movies too often, and he told that the soap operas I watched were crap. I usually had to say "Dad" four or five times before he would hear me, and at least once a week, he would get into his car and drive away to somewhere without saying a word to anybody, and he didn't reappear until several hours later. Dad wasn't a saint; Dad was a man, with the same imperfections as all men.