RIP, Eagle. I'll miss your fun good loving Guns N Roses playing ass.

Anyway. Right now I would like to discuss my mom.

My mom is different. She possesses a trait that almost nobody I've ever met has ever had. She gets along with everyone. Small talk? She'll do it. She'll talk to you about anything. She's just a country girl from Pleasant Grove, but she'll come walking in and by the time she leaves, you'll remember her for the rest of your life.

I get the question "So how's your mom?" from anyone who's ever met her every single time I see them. She leaves a mark, and never, ever a bad one.

My brother isn't like that. I'm certainly not like that. My dad isn't like that. My mom's mom isn't like that. My mom is her own seperate entity. She treats each and every person like they mean something, and she doesn't even really try. She just is. Like, I love going to her house. My brother and I are going to spend Christmas with her instead of with our dad for the first time ever this year because it's just so much less pressure than we would have at our dad's.

It's not that I'm really jealous because I know that unless I consciously try to talk to every single person I meet and be nice and sunny and happy all the time, I just won't ever be like her. And I'm okay with that. I've made my peace with that.

My brother and I both agree that my mom is one of the best people we've ever known. First of all, she gives me far more credit than I ever deserve. While my dad just mostly complains about me, she has total and complete faith in me and always brags to everyone about what a great writer I am and that I just need a small break and the world will then understand. She took care of my dad's mom when she was in the advanced stage of Alzheimer's, which really isn't that easy of a task. She always visits her own mother and does all her shopping and all that since her mom is home-bound most of the time. She makes everyone around her happy, and she makes it look so effortless. And I think it is effortless for her. Not to mention the fact that she's just naturally beautiful and used to be a model and crap.

Even when she was depressed after the divorce, she still kept it together and she was still always happy enough to have an effect on people. She will just go out of her way to help people, and she usually won't complain about it unless someone fucks with her, in which case she'll take care of the fucker. She manages to be the nicest and most breezy person you'll ever meet while not letting anyone walk all over her. It's good stuff.

And what I really want to write about right now is the fact that that worries me sometimes. I almost feel like she's too good to be true or something. Like, for example.. when she and I went our seperate ways after having dinner with one of her friends last night, she had a 45 minute drive in front of her and I worried until she got home that something terrible would happen to her on that way home. You know what I mean? I fear that my mom is such a good and genuinenly caring person that she'll be taken away before it's really her time to go just because she's such a good person.

I know that's crazy, and it's not like she's a teenager or anything. She's almost 60 years old! But I just really want her to be happy! She finally got rid of my dad after 25 years, and 10 years later she's happier than she's been in forfuckingever. Her new husband might be a little strange, might be 10 years older than her, and might just be a big kook, but she loves him and he loves her just as much. He bought her a horse even though she didn't even suggest anything like that just because he knew it would make her happy, and that horse does! She loves her horse as much as she loves her kids!

I am always scared that when we part ways, it will somehow be the last time I ever see her. And that's just annoying, but it's a fear that I've had ever since I was 8 years old, and it's stupid. But she has so much blind faith in me and everything I do that I just think that it's too good to be true.

The point is, my mom is the kind of person people notice. She gets free cookies at Subway. She gets out of tickets just by being herself. And I don't want that to be prematurely taken away just because fate decides it's a good idea. Maybe I'm more worried about myself... I don't know what I'd do without my mom. There was a movie called Roommates that came out 10 years ago, and I remember seeing it and bawling my eyes out because the mom in the family dies off. But seriously, there would be something wrong in the world if something were to happen to my mom.

I don't know. She's just a good person. I like to brag.

And for something completely different, I'd like to call attention to the fact that Matt and I have been "back together" longer than we had been broken up now. It's been almost a year since then, and it was 8 months that we were apart. That should say something important, and it does, and I will probably talk about it when I'm not too busy spouting weirdness about my mom.

I'm out.

*****

a year ago..

"Everything in my life, I did to myself. I grew up with the right kind of support, both emotionally and financially. I could have done so much by now, but instead I'm just a boring person. My friend Pam went all around the world a few years ago. She ran out of money in Rome, and then had to illegally teach english in Taiwan just to earn money to get home. That's interesting! That's what people want to hear. I have nothing interesting, nothing that stands out about me. And the thing is.. I have no idea how to work on that. I thought coming to Austin would help me do it, but instead I'm just more freakishly confused."