2004-07-12 - 3:52 a.m.
KIN & JUICE
Boy, I've really been neglecting my updates. I'll try to do a long one here to make up for it.
SO. Remember when I was talking about a family reunion a few updates ago? Well, this past week I ended up having an unexpected one! It was quite nice. Let me tell you all about it.
My dad has a brother that lives in New York, and he has two daughters, Tiffany and Katie. The woman he married, my aunt (although I don't really consider her much of an aunt because she and my uncle have been split up for a long time), also has an older daughter from before she married my uncle. But that older daughter has no relevance to anything. I just mentioned her to make this longer.
But anyway, my uncle's two daughters. Tiffany is the exact same age as me, and we used to play a lot when we were little. My family went to visit them in New York when I was about 4, and they made various trips out here over the years. When I was 14 or so is when my aunt and uncle split up, and they REALLY split, as in my cousins barely even keep in contact with their dad anymore. Because their mom hates him, not because he did something terrible or anything like that.
Katie is 5 years younger than me and she was always so cute. While Tiffany and I would play, she'd follow us around and would basically be adorable in a variety of ways. But I haven't seen either of them since my aunt and uncle got divorced.
WELL. I came home last Saturday, a week ago, to find two beautiful young ladies sitting on the couch with my parents. You can probably see where this is going. It was them!
They're both on summer break and thought they'd drive out here to see the family they haven't seen in 10 years. Tiffany is still in college despite being old enough to have graduated a year or two ago, and Katie is in her third year of college despite only being old enough to have graduated high school a year ago. I never did get to the bottom of that.
They do still talk to their dad sometimes, but not often or detailed enough to know how we were all doing. They didn't even know that I'm getting married, let alone that it's just a few weeks away. They were kinda upset that they'd come early, cause they couldn't stay for 3 weeks so they could be here for it. But Charity and I are going to the Tri-State Area for a few days at the beginning of our honeymoon, so we'll go see them there.
They stayed here for a few days and left on Tuesday. It was very nice to see Tiffany, who has unsurprisingly blossomed into quite an incredible person. She's pretty much just like I remembered her, except bigger. She was very mature for a kid.
But I was completely blown away by little Katie. Get this, after 10 years, she's not so little anymore. She's 19! She's like... a woman and stuff. She's got this slight New York accent and she's studying to be a teacher. And she's SO cute. She even has one of those tattoos on the small of her back, as has been all the rage for "hip" and "today" females the past few years. When I saw that, that's when I was really like "whoa, this truly bares no resemblance to the adorable youngster I used to know". But I love her anyway.
We hung out all weekend and made sure to exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses and all such things before they headed back home. I really liked seeing them. I was kinda bummed for a day or two after they left. For some reason, when I'm away from somebody I really like/love, it's like I just get numb to it. And then when the person comes back, I realize how much I've missed them. Then they leave again and I'm very sad.
Anyway. New subject! Earlier this week, Charity and I stayed over at our new place for the first time. We didn't actually sleep in the bed or anything, cause our bedroom isn't ready yet. We just crashed on the couch. Our couch is really great. We had it at our school house too, it's so... I dunno what a good word is. Deep? The cushions are big and go back pretty far, so there's plenty of room. I can lay flat on my back and she can lay comfortably on her side between me and the back of the couch. Or vice versa. Or we can both lay on our sides next to each other. It's a good couch.
So we woke up and it was our first ever morning waking up together in our new house. That was a nice feeling. But it also kinda sucked because we have no food in the house, and we're about 15 minutes away from anything. I at least need my juice in the morning. I gots to have my juice!
I used to have cereal every morning, as most kids do, but around my junior year of high school I started getting stomach aches every day. It didn't really bother me, like I didn't think I was gonna puke or anything. But my stomach would be churning all day, and worse yet, it would make noise. If we were sitting quietly in class, people could hear my stomach. That gets to be somewhat embarrassing.
I worked in the attendance office my last two years of high school, and one semester I was in there for the first hour of the day. And the secretaries always had food of some sort, like breakfast pizza and all whatnots. But I'd never eat anything because I knew my stomach was going to start bothering me later and I didn't want to add fuel to the fire. My mom once went into the office when she was there for conferences or something, and the secretaries were all "he NEVER eats anything!". Maybe they thought I was anorexic or something.
I finally figured that I had to change up my morning eating habits, so I stopped having cereal on the thought that maybe the milk was bothering me. I started having juice and a pop-tart or a granola bar or something. But the juice was the key. Usually I'll have orange juice, but I'm a big fan of cranberry, also. Grapefruit juice I enjoy. Grape, of course.
I'll have almost any kind of juice except apple. No apple juice! I'm not entirely sure why that is, but during my sophomore year of college one of my roommates had a baby, and it was like 100% apple juice all the time. 24 hours a day, you just couldn't get away from the freakin' apple juice. I dunno if it was just juice overkill, or if it was some combo of the juice and the baby always being changed, but I now find myself completely unable to distinguish between apple juice and pee. So keep that stuff away from me.
Anyway, switching my breakfast helped and I stopped having the stomach trouble. I can drink milk any other time of day, it’s not like I’m lactose intolerant or something. For all I know, I could go back to having it in the morning now. But I do love my juice. Mmm. Juice.
I gotta go, bye!
