Love during wartime.

Tonight was too good not to mention.

We cooked a full meal to take up to the hospital, where my gramps is well enough to get up and around in the wheelchair as long as he stays on the oxygen. Shortly after we arrived and got everything set up in the common area, Gramps decided he had to pee so my grams wheeled him off to handle that, and my family decided to fill me in on an incident that happened while I was gone this weekend.

On Thursday I installed Skype on my grams's computer so we'll be able to talk until I get a phone in SK. Last night, she was in playing solitaire and "minding her own business" when a incoming call popped up from 'Slut93'. Apparently she was so distressed that she rushed into the family room and announced this to the entire family, using the S word itself, which is not like her at all.

God bless my grandparents and their adjusting to the internet just for me.

Then some sort of tit for tat arose out of this involving a debate about whether we all get our orneriness from my grams or my gramps.

Gramps: "At least I never struck a match against my baby sister's hair."

Grams: "No, you just hit your brother in the face with a frying pan."

"I didn't sharpen sticks and hide under the porch to poke my siblings while they were sitting with sweethearts on the swing."

"I didn't use a bicycle pump to blow up toads!"

"You did stick a clothes pin on a cat's tail and then laughed when it fell off..."

"You did that?"

"Well now... I just put the clothes pin on there and then the cat disappeared for a while. When it came back, it didn't have a tail anymore. That's not exactly how that happened."

"And you and Girly stoned Troop Taylor."

"Now that wasn't .... you just let me tell the whole story. Me and Girly were fishing down at the creek, and Troop Taylor -- he was going with Dot at the time -- well, he walked past and threw some rocks down the hill and scared us. So, me and Girly got to thinking on it and we decided, if he's walking that way, reasoning says he's got to come back this way. So we started gathering rocks -- worked all day building a big ol' pile of rocks, me and Girly -- and sure enough, later that evening, here comes Troop Taylor. So we rocked him. Serves him right for scaring two little kids, practically a grown man...."

Gramps also mentioned the time just after they started dating when he was showing off and told his buddy to drive them to pick up some beer. My grams told him what he could do with his beer, and his date, if he expected her to sit around and watch him get drunk. To which he responded: "I meant root beer." Smooth.

This was after she told him she would only go out with him if he didn't wear his stupid Navy uniform.

I have no idea where we get it from.

Our love to admire.

What a great last weekend. Saying goodbye for a year is oddly uneventful -- how do you conceive of a year apart? I don't think it's possible. And, by now, goodbyes are so routine. We always worry that we will change, and change away from each other somehow, but in five years it has never happened yet.

Loads of poetry talk. It's easier to be motivated when we're together. The letter poems are the new Paris: '09, which is now just Paris: Eventually. Hopefully the poems don't go the same route. But I'm starting to think about the world in different terms now, and the biggest upside of Paris is Stephanie anyway.

I think if we can get the poems in some sort of presentable form, I may cash in all those hours spent lugging books and standing behind merch tables, making photocopies and tracking down obscure bird calls. Maybe one of the poets will have mercy and give us a little advice about what to do with them. Of everything I've done, I think I have the most faith in these poems. Having faith is dangerous though -- you can always get shot down.

Still, I know when I show them what we've done I'm going to get in trouble. For not taking myself and my work seriously. Which, as we discussed this weekend, seems to be the main problem in my life thus far. I don't want to take anything at all seriously -- least of all myself -- but everyone else seems to expect me to. The professors used to tell me, if you don't take your work seriously and present it as such, no one else will either. I don't really want people to take my poems seriously, though. Just enjoying them would be more than enough for me.

I don't want to think about making copies of things and holding onto drafts and writing serious bios and talking about myself as though I matter.

I have loads more to say, but we're up to the hospital for my grams's birthday tonight. Then hopefully my visa will arrive, booking a flight....

My correspondence may be a little lapsed the next few days. Forgive and forget, please, my dear ones. I'll get it together eventually. Sorry for the rushed, haphazard posting.

P.S. -- I finally bought Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential on Friday and my life automatically got better. Just as the G Man found a spare copy to shoot my way, as well. Sometimes you're just twice blessed.

I will miss the home thing. A little.

And I never wrote a letter to my home.

I don't sleep more than a few hours a night now, even if there is no reason to be awake at either end of the day. But I don't feel tired. I think I feel less tired than when I sleep more.

Made it to bed by one last night (some miracle) and so was up by 5 am. It's been nice to spend some time sitting and talking with my grams. She's been going nonstop -- Gramps still isn't home from the hospital, and of course the tough old bird still works full time.

She's got her faults, and I am inclined to go easy on them, because I got a lot of my own faults from her. But she's still a saint as far as I can see. And while those faults do contribute to some problems, they are moreso part of something else that helps her to carry us all through these things. Stubborn, determined, tenacious -- refuses to give in to emotions. She's a bitch on wheels more times than not, but you see the softness in her when things like this happen, as well as the dogged strength.

I'm glad for the time home with my family, especially with everything that has gone on these last few months. But I think too that I've disturbed the fabric somewhat. They think of it as me leaving them all over again. Again saying things here aren't good enough for me.

Supposed to arrive in SK on September 30th. I won't say I will this time, because I'm tired of doing that and then changing it. Knock on wood. That's in 12 days. My gramps may not even be home by then.

Do I even need to say that I feel guilty? Of course I do. And if everything hadn't been pushed to the extreme already, I may be able to buy myself another month. As it is I've already bought six or seven. I don't need to get into all of it. I'm sure everyone understands.

Sometimes you don't think -- you just do. Grams has taught me well there.


Bob Dylan: I Was Young When I Left Home

My little cousin isn't so little anymore. The little bugger is bigger than me these days and, I daresay, becoming quite the teenager. I did his hair into a Mohawk earlier this summer, which was just my way of showing the baseball playing mini-jock that sometimes being like his 'weird' cousin can be cool, too.

The point is, the kid's been through a lot. Everything I've been through with this family since I was twelve, he's been through since he was two. He's got a mother who loves him to pieces and dotes like you wouldn't believe. But when you're thirteen, sometimes you start to look for something else. That's why when he started to get upset in the hospital room last night, I did what any decent, cool-as-fuck older cousin would do: I pinched his ass.

Well, I didn't just pinch his ass. I shoved him a little first and when he shoved me back, I pinched his ass.

"Caleb, stop squirming. We're in a hospital."

Shocked face. I reach over where no one can see and pinch him again.

"Caleb Dean, I'm serious! Quit horsing around. This is the Intensive Care Unit for God's sake...."

Pinch.

"Aunt Kelly, would you tell your son to behave himself? The nurses can see him goofing around over here and it's embarrassing."

He then proceeded to tell me that he's actually taller than me now, but it's okay because I'm still pretty tall............ for a girl.

Little bastard. He's lucky I love him.

Finally, some good news.

Yesterday they took Gramps off the ventilator and his blood pressure started to rise, which set us back, because in order to get him to take the ventilator in again, they had to sedate him. Since they put him back on the ventilator, I was able to talk my grams into coming home to sleep last night. Which means we all got a decent (if short) night's sleep. When she's not here, we all kind of sleep in shifts and very lightly.

This afternoon, as he comes out from under the sedation, he is opening his eyes a little and actually focusing. When asked where he was, he mouthed the word 'hospital' and is responding once again to requests to squeeze hands.

These are all very, very good signs. Coming on the tails of what was looking very dire just last night.

I'm going to be leaving for the hospital shortly. My gramps took all his pills again, so you know... prayers, thoughts, energy, rain dances... whatever you got would be appreciated. Phone calls and texts are also welcome, given the inherent crappiness of being stuck at a hospital, but if I don't respond, it's a battery thing. Or. You know, whatever.

Mags, I'm banking on October.

So Guy, my favorite person in the world aka the guy (ha ha) handling this whole recruitment nonsense, sent me an email today demanding to know where my visa is and when I'm leaving for Korea, which was funny because I was just about to send him an email with basically the same content. This was then followed almost immediately by a bizarrely chummy email stating that he was leaving the agency to go back to school and get his masters and that it had been really great working with me, but not to contact him anymore.

Red flags? Anyone?

So now I'm back to the original guy who was totally inefficient at answering any of my questions but could call at 8 am on a Saturday just to check if I was still alive, named... well I don't remember and that's not important anyway. What this means is that a significant portion of my day tomorrow will probably be spent explaining things people should already know. And as for what the hell happened to Scott Kim in Korea, well that's anyone's guess.

Mike and I probably need to speak on the actual telephone soon. Just to confirm that we both have the exact same non-information and absolutely no idea what's going on.

I want to leave. I do not want another month here. I'm sorry. I love everyone and home is where the heart is. But I want to leave. Now.

I need to watch Obama's speech, but I can't concentrate on anything right now. I can't even hold conversations because there's this big distracting question mark looming over everything.

Things I do know about the immediate future:

1. Steph and I are eating donuts and watching Degrassi tomorrow night.

"It's never the right time for donuts," is what I said to her.

I can't eat them in the mornings because that much sugar so early makes me ill. We never make it out of our pajamas before lunch, and we eat too much for dinner to follow it with anything at all, especially donuts. But she's standing firm on this one, I think.

Shame, though. The whole idea originally was to get donuts early in the morning so we could throw them from the car window at passing joggers. Because healthy people are annoying.

2. Heath is coming up on Saturday. I don't know if we are going to Fry Street or not, but I sort of hope not. The Denton bar scene leaves something(s) to be desired, and I'm not usually pleased with bar scenes as it is. I'd be happier sitting in just the three of us splitting a bottle of red and catching up. I'm getting old, what can I say?

3. Cheesecake is supposed to factor into all of this somehow. The basic outline I'm getting is that we're going to replace all our normal meals with horrible desserts this weekend. I'll let you know how that turns out.


Going through old photos messes with my head. I think I've had six lives already. And here I go, getting mixed up in a new one.

Absolutely ruined. I have no idea how a day of mostly nothing could possibly be so exhausting. It's just got to be the 107 degrees. Me and the kid went to dawdle around Target tonight and see what we could pick up for our prospective moves. I got that sensible belt I mentioned earlier and a set of XL twin sheets, pure dorm room style. As we strolled through the housewares section, I said, "My life is on repeat."

Later we went for dinner at a restaurant we've been going to for seven years.

"It's kinda depressing," she said, picking at the chips and salsa in front of her. "Always coming back home again."

We talked about her plans for grad school and I outlined the Korean holidays for her, to the best of my ability. I told her that if we aren't able to take a trip when I finish my contract, for whatever reason, I'm going to re-sign. Re-signing means not having to move, not having to start all over again, a pay rise and more vacation time. It also means only two weeks home.

Life falls funny sometimes, but you have to trust that there's something to it. The more I think about it, the more I am starting to see that it's time for me to really be away from home for a while. Not four hour flight, six months at a time away. Really away. I think part of the reason I could never really get my feet dug into Brooklyn soil was because I was back and forth so often. The night before I left New York I would say, I'm going home tomorrow. And the night before I left Dallas I would say, I'm going home tomorrow.

Not that I expect that to ever really go away. But I think breaking the sort of New York/Dallas shared custody situation will go a long way in helping me sort out where exactly it is I should put myself. It helps that most of my nearest and dearest are scattered across the four corners already, so I don't really have to choose.

When I came home for Christmas, it was the hardest thing ever to get back on the plane to New York. I even extended my ticket, which is something I'd never done before. Now, I have been here for long enough. Not too long -- just long enough. Long enough to feel comfortable leaving for a very long time. And trusting that things here will go on without me. And I will go on without them.

Well the grandparents and the kid are out of town for a week. I slept a lot yesterday, the first good sleep I've had in ages, since it's pretty hard to get any peace and quiet. Then last night around nine I was out on the front porch smoking a cigarette and my aunt comes out and just says, "Wine."

"Yeah..."

So I had my second experience with a Texas "beer barn" last night. Only this one was made out of brick and wasn't called that. I think it was trying to be a little more classy, but it was definitely a beer barn. I can't remember who I went with the first time. Frankie? We asked my ma if she wanted anything and she requested a "mid-range chianti". Classic. The guy at the beer barn didn't know what chianti was.

So I spent the evening getting pissed on red wine and watching The Importance of Being Earnest. Around midnight, my aunt and I realized we hadn't eaten, so we went to Taco Bueno. Steph would be proud, and I was too. Stayed up till two talking about all the heathen kind of things we can't discuss any other time.

Now I'm sitting here sipping on redbush chai and trying to ignore my growling stomach, because I'm too lazy to forage something for lunch.

I think it's going to be a good week.