The First Weekend of the Year

I watched the game, and by the time we got to the third quarter, my heart was broken.  We were behind by thirty-five points.  Alabama kept getting the ball and running it against us. 
Then I remembered that it was after three and I still hadn't had anything to eat.  I made myself some nachos.
My Mom came in and ate some of them, and this personally irked me.  I hate how people are always eating my food. 
I turned the tv off after we fell behind by forty-two points.  I just couldn't watch it anymore because it was depressing me. 
My sister turned on some dumb MTV show.  And then my internet wouldn't connect.  I don't know why, but it seems like lately a lot of bad things have happened, and somehow, not being able to connect to the internet was too much to deal with. 
I went out for a walk.  I haven't been out for a walk in weeks, even though I've just stayed inside to exercise.  For the first part of my walk, I was still depressed, thinking about the bad things that had happened this week.  But by the time I got back home, I was feeling cheerful. 
As I was taking off my shoes, my Mom started talking to me about all this stuff she wanted me to do in the next few days and then about my Grandma (who is still in the hospital).  I just felt like a deflating balloon. What little cheerfulness I had left me. 
We went out to dinner.  My sister didn't want to come along.  In the car, my Mom asked if she had a fight with her boyfriend. 
"I don't know.  She didn't say anything to me about it," I said.  Mom didn't really have any proof, just that she was sort of a mope the last twenty-four hours.  I had noticed that too. 
Dinner was okay.  My Mom usually is fine at restaurants, but she chose tonight to be one of those people who harass the wait staff.  One of the waiters came up and asked if we wanted more of some chips.  My Mom said that she was hoping the food would come out soon.  This apparently prompted the manager to come over and say the food was coming soon. 
Uh-oh. 
Then my Mom wasn't happy with how her burger was cooked, and they took it back and got her a new one.  The manager came over again and checked to make sure the second one was cooked well and then came back to ask her again if it was okay. 
I think the manager was overreacting a bit, but at the same time it's so embarrassing.  We got out of there soon. 
When I got back, my sister was watching Jersey Shore.  I tried to do some work in the same room.  Then the boyfriend called.  She talked to him briefly, telling him that all he had to do was give his Dad's name and use his ID.  I don't know what that was over, but doesn't sound much like making up. 
I worked on putting some new music on my MP3 player.  As I was trying to get a CD to work, and it wouldn't import.  I tried to get it a second time and it worked then.
Then the boyfriend walked into the room.  He sat down with my sister and they tried to watch a movie.  Something about the air was really tense (they couldn't decide what to watch) so I left.  I went to the next room, continuing the fixing up of my MP3 player and reading about French chansons in between. 

My sister and her boyfriend watched the UConn/Oklahoma game.  I watched bits and pieces of it.  Man, Oklahoma's a good team.  They're fast and they're rough. 
The only thing I don't like about them is their mascot.  I'm strangely picky about mascots, and I find there's something really awful about glorifying the Sooners, who were part of a bunch of white people who kicked Native Americans off their land, the land the government forced them on after torturing them through the Trail of Tears.  (Among other things, soldiers raped Native American women, specifically targeting those who spoke English.) 
I watched part of the Crow which I've never seen before but heard a lot about over the years.  I can see why people like it.  Then I watched Criminal Minds.  I'm trying to watch as much of it as possible because I don't have access to it when I leave home, being without a tv and all.  Mostly, being without a tv is a good thing, but sometimes I don't want to do anything but veg out, and watching tv has to be the ultimate way to veg out. 
Afterwards, I was still not quite ready for bed, so I sat down and read for about an hour.  Then I fixed myself a drink and read for another hour and finally I felt ready for bed. 
I had another dream about Sam, the second one in about a month.  It's so strange dreaming about Sam because I don't usually think about her at all.  This time, I walked into a room and there she was, sitting at her computer.  We talk, though I can't really remember what about, though I think part of the conversation centers around music, specifically a CD I bought when I was in Canada.  Then we start dancing around, and she's shouting the way she used to. 
I haven't seen Sam for at least a year now.  Right around this time, she packed up her bags and left, not saying goodbye to me or anyone else.  In the time leading up to her leaving, I saw her around less and less, because we were no longer living in the same area or in the same field of work.  But she was living with Emily and Chrissy, and she didn't say anything to them either (even if my last dream implied Emily knew more than she told me at the time.) 
When I got up, my Mom was in the kitchen, talking about how she was going to see my Grandma in the hospital today.  I wanted to go, but not really now.
I took another walk.  This time, I put on my MP3 player and went around the neighborhood.  There was no one around, and I sort of like it this way.  I don't really like it when people around here stop and talk to me because I don't necessarily want to talk to them, and usually they ask what I'm up to, and honestly I'm too tired to talk about that these days.

Dinner at Jimmy's

I stood in Jimmy's room, trying to ignore all the signs of life that I would normally find interesting.  I was on the phone with my Dad.
"Can I come home a little later?" I asked.  I figured the answer would be no, because my Grandma was in the hospital, again.  And to some degree, rightly so.
"Why?"
"I got invited to a brunch with some friends."
"Okay."
I was relieved.  I wanted to squeeze out every last drop of goodness from this trip, especially since it looked like I wouldn't be coming home to anything good.  I had a bunch of business to attend to immediately coming home. 
This trip ended up being far more stressful than I thought it would be, mostly because the problems that I had last semester (my Grandma being sick, friends needing support, my various boy problems) all flared up again.  Mostly, it made me think that for all my trying to move on, nothing has really changed yet.  It's been a disappointment, to be honest.  I steeled myself to go back out to everyone.
Luckily, no one asked what the phone call was about.  Maybe, given what they know about me, they could have already guessed. 
Paul was working on shredding cheese for our meal.  Jimmy was cutting up onions.  There was nothing for me to do (though I offered to pay for my bit of the meal), so I watched.
"That's some great cutting," I told Jimmy.  It looked like the moves you see on one of those cooking programs. 
Jimmy didn't say anything, as usual.
"Jimmy won't take a compliment," I explained to Ben, who was sitting at Jimmy's computer in the living room area.  Ben laughed.  "I'm working on him."
Ben, meanwhile, was watching YouTube videos, everyone's favorite way to blow off time.  He told us he really liked Old Spice commercials, which sort of baffles me, because there's something gross and sleazy about so many of them.  We found one featuring everyone's favorite child star, Neil Patrick Harris.



Then Paul got on my political hero, Robert Byrd.  After looking awhile, we found what I consider his best speech, where he tells people he's older.  Ben watched it and said it was a really good speech.



Once Jimmy finished the dinner, we ate.  It was delicious.  Everyone fell silent as we ate.  Jimmy said that was a huge compliment in itself.  I'd be happy to have Jimmy cook for me all the time. 

Ben, it turns out, is a fan of Doctor Who.  Perhaps someone tipped him off to my love about it, because we got talking about it.  He was telling me he had just watched "The Lodger."
"That's the episode right before the two episode season finale."  Don't be surprised by this recall of mine.  I often am the one correcting people's knowledge of the show.
They were apparently showing that first episode of the finale, which I told him was good.  He was all baffled by my geekiness.  Get used to it, I thought.
We then started on the dishes.

Coloring and Cooking

I had a babysitting gig today. 
I was just watching one little girl, and I played with her the entire time.  She had this set of blocks that were meant to be stacked on top of each other to make various towers.  She mostly played with that and I watched.  She's a big fan of me watching her play with things, either that or making up games that are designed to make her win.  It's obviously boring from my point of view.  I found myself fantasizing about going home and reading this article I was working on last night.
We also went round to one of her friend's house, where they were painting rocks.  She painted a rock for herself (making it green and blue) and her other friends had made various rocks, one clearly painted with a butterfly on top. 
We also played with her brother's train set.  (Same basic deal.  Watch her make the trains go or let her boss me around.)  We were also able to build some elaborate tracks for the trains to navigate on. 
One of my favorite things to do when babysitting is coloring because it keeps kids in their seats (less likely to hurt themselves) and they're actually making something.  Coloring in actual coloring books is sort of exotic to me, because when I was a kid I never used them.  I knew what they were, I saw other kids like them.  But the coloring books never had pictures of my house or my friends in outfits I designed for them or anything like that, and I always preferred blank paper to coloring books.  Now, of course, there's something nicely mindless about coloring books.  I just sat there and colored pictures of rabbits and Hello Kitty and other things.  She started off coloring and then made some pictures of her own, mostly focusing on making hearts.  She made me a picture, which consisted of my name, the word love and what was explained to me as a cupcake.  
Making lunch was the least fun part.  I told her that she could go play, but she wanted to hang around the kitchen.  Because I was making her mac and cheese, this made me a little wary, because I would rather she be out in the living room playing with her dolls than be around boiling water.  One of the many annoying things I notice about babysitting is that kids basically expect you to do anything you want the moment they say it.  I'm certain I was a pain in the ass to my Mom, but I also remember being told no a lot.  Or something like "I can't just wave my magic wand and make that happen," in answer to something physically impossible. 
Their stove was also really slow at boiling things, which just sort of added to the problem, because she kept asking when it was going to be.  I told her that she was welcome to go play with her toys in the meantime, but no, she wanted to sit there and watch me.  Finally, the water started boiling after ten minutes, and once I got it to boil, making the rest of the mac and cheese wasn't too hard.  I'm not much of a cook, and I don't make food often (my Dad insists on making me everything at home.  Every time I enter the kitchen, he comes in behind me and asks me four times each if I want something.  No, I just want to look through the mail.) and I'm always wary of using equipment that I'm unfamiliar with.
The Dad set out the mac and cheese, but not the pots or pans or even a microwavable bowl.  Their kitchen is a mess and sort of hard to navigate, since things are placed in cupboards that would be better in a different cupboard right next to them.  Plus, very few of their bowls were labeled, and the ones that were indicated that they weren't to be put in the microwave.