Blizzards

I had something really great to say about my trip to MI, but I lost it. Something succinct and perfect and honest. But it vanished. So here's the rundown:
I got caught in a blizzard on my way up, which surprisingly hasn't happened to me before. I stayed in a hotel by myself in Indiana. I finished the drive the following morning and made it in time to buy baby shower gifts and head over to help with preparations. I ate too much food and helped play baby games and open presents. I spent the day with the women in my family and my brother. Later I had drinks with my aunt and her friends. Then I met my mom and brother for karaoke. I sang karaoke in Eaton Rapids. I did the Cupid Shuffle. My brother and I danced to "Stayin' Alive." He does a mean fuckin' Worm. Like three feet off the floor. Impressive. When I got home from the "bar" my grandpa made me a drunken omelet. The next morning, I drove home.
A lot of driving. Tense driving. But definitely worth it.
And. Had I stayed three extra days, I could've met my first cousin once removed. He came three weeks early. Zachery Robert. I'm still awaiting pictures. Mom and baby are doing well.

I Am A Dancy Party Waiting To Happen

Did you know this about me? It's true.
I had a superb weekend. I nurtured a blossoming friendship. I helped throw a baby shower for my boyfriend's brother & his wife. I worked some overtime. I had a dance party with some super sultry ladies.
I listened to this all day. It seriously made my day better. I think K'Naan will be my summer jamfest. The whole album is radical. Sometimes I think I must look like some kinda' idiot white girl blasting such things from my tiny Honda. Then I realize that I don't really care. I danced in my seat the whole way home today.
PS: Shout out to my M for her birthday!

On Second Thought

My crazy family is already driving me crazy. I find that my grandmother is demanding our company, even though she's already got a full house and there are empty beds down the road. But she doesn't want us in the empty beds, she wants us on air mattresses in the den and the basement. Have I mentioned that my grandparents are very conservative, strict Catholics? Tony and I must sleep in separate beds (usually on separate floors) when we visit. My grandma talks about it with relish, like she's really stickin' it to us. And I'm like, "Grandma, we live together. We sleep together all the time. If your rule bothered us that much, we'd stay at my dad's." But I let her keep her victories.
My mom is doing the "you be the middle man with your stepdad and your brother even though I'm a grown woman and should be able to plan for your visits accordingly" thing. Good Lord. I feel for my brother. I hope he survives his adolescence unscathed. I'm not sure what the odds are, though. Who does survive adolescence unscathed anyway?
But alas. We decided to bring the pup. What's the point of a small-ish dog if you're not going to take him on road trips, anyway? He's freshly bathed, so hopefully he can keep his face out of his butthole for a few days. Hopefully he won't find anything dead to roll in this time.
Once we get through the drive, it should be smooth sailing, though. No plans other than to go visit my dad. We'll play some cards. We'll play some board games. We'll visit with family. We'll eat a lot of food that's really bad for us, and we'll soak up the love. So I think on third thought, I'll be a little easier on the ol' loved ones.

Charlie <3 Mariokart

So...we went out to Tony's mom's tonight for dinner. As we were getting about ready to leave, his niece and nephew got there. We were all talking about Mariokart, and Tony's brother was talking about racing Tony's dad, Freddie, and Tony's nephew, Charlie, on-line. If you're a novice about such things, you should know that you can hook your Wii (or Xbox or whatever) up to the Internet, and play your games against a world full of gamers. You can also meet up with your friends and race games with them. Tony's brother and dad and nephew had all played against eachother this way last night.
When we were leaving tonight, Charlie asked us, "Are you going to be on-line tonight?" If we said yes, we got a high five.
Did I mention that he's five?

Stepdad-isms

I don't know if this is standard, if it's something in the gene pool or generation pool or social pool that makes some more prone than others to adopting catch phrases, or if we've all got them, and we just don't notice them in ourselves.
I saw my stepdad this past holiday, and things have been swirling around in my head since then. He and my mom are now divorced, and she's remarried to DB#1, but since my stepdad is my brother's dad he's still around, and since I spent my formative years growing up with him, he'll always be my stepdad to me. If I'm talking about my parents in a collective sense, like, "My parents used to take us here," I mean my mom and stepdad. Any reference to parents as a unit would be describing them.
Anyway, I wander. Key exchanges from my childhood/adolescense:

Stepdad (after any clumsiness or erring): Smooth move, ex-lax.

Nichole: Gosh, my neck hurts.
Stepdad: Oh really, 'cause your face is killing me!

Stepdad: I'm so hungry, I'm seeing dead relatives.

Stepdad: Are you going to the movies?
Nichole: No.
Stepdad: Well, then why are you picking your seat?

Stepdad: Comet...
It tastes like Listerine.
Comet...
It makes your mouth turn green.
Comet...will make you vomit.
So buy some comet, and vomit today.

I think that there was another one about diahrea, cha cha cha. Oh yeah, and "Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot, the more you toot, the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal."
Funny how things stick with you as you get older. What sticks with you and what falls away. These turns of phrase pop into my head at random times. I long to say, "Well, your face is killing me! Ha ha ha!" when someone complains of a sore back or something. Yet I refrain, for fear of being thought as silly as I once thought my stepdad. Now I realize that these are ingrained in my mind as part of my home life. My childhood. The life with my mother and stepdad before things took a turn or two for the worse and they became miserable together.
He came over to my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve...quite chatty, although the cause of that was quite evident based on the bobbing and weaving. He said, after a discussion of how the in-laws in our family are referred to as outlaws, how he's the only one who's still invited to family events after divorce, he pats my shoulder and says, "And this...this is still my favorite ex-daughter."
Priceless. Dysfunctional. And totally priceless.

today i feel kind of sick

Like the kind of sick you feel when you've eaten too many cookies. Although to be honest, that doesn't happen to me very often, because I can really put away some cookies. There are a couple of things making me feel this way, but I think the top of the list is my mother.
There's been a lot of drama in the Nichole House for the past year, mitigated by my mother and her new beau and the unfortunate events surrounding his miserable existence.
I don't suppose that it's appropriate to get into such things in a public forum. But let's suffice it to say that I am not happy with my mother's choice in men and what with my brother being thirteen, her choice in men isn't something that only has an effect on her.
Well, and on Thursday I found out that she didn't file the divorce papers like she said she was going to (once he was in jail). And she's "undecided" about what she's going to do, which means that for the second time since June she has decided not to file for a divorce.
Perhaps a little back story is necessary. My mom met this guy last summer. She married him on Christmas Eve. He's a "recovering" alcoholic with an ex-wife and three kids in Chile. For the past year my mother has been a crazy person that I do not recognize. This woman is not the same woman who raised me.
And thinking about it all and what it means for my brother, and what it says about my mother and what her priorities are just makes me literally sick to my stomach. It makes me worry about so many things. Whether my brother will be safe in his own home. What the man is teaching my brother. What my mother is filling his head with to make him accept "Beau" being back in their house again. Whether my brother will lose all his trust in my mother after she says one thing and does another regarding very important situations in their lives. How my brother is going act out when he gets frustrated. What my brother is going to learn about men and women and relationships living in their house. How he'll vent his anger. What he'll be getting into while my mother is worried about the other man who's the priority in her life.
I just feel overwhelmed by all of it. I don't know how my brother feels about everything. I don't even know how much she has talked to him about it. I just feel disgusted that my mother would put a man before her own child and that she fails to see that that's what she's doing. It makes me sick.
And I don't know how to handle it. I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know how to talk to her. I am at a loss.