So I got back late yesterday from my trip to visit my family and attend my friend's graduation party. Before I get down to other stuff here's an amusing highlight. I passed this sign on the way that was advertizing a restaurant two hundred and ninety-two miles away! As well as listing a few of the menu highlights they also raved in large print about their "Fabulous Restrooms". It's like, "well lets go there! I know it's like four and a half hours away and we're all hungry and we have to pee, but we can just cross our legs and gnaw on our fingers till we get there darnit!!"

Anyway the graduation party was a lot of fun. Visiting with my family...well it was fun...sorta. It was good to see them again, but it felt like there was this black cloud hanging over everything; like everyone was unhappy and only waiting for things to get worse. My grandmother's Alzhiemer's is advancing. This is making her increasingly hard to live with. She's apparently getting progressively meaner too.

I went out to lunch with my mom and, as she always seems to be doing when I've spoken with her recently, she was complaining about my grandmother's condition and the difficult, unpleasant position it left her (and my grandfather in). She was saying how she got absolutely no privacy or time to herself. How she had to explain (several times) where she was going, what she was doing, and when she'd be back. Finally she looked at me and said, "I hate my life". She also mentioned that while she's been getting worse lately she's always been difficult to live with. She even said she was one of the reasons she got married at 20 and moved away....then noted the irony that she ended up back in the same place anyway. (My parents were married 15 years before I was born, then they devorced when I was 2 - it didn't have anything to do with me my dad was having an affair)

I also had a long conversation with my grandfather, who's still sharp as a particularly dangerous tack in fact he explained to me how to work the cordless phone. Anyway I've always been impressed with how well he's always handled everything, EVERYTHING. Apparently though she'd just said something dreadful because he said to me, "I just don't understand how a mother can say things like that to her children, or a wife those things to her husband". (I won't actually repeat the things). Anyway then he recounted a story of a few years ago when he was in the hospital for heart surgery and my grandmother was in a bad mood and first told him off, then told my mom off, then insisted that they leave. Apparently though the nurse overheard everything on the monitors or intercom thing or whatever and when she went back in she said, "Will you have anyone to take care of you when you get out, I mean besides your ex-wife." He was too embarrassed to explain otherwise too.

I may be depicting my grandmother in a very unflattering light. I don't mean to. She definitely has her good points, quite a few actually. She was also easier to get along with before her illness. We were particularly close when I was a child. She's still consistantly nicer to me than anyone else in the family. Of course I suppose it's because I "play along" when she asks/tells the same thing over and over, and because I don't really "bite" when she gets ornery. On the other hand I only had to deal with it for about 36 hours much of which I spent away, and still my patience was definitely getting thinner by the end.

I also visited my aunt and cousin. It was a nice visit but their situation isn't great either. My aunt....has a drinking problem. She quit her job several years ago and has spent the last few years drunk and running up credit card debt. She also doesn't seem to have any intention of returning to work...ever. I'm not entirely sure what her plan is, but I think it must be along the lines of waiting for my cousin to finish college and living off her. It sounds dreadful, but I'm sympathetic towards her...I think she struggles with depression. Granted if I had to guess I'd say it stems from her life situation and not genetics, but it's still pretty crummy.

Then there's my cousin. I still think she's really a lesbian. I also just found out that the girl I was thinking she was secretly seeing (who seems even more like a lesbian) was moving to Houston (small world after all). So if I'm right it must be pretty cruddy for her ...even if I'm wrong it's still cruddy losing your best friend of the last 6 or 7 years. My cousin unfortunately seems to be getting more and more passive agressive. I'm sure this is a result of living with her strong-willed (and fairly controlling) mother for so long. The poor girl STILL doesn't drive and she's going to be 21 in Jan.

As for Timmy, well I left him with them. He'd done a pretty good job of endearing himself with my mom and both my grandparents. On the other hand he was also completely freaking out. He cried nonstop the first night. Always seemed to be looking for something (we speculate it was Lucky), and also spent a good deal of time hiding under various furniture. They've decided to leave him in the house for a few days until he gets acclimated. I think his time inside will be short though as whenever I was in the room (and he apparently felt safer) he went straight to work returning to his bad habits . So I guess the more secure he gets the worse he'll behave. Still he settles down enough to go outside I suppose he'll be okay.

Anyway as a drove away and began my journey home I realized something: I can't fix it for them. I can't solve their problems or take away the burdens. As always I was deeply concerned and sorry for them. I desperately wanted to make it all better, but I realized I couldn't. I could join the misery. Perhaps even buffer them a little against each other and the rest of life's attacks, but in the long run I couldn't really make the problems go away. I realized something else too: I'm happy, very happy. I love my life, I enjoy everyday. I'm constantly looking forward to doing new things or continuing to enjoy the old, familar ones. I'm not bored, and I'm not sad, and I'm not going to feel guilty about that. I'm sure this whole entry classifies as TMI and also makes me come off snotty and selfish, but I've worked to make my life into what I want it to be, struggled to remain positive in the face of unexpected problems, and I'm going to enjoy it darnit! I love them and I'll do anything and everything I can to help any of them, but there's no point in sacrificing my happiness to join them with their stress. So I won't.