So my last “summer” in the vacation sense of the word has come to an end. I drove back from a most enjoyable family reunion today and just felt wrong—it is the first time in eight years I am not rushing home to get to marching band. I honestly don’t know what to do with myself. I should be out playing drums, getting sweaty, ruining my hearing and my joints…instead I’m sitting at home typing. Hm, maybe better in the long run but definitely sitting sour right now. The logical side of me is content considering I can’t pick up a drum without my shoulders and elbows aching for days but the sentimental side—it always has this annoying knack for blocking out the bad memories and expanding the good ones. I suppose that makes my life seem more pleasant to me than it has probably been, but it makes it terribly difficult to move on. No happy solution to this problem I suppose except to stop wasting your time and mine worrying about it.

I would like to discuss some recent occurrences, though. As aforementioned I did just return from a family reunion. I think it was perhaps one of the best I have been too in a long time. That is of course a good thing, but also a bad thing because it makes it harder to leave. I might also admit that I am a tad emotional as I travel through my first year without my grandma on that side. She was my (and my immediate family’s) link to that entire side of the family. Now we will see them once a year but I will never hear the gossip of who is doing what, which child broke the law or received an award or did well in school. I never realized I enjoyed that until this weekend. I never realized how much I relied on my grandma being there until she wasn’t anymore. Once again I never learn until it is too late. I do have the small consolation of spending my college years in correspondence with Dee (the grandmother) so I did get to know her as more than just “grandma” before she went but I wonder if that only made it worse. I don’t regret it at all, but it is certainly true the better to you know and love someone the more you miss them. Goodness if I’m this big a mess with one grandma I’m screwed when the immediate family starts to go. I will definitely have to die before any of them. Not to mention the logistics of a funeral are the hugest pain in the ass. Who wants to fuck with settling the estate and finding money to pay for things and moving stuff out when you feel like shit? One of life’s little ironies I guess. A time you are supposed to be able to mourn and instead you’re buried ass deep in paperwork. Woo-hoo. Enough of that. I apologize for not being more chipper. This whole starting work for real on Monday and not going to school thing is getting to me. I definitely need to not get stuck in a dead end job. But what do I want to do? If anyone knows please tell me. I’ll be sitting at home playing with my cats.