Wonderland or Not

I’m par­ti­ci­pa­ting, in a non par­ti­ci­pa­tory fashion, in Infi­nite Sum­mer. I star­ted yes­ter­day. My hou­se­mate, who often scrolls my sites online, much like my old college room­ma­tes used to scroll blogs for me, is blo­gless and lives vica­riously through me, pro­vo­ked me to do it. It’s not like work, school, no real vaca­tion, at least until the end of sum­mer, a gar­den finally gro­wing, and thanks to the rain finally stop­ping in need of daily wate­ring, not to men­tion a long list of other acti­vi­ties aren’t kee­ping me busy enough. Because I wan­ted to share the wealth I sent the book to the only per­son I knew who would pos­sibly be inte­res­ted in par­ti­ci­pa­ting, G. I sent it to him for his birth­day. That birth­day is today. Happy birth­day G. Get cracking.

I’m out to purchase some food. I’m giving my cou­sin a 20th birth­day din­ner tonight. Her birth­day was a cou­ple of weeks ago. It’s a con­ve­nient time for our yearly com­mi­se­ra­tion. She is in town for the wee­kend after a weeks’ vaca­tion she took with her mother and friends. She’s hea­ding back to Pitts­burgh, where she goes to college during the regu­lar term and works at two jobs this sum­mer. It’s the first “not living at home sum­mer” for her, neces­sary because she got an apart­ment for her junior year and it needs to be paid for. The begin­ning of the end, as it goes, or is called, in our family. The first sig­nal that you won’t be home again except to visit. The fema­les in our family his­to­ri­cally are more likely to move out ear­lier and more per­ma­nently than the males. I’m not sure why that is, but it is curious. From The east coast to the west it is a dis­tinct pat­tern on one side of my family tree anyway.

She can’t drink legally of course, and I feel like an ogre because when she asked about going to a cer­tain club I dec­li­ned to take her, fake id or not. She didn’t seem to con­cer­ned though, and we’ll spend the eve­ning here in mind­less con­ver­sa­tion. I’ll fill her head with advice and she’ll pre­tend she is lis­te­ning. Ill have to hear too much about her new boy­friend, who hap­pens to be older than her and out of college. Yes, been there done that, but wha­te­ver. The guy also lives at home still, which I have to get a handle on because things like that sound sus­pect to me. I call them “home­boys”, and though somewhat dero­ga­tory it isn’t really meant to be, it’s just something I can’t get a handle on. It also dis­turbs me some that she only dum­ped her old boy­friend after the new boy­friend came into the pic­ture. My advice always is to spend some time boyfriend-less, but that is per­so­nal pre­fe­rence I guess. Mer­lot will be invol­ved of course, she is Cuban on her father’s side, and it is not ille­gal in the mind of Cubans no mat­ter where they live, to drink decent wine with din­ner, even when you are 12.

I’m dall­ying because I dis­like buying gro­ce­ries as a rule. I’ll pro­bably hit the wine shop first.

Take out Japa­nese food is begin­ning to sound good.……

peace