All the Big Feelings

A girl at work had what seems like a nervous breakdown today. She had to go home early and everything. This really pissed off another girl, which pissed me off.

Basically, between Robin Williams killing himself and the way the police are handling themselves in St. Louis, last week was really intense. Today this girl was going on and on about how scary it is, how she can't sleep, she looks at police differently, etc. The catch? She's white. She basically worked herself into a tizzy (I am a terrible person because of wondering if she was faking it to cut out of work early) and got sent home.

The girl who got pissed off is black. She started going on and on about white privilege and how spoiled rich white bitches have no right to be upset or scared. For the most part I agree with her, but I didn't need to hear her bitch about it for three hours straight, and finally just packed up my stuff and left to finish working at home.

I'm reading this book that takes place in a concentration camps during WWII, and when it got really intense I started to calm down by thinking, "Well it was hell, but it can't ever happen again." But then I realized ... people probably thought a lot of the things going on in Ferguson couldn't happen, after all the work done in the 60's. So maybe the girl from work is right to be scared. Maybe none of us are safe, after all.

Time to get an attack-service dog

My friend Bianca always gets attacked by mosquitoes. She gives off some pheromone or something that makes them seek her out. Even in a room full of other people Bianca will be the only one to get bitten.

I think Alex has a special victim pheromone. She got mugged yesterday - some guy followed her into the building and was punching her while trying to steal her keys. The doorman came back from his break or wherever he was and pulled the guy off Alex and threw him out. This is not her first mugging. It needs to be the last. Josh and I are signing her up for krav maga. Alex needs to get more aggressive.

Maybe I should appreciate Josh more

This girl Brittany at work is a bit of a hot mess personally who sort of barely pulls it together for the job. I know an outrageous amount of personal stuff about her. Including that her semi live-in boyfriend is an actual reformed heroin user who is a current alcoholic who has gout. His job is being a money-taker/security guard at a strip club. He's also the custodian who mops the floors after guys watching the strippers make them sticky. So yeah.

Anyway apparently they have this super difficult relationship, and he's like, a terrible boyfriend. For Christmas, Brittany wanted one of four specific things, each under $50. He gave her some weird art he bought off Etsy from an ex-girlfriend that doesn't go with her house. He doesn't understand why she didn't love it. But the sex is really amazing.

They get in big dramatic fights on the regular, and he cheated on her once, and she's cheated on him many times. She told me they have an open relationship, so I'm a little confused on the cheating part, but I don't ask too many questions.

So, recently this other guy who has been with his girlfriend for something like a hundred years, has told Brittany he'll break up with his girlfriend for her. And she's (had sex with him) really into him, and really into how stable he is, with a real job, and no drama. But Brittany was conflicted because she couldn't quite bring herself to break up with the first guy.

She constantly threatens to break up with the boyfriend, and I told her this new guy sounds perfect, and she should go for it. But she couldn't bring herself to. Except that last week, they got in a huge fight about going to some concert (the details were a little murky and I don't care enough about the minute details to ask Brittany to clarify) and really DID break up.

Today Brittany was crying on and off all day and when she came back from lunch she was hysterical. So hysterical that when she tried to tell me why, I couldn't understand what she was saying. Finally this guy overheard and told me "he gave back the house keys." Oh. Well that seems sort of final I guess. Brittany said the boyfriend told her he'll never be able to be the kind of boyfriend she wants (which I agree with) because he doesn't even think he'll be alive for a long time. I didn't quite understand that logic - it seems like a cop out to me.

All that to say that 1. Brittany is not doing her share of work which means there's more for me and the other person to do, 2. Sometimes work is like a soap opera, and 3. I need to be much nicer to Josh and thank him for not doing crack. Heroin. Whatever.

Midlife crisis

Alex has been crying for three hours. She claims she just realized she's not going to dance for the rest of her life. Which she's known before - I know, because we've talked about it. I don't want to be rude but ... this all seems kind of over-dramatic. Going from room to room, trying to get everyone to agree with how very crushing it is. Refusing to eat dinner because it's all just too sad.

She disagrees. Alex is all "end of an ERA" and talking about being in mourning and anything that has been discussed in front of her has been twisted around to be sad. Josh said it's as if she's having a midlife crisis - that she's woken up and realized there will soon come a day when she doesn't spend four or five hours each day doing what she loves and being in her happy place.

He is a better person than I am. All I want is for at least one sister, if not both, to move out. Plus, to get a dog.

How to be sure

Sometimes you're not sure if you're missing someone, or you're just out of your normal routine. So here's a tip: if you find yourself awake at 4 in the morning googling what the periodic table of elements looks like in the native language of the country you're currently in? You miss your sister. If you find yourself watching a documentary about auditions at a Russian ballet school? You miss your sister. If you find yourself constantly looking at the time to calculate the time in New York? You miss your sisters, and are trying to guess exactly what they're doing in that very moment. There IS such a thing as too close.

*For the person who asked, the book was The Test, by Patricia Gussin. It was actually really good aside from it incorporating 9/11 into the storyline.

Sneaks up on you

We ran into this super-nice group of kids also traipsing around. So we hung out with them for a couple of days. Then we were moving on, to a different city. One of the girls gave me a little going away present - isn't that the cutest thing ever? She gave me a little snack for the trip, a small bouquet of local flowers she'd picked, and a book to read. So sweet, right?

The day after that, I started reading the book. It was really good. I started drinking less at night so I could wake up earlier and read while Josh was still sleeping. We had this talk about how we do best with little spurts of separation every couple of days, and when Josh mentioned wanting to go check out a museum I had no interest in, it was a perfect time to read more.

So I'm reading, reading, and then one of the main characters goes to New York for a meeting. Where a fucking plane slams into the building she's in, she watches people jumping to their deaths, she is running across Brooklyn Bridge barefoot, she turns around to watch the towers crumble.

I don't know what's worse - that it snuck up on me and I hadn't seen it coming, or once it happened that stopping reading wasn't an option. So Josh came back to find me sitting in the bathtub crying when he'd left a perfectly happy girl an hour before. I am so MAD at this book. And I am so MAD at life. I flew across the Atlantic Ocean and STILL can't get away from this? That is BULLSHIT. 

You're welcome

I'm sure that on five thousand different levels it's wrong that I am jealous of what happened at the Boston Marathon. But I am. People reacted so quickly. It saved so many lives. Everyone's had so much time. To think about if they run towards a crisis or away from it. To know how they can help if a crisis ever happens in front of them.

Sure all the regular terrible nightmares came back, and Alex and I stopped hating each other quite as much and I cried for Boston a hundred times because I feel awful for them knowing what they were going through. I'm also really, really jealous. My mother would be beautiful even if she had a leg or two blown off.

It took them a week. One week. I am fully convinced it only took such a short time because of everything learned from 9/11. So I'm jealous and bitter and you're welcome.

So you want to be Angry Spice

It's awkward when you call your doctor to say you think your sister needs a shrink and he asks why and you pause and then just say, "Because everyone on the internet told me she does." I struggled to explain her blaming me for everything, the anger. Finally I repeated myself. "The internet told me to."

Doug just laughed and suggested we find her someone. I wanted confirmation. "And by 'we' you mean ...?" He confirmed. "Me." When I told him she'd probably want a guy rather than a girl shrink, Doug told me he'd find a girl. I laughed and Doug explained that some teenage girls have this way of flirting without flirting that gets men on their side. He said that a therapist of all people, should realize it's happening but a girl therapist will let Alex get away with a lot less. Sounds perfect to me.

I feel like a traitor for telling on her.

What I thought would happen

Yesterday I made Alex go to the Bronx. Alone. She tried to use that as proof I don't care about her. "You're sending me to a dangerous place all by myself?!" Yes. In broad daylight, with a cell phone and pepper spray, at the same age I was when we lived there and I walked around all the time by myself. It's no more dangerous now than it was then. 

You think Aunt Elaine is so great? Fine. Go visit and ask if you can live with her. Enjoy living in Mott Haven with a filthy hoarder.

Alex thought she should bring her something. "Then go use your money to buy her some boxed shit. No way in hell is that woman getting any of my money." One box of No Pudge Fudge Brownies later, Alex headed out with a final warning. "If I get jumped, you're going to be sorry." I'm already sorry about this whole thing. It's still hard to wrap my head around her remembering things so differently than they happened.

About three hours later Alex was back without the brownies. I'd gone to work so wasn't home and didn't talk to her, but Danielle did. Alex lasted for 20 minutes wandering around our old housing project before she gave up, spooked, and fled west back to the city. Danielle (who keeps switching loyalties) told me the best thing was Alex's, "I've never been so happy to be in Harlem!" statement. 

Yeah, Aunt Elaine moved. Alex couldn't find her. Some crazy crackwhore demanded the brownies. Good. There you go. That's how much she cares about you - so much that she kicked you out, never told you when or where she moved, and couldn't care less that you can't find her. I hope that totally fits in with your fantasy of the reunion.

Come to Jesus

This morning Alex and I had a big talk. Like a huge, life-changing, down and dirty honest talk. There may have been crying involved. And screaming. I hadn't realized how much we were talking around instead of about. Or how unhappy and scared Alex is, and has been. For a long time. A long, long time. Like years.

It feels like I've failed. I thought I was doing everything. It turns out I was doing the bare minimum. It felt like everything I had, I shared. Alex felt like everything I had, she got the tiniest bit of, and only after the novelty of having it had warn off and someone else had used it first.

We are living together but it turns out we are seeing everything completely oppositely. Just. Totally. Raw.

Dancer down

Alex badly sprained her foot. Bad enough that she stayed home today (she has a cold too and the combination made her want to skip school).

The amount of begging and whining for Josh or me to stay with her was out of control. Alex actually ripped Josh's shirt a tiny bit, by refusing to let go of the hem in an attempt to convince him to stay.

She is 15. Plenty old enough to do tons of things for herself. Alex will go to school tomorrow. Even if Josh hadn't offered to give her cab money to get there and back. Because having her at home encourages Al to be too whiny.

Connecticut is not far away

Everyone is saying it boils down to not having strict enough gun control, and not having enough support for mental health problems. I suppose to other countries, we look like gun-toting idiots. People say guns don't kill people; people kill people. That's nice, but wrong. It takes so little time to kill with a gun. If you're killing with a knife, or your hands, with each stab or punch you have to re-commit yourself to the goal of killing someone. You have to keep making the decision over and over. With a gun, you don't get that luxury of time.

I am not really prepared to kill another person, unless I am 100% positive they are trying to kill me, so I should not have a gun. Plus I have anger management issues, so people like me probably shouldn't be allowed near guns. That's okay - I can find other hobbies.

I wonder if, had Adam Lanza's mother lived, would she have killed herself from the shame of having a son who would do something so horrifying? Think of that executive in China who killed himself a few years ago when there was all that lead discovered in toys. The nurse who put through a call about Kate Middleton. Where has America's sense of shame gone? We are not ashamed enough, or often enough.

Not that we should all go killing ourselves out of shame, but we should be more ashamed. Honey Boo Boo should not be as successful a show as it is. We should be ashamed enough to behave better.

I wonder what Adam Lanza's mother was thinking, letting her crazy son have access to these guns. Maybe he always moped around and this ... this hobby was the only thing that seemed to make him happy. Maybe there was some other reason. Maybe she was a little crazy herself and just wasn't thinking straight.

I don't know. I am depressed. Not as depressed as the parents of those dead kids in Connecticut though.

Sisterly synchronized tumbling passes

This should be a new Olympic sport. Josh thinks Mckayla Whatever, the gymnast, smiles in a way that says "Yeah, I'll pose for Playboy as soon as I'm 18, sure." We will assume this is a guy thing, that all guys look at girls and consider whether they'd be down to pose naked?

My sister is coming to pick me up at work tomorrow. Dani wanted to come up and see reception, but I told her to wait in the lobby. Not really sure why having her come up would be a bad idea, but it felt wrong.

Today I had to work with this partner who has a corner office. Everybody hates her because she's so yelly and supposedly makes even people with real jobs, cry. I made sure to get in a little early and was standing in her doorway at exactly 8:59 a.m.  When the partner looked over I got super nervous and gave her this ridiculous shit-eating grin. She smiled back at me, kind of laughing and told me to go get her a coffee. When I brought it, she handed me papers with a post-it that had a name on it and told me to deliver them. After I came back from that, she immediately had another thing for me to do. That's how the entire day went. Rapid-fire, one thing after another. It seemed like the only two words I said all day to her were "Hi" and "Okay."

It made me really nervous that all she did was keep barking out demands, all day long. There was no yelling on her part and no crying on mine, so maybe today was a success. Usually if you work a lot with one person you'll get some kind of feedback, so tomorrow I might find out if she didn't talk to me because she hated me.

Mommyness

Me and my sisters always say I love you before we leave each other, whether it's on the phone, when we're leaving the house for the day, going to sleep at night, or running out for five minutes to grab more milk. When we lived in Brooklyn we even said it running down to our nana's and she lived right near us. We're all loud and Italian with our feelings, and the first time Dani was leaving and said I love you to Josh he was a little flustered. It's kind of as if his family is Jewish but with some hardcore WASP tendencies. They were not very mushy when I met them. The first time I hugged Laurie, she stood there really stiffly and looked shocked.

Aunt Elaine hated us, and constantly talked shit about us, to us. I wish we could have asked my mom how they came to be so ... apart. I can't imagine hating one of my sisters so furiously that I'd take it out on their kids. That just seems to cross a huge line. 

I want to talk to my mom about all of it. Aunt Elaine, what they were like growing up, if she did something to make the three of us close. Alex once said she wasn't convinced multiples are closer than we are. I wonder if my mom ever tried to fix her fight with Aunt Elaine. I wonder what she could have done to make it so bad in the first place. Danielle once said she did nothing, and Aunt Elaine was just jealous.

I don't know if we'd have wound up this way if we hadn't lived with Aunt Elaine. Maybe my mom wouldn't have been permanently placed on the pedestal she's on if she'd lived. Maybe she'd have totally fucked up everything that was about to come. I guess that's the good thing about dying early in someone's life, when all you've done are the easy parts - you die confident everyone will remember you lovingly.

 Sometimes I wish I could hate my mom so missing her wouldn't hurt so much.

It's NOT an STD

I am a terrible sister. Let's just get that out of the way. About once a month Josh whispers in my ear, "Don't you want to ...?" or "Don't you think you should ...?" in relation to one sister or another. He always thinks I should be doing more for them, with them than I do. I always say no. Josh has sister issues because of his sister who unofficially divorced her family years ago.

In the middle of the night I woke up to Josh nudging me with his knee. "Sammer. Sam is that your sister?" I was in the middle of a very busy dream.  There was massive construction, there were wheelchairs, hot construction guys, a race, and people from work. A lot to keep track of, and it was hard to understand Josh. Of course my sister's not a construction worker, what was he talking about? (By the way in my dream, one of the construction workers took his shoes off and had me stand on his feet while he walked me across a metal beam and he was wearing dress socks. Does that mean anything?)

"Sam! One of them's crying." I still couldn't leave my dream. None of the wheelchair people were crying; what was he talking about? They were totally calm. I was trying to be like them.

Then Josh was standing over the bed, pulling me into a sitting position. "Al is crying in the bathroom. She wants you." Now I was up. Knocking on the bathroom door, I stuck my head in. "Did you get your period?" Danielle was behind me trying to shove the door open more. Alex claimed it hurt horribly when she peed. "So just pee really fast?" I suggested. Al cried harder.

Danielle pulled at my arm. "She has an STD!" What? We stood there arguing about which STD's cause painful peeing while Alex cried in pain and yelled that she didn't have an STD. Josh wandered by. He claimed he looked it up, Alex had a UTI, and needed cranberry juice. The three of us stood there staring at each other. Somebody had to volunteer to go out and get cranberry juice. I was confident that if I crawled back into bed within the next two minutes I could get back to my dream and make sure the wheelchairers got across the beams to the other side in time.

Josh threw on a t-shirt and went. Much later, after we woke up at an appropriate time, he told me the only reason he went was because of being scared he'd get stuck having to stay at home talking her down through the bathroom door. No clue what happened to the wheelchair people.

Coming off

Tomorrow I go to get my arm checked. I am so hoping it is time for this cast to come off. Yesterday I totally lost my shit, hysterically crying in bed because this lack-of-arm thing is so frustrating. All the last six weeks I have been piling on the protein in an effort to make my broken bone heal faster. I got told to be careful - that some people think a cast means they can whack their arm on anything and it won't matter because the cast is protection. My arm only got whacked once, right at the beginning. It was just because I under-estimated how much space the cast takes up while going through a doorway.

Please, please, please be healed. Please please be ready to come off. I want to wash my own hair. I want to be able to take pans in and out of the oven by myself. I want to be able to hook my bra in the back.

Josh told me tonight not to be upset if they take my cast off but put on a brace. I am just saying right now that damn straight I WILL be upset if my arm is not completely free. Josh told me not to be upset if my arm has zero strength and I have to work up to stuff like handstands or get sent to physical therapy. Who even goes to physical therapy? Isn't that for like, people coming home from Iraq who've had their legs blown off? There's been enough shrinking from Craig. I don't want any more therapy.

I just want my arm back.

Yeah what they said

If you add up all your comments to my last post, then yeah, that's it exactly. Josh told me that Tom said I run us (meaning me and my sisters) like a well-oiled machine, and that Josh is the squeaky wheel. I asked if that made him feel bad, but Josh just laughed and said no. Almost nothing bothers him. If you put a fork in with the spoons it bothers me all day.

Today I asked Josh if he thinks I'm high-strung. (By the way, this was a mistake. This was just as bad, or maybe worse, as asking if I look fat. I do not recommend asking this question.) Whenever it feels like my voice would get screechy if words came out, I assume it's high-strung time. Right after asking, I knew that I wouldn't like the answer, and Josh didn't like that I'd asked. But he's not just a good boyfriend during the week, so he dove in and stumbled through saying no while he meant yes.

The only good thing about this mistake was finding out that I'm not completely annoyingly high-strung. Josh's assessments is that I have moments, or categories that I'm high-strung about, like spending money. He also decided this is directly related to my anger issues, that I get angry when I am not in control. Like when his mom swoops in to go through our clothing? Yeah, I am definitely looking into shrinking tomorrow for sure.

Stolen

Today I met up with Jackie for a little while. We ducked into a coffee shop to catch up and warm up. There were a few kids at another table, and Jackie knew two of them so we went over to chat them up for a couple of minutes.

There is absolutely no reason for this, but when we walked over, I took my coat and bag. We were really only there for about two or three minutes. As Jackie and I turned around to go back to our table Jackie asked me, "Where's my messenger bag?" It was gone. Completely gone.

We looked everywhere, and asked everyone. Like most people, Jackie's entire life was in her bag. Two notebooks, with tons of personal info including her dad's credit card digits. A bag of weed and a pipe. About $200 worth of makeup. Some jewelry. Her iPod Touch. Two gift certificates - one for a pedicure, one for a massage. Her boyfriend's paycheck.

Jackie is so furiously angry. I feel bad for her.

Happy at home, disappointed in being surprised

Josh got up early this morning and did all our laundry before we left so we came home with clean clothes. It was the first time he did laundry all by himself without even asking me any questions. We packed up our presents and got to the airport without having to rush through. It was hard to remember how cold it is here, and when we saw other people lugging heavy coats onto the plane I was glad we had the luxury of not taking them with us.

I had figured Josh would have arranged a car to pick us up at the airport since that's how we got there. I hadn't figured he'd have arranged for my sisters to be in it. He hadn't figured it would make me cry. While we were in Florida I pushed so hard to not miss them and not feel bad they weren't also there, and when I saw them with their shit-eating grins at the airport it all slammed back into me.

We went home and I gave my sisters their presents. Danielle loved that she got something nobody else could have since hers was personalized by an astronaut. Josh was surprised the house wasn't trashed and we didn't see evidence of anything having gone wrong. I was disappointed that he was surprised. He tried to tell me it wasn't personal to Danielle and Al, that it's standard for any high schooler to throw a party when they're home alone, but it still stung. I was impressed they had money left over but Alex told me they ate breakfast for dinner a couple of nights, plus Laurie had them over a couple of times. I guess those, coupled with leftovers from fire family dinners meant they didn't need to buy as much.

It was so good to be home even though I had a lot of fun. It was so good to be able to walk out of our home and walk places. It was so good to touch my sisters, to see more people I know than just Josh, to know how to get places again.

Kind of sad to be back to the grind of school and work, back to the freezing cold, back to wearing boots instead of flip flops, but so happy to be back with my sisters. They put chocolates on our pillows, to ease us back into the harshness of non-vacation life.

Why am I an ungrateful bitch?

Seriously if somebody knows the answer please tell me. This is one of those life lesson things I need to learn. Reasons I need to learn how to be grateful:

1. Feeling like a total shit when being an ungrateful bitch
2. Bad example to sisters
3. Not appreciating whatever is there waiting to be appreciated

Josh's parents gave me some really great Christmas presents. I know that Laurie and Josh went shopping together, stressed over picking out specific things, and Josh took all responsibility if I hated the clothes they gave me. Laurie and Tom got me 2 pairs of boots, 2 corduroy skirts (black, gray), and two sweaters (red, light blue). Plus they gave the three of us a set of really fancy luggage. Although Josh told me later it's not "that" fancy, because you don't want fancy luggage since people will assume fancy luggage holds expensive things and then will steal it. It's like a whole different side of street smarts I don't have - like the rich people's street smarts. Somebody should write a book for that.

Anyway, those are all the presents I opened. We ate, we opened presents, we ate some more, we played with all our new stuff, we cleaned up, it was great. Laurie and Tom left. Josh told me there was one more present his parents left in our bedroom. It seemed weird. We went into the bedroom. I stopped short. The bed had been re-made. With different bedding. Totally different stuff.

They gave us new pillows, new sheets, new comforter, new throw. The whole thing. Josh was really excited. He and Tom had snuck in to do this while dinner clean-up was happening. Honestly, I felt like I'd been punched in the chest. Then I felt really glad Josh's parents had already left and I didn't have to face them to say thank you right away because I was on the verge of crying.

I don't know why. I'm still not happy about it. Danielle and Alex didn't really get it either. Apparently Josh gets new bedding every year. What happens to the old stuff? He doesn't know - it's given away or whatever. Why new stuff every year? Because. That's it. Because it's nice to have fresh new stuff once a year. This slays me. But I did pull my shit together and called to say thank you when I could do it without crying.