Fly Away Home

Okay, I cheated. A little. That was a movie. About Canadian ducks. But I think it has a soundtrack, so maybe I didn't really...?

Anyway, in the movie the girl realizes that her geese or swans or whatever they are aren't happy and she teaches them how to fly home when they want to.

Well, my parents aren't that girl. I'm still in Texas, land of accents and the friendly obese. But before even the wee hours of tomorrow morning I'll be rudely awakened, shoved in a cold shower, frowned upon and packaged neatly into a Presentable Shirt if someone gathers up the courage to open my suitcase or a Unpresentable Shirt if they don't, in which case I will sit in the middle of the back seat. We will stand in lines and I will sit on the baggage cart and daydream about coffee shops and about not-so-Victorian-ly greeting my not-so-long lost love until they make me get up. I will try to write the two assignments that I owe on Tuesday on the airplane. I will fall asleep halfway through and leave black ink marks on my Presentable Shirt, or my Unpresentable Shirt, as the case may be. My parents will be Very Upset. I will put my headphones on so I don't have to listen to my dad's lectures and snide remarks and won't take them off till after the horribly new-car-smelly car ride, when I will run upstairs to call H. and put on my high-tops and then I will gloriously, magnificently WALK. AWAY FROM MY FAMILY.

God bless the MTA.
And coffee and attractive civilians and parties and Smirnoff Ices and thrift shops and clean paper and pens that work and shiny bookstores and cell phone service and the internet and friends and Washington Square and air conditioners. And people whose names I won't mention who leave him an empty house.

See? Look at that. Away for a week and my atheism is already wearing thin.
As is my readership. Now that I finally have internet access and cell phone service(blame San Antonio) I have discovered that in my absence someone actually WANTED a copy of The Oblivion, somebody remembered my birthday, and nobody bothered to read this.
That's a lie. People read this. Just not many.
Meh. Too bored to care.

Texas is beautiful. It really is. And it's not all Republican, either. In fact, it's almost evenly split, which makes things pretty interesting. Nobody dares to bring up politics at dinner.

My cousins want to hear about my mischevious doings. I've informed them about my newspaper controversies, all the times I've broken into places I wasn't supposed to go to, all the tricks we pull on Montaturo, the way Chris knocked the ceiling out once, the way Maya G.P. and I broke onto the roof, my dealings with the Hubbellator, Matt's rebellion, the concerts, the parties, the Rocky Horror nights (of which I would love to see more!), the Senior Projects fiascoes, the soccer censorship... everything I could think of for an entire car ride.

And when I was done?
They wanted more.

My life isn't interesting enough, apparantly.

I tell ya, I get no gratitude.
Harry, if you say one word about my grammar I will slap you.
In a very un-Victorian way.

I feel like a Cathy cartoon. I want to sob helplessly from homesickness. I want to shop for shoes. I want to buy a membership for a gym I will never visit and calm myself with jello at midnight. I want to buy into a sales pitch and pick up a lemon-yellow bikini that I will never wear (instead of my three-year-old one that doesn't hold my boobs up any more, and which I never liked in the first place). At the very least I want to pour over a motorcycle magazine and decide how much my freedom will cost.

But I am not Cathy, or one of the Hell's Angels, and they want me to eat pizza and be Lively And Entertaining and not myself again.

Someone write some guitar chords for me. I have a gypsy song brewing behind my boredom in the key of E-minor. It is angsty and hormonal and lonely and hopeful and sexy and a little insane.

Like me.