Friday Five

1. What are your favorite ways to relax and unwind?
A long, luxurient hot bath or shower. Cooking with friends. Oh, here's a shock -- MUSHing.

2. What do you do the moment you get home from work/school/errands?
Erm, I don't. Used to be I'd strip and go lounge. In high school it involved kicking off my shoes, dimming the lights, and dancing around the music on the stereo til my parents got home.

3. What are your favorite aroma-therapeutic smells?
Anything spicy. I love the scent of constant comment tea.

4. Do you feel more relaxed with a group of friends or hanging out by yourself?
Relaxed? I guess that would be alone or with husband. On the other hand, i can be very comfortable in a crowd if it's the right crowd. A sure sign that I'm happy with a group of friends is that I'll nod off. Social napping my friend David calls it. Yes, I'm the life of the party, I know.

5. What is something that you feel is relaxing but most people don't?
Will you all think I'm a freak if I say a good cry? I like to have on about once a week, either about a tv show or a book or something. It gets my inner angst out so I can focus on having fun.

The contractors...

Were here Wednesday. They installed the backsplash. supposed to come back yesterday to do the grout and finish up details. He came, tested the tiles, said they weren't dry enough, and that he'd come today. Today he called... he's stuck upstate. Will get here Monday.

This journal brought to you in bite-sized chunks.

My nephew...

I never did go back and write more about the family reunion we all went to. Perhaps soon. Meanwhile, I am awaiting the arrival of my nephew with some excitement and trepidation. Well, no, not 'some'. A lot of trepidation. A lot of anxiety. A little hope. Some back story most of you may know...

In March of 1999, our niece and nephew came to live with us. They were my husband's half-brother's kids via his ex-wife, and there were bad things all around with their parents, and they needed a spot. Two weeks into their stay, the niece had a total psychotic break and had to go back to her mother's for psychiatric care.

Then the nephew lived with us for two and a half years. I ended out quitting my job so that I could be a full-time parent for him. He had his share of violent panic attacks, juvenile delinquencies, sulky pouting fits, bed-wettings... in the end, though, I think the three of us really bonded as a family. The husband was his soccer and basketball coach, we did all the kids movies, threw birthday parties, built our lives around him...

...and then, summer of 2002, he left. His mom wanted him back, and there was nothing we could do. It hurt that he'd gone, and I was very grateful that I was already pregnant so that I had something to focus on, something to look forward to.

The year since, with regards to him, has been a nightmare. On the phone, he's used such phrases as 'we can't afford a decent apartment except near all the coons' or 'all Mexicans are mean.' His mother went on a three-day crystal meth binge with money that we'd sent them for bus tickets. He'll be repeating the sixth grade due to a constitutional inability to do his homework while having no supervision or structure at home (fancy that...)

And now I'm about to see him for the first time in over a year.

I'm thinking -- this could be great. We could have a fabulous weekend. He could be his charming old self like when things were really good. And then I'll be heartbroken when he goes away again.

Or... things could be bad. Awkward. Distant. A lot of shrugging and monosyllabic answers and that bored, pained look he gets in his eyes when he has nothing to do with his whole body to distract him from the unbearable weight of memory and life.

And so I wait, trepidaciously planning out the weekend menu (he is nothing if not a finicky eater) and wondering if the luster of visiting us will be thin without his old neighborhood to haunt. Perhaps a trip back to Brooklyn is in order.

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