Changing things.....

Hello everyone! Just got back from winter break and the weather in Austin, Houston, and Dallas were all nice, imagine running around in flip flops in December, while it has been raining and cold in KC.

The GF took the dog with her to her parents' in Dallas and even though she got to see the cute nephew and ate some whataburgers, her mom's addiction to talking non-stop is worth anyone's sympathy. She (the mom) means well, but you just have to be there for about 24 hours and you'll see (or feel) what I mean!

I spent about a week in Houston, and I'm glad to see that my grandparents have been doing better physically than the last time that I saw them. They're still not really up to speed physically, and they'll probably never be, but I'm glad at least none of them are in the hospital, you know?

It wasn't all smooth sailing though, I had a huge fight with my sister over how things have changed. My grandparents' illnesses has put a lot of strains on everyone in the family, and my way of coping with the aftermath is to kind of keep a bit of a distance between myself and everyone in my family, and I suspect that it also might have spilled over to my own relationship with the GF. I got mad with my sister because she became more attentive to the family and became the favorite and in a weird kind of way was "rubbing it in". (She basically was reaping the rewards of her attentiveness, and deservedly so.) By the way, this favoritism thing is and has been something that's kind of underlying between my sister and I in relation to dealing with our grandparents. Now, I've come to admit that.

Now for the other end of the familial problem, I've got a uncle from my father's side who has been nothing but helpful to me as I was growing up, now that doesn't mean that he has been in full support of me and my GF. (That's a whole other horrific story.) He (the uncle) married this lady and they've got 3 kids, who are in their teens now. In the beginning, his wife and I were friendly, then a few years ago, something changed and I guess she really hates me now. No, she's not pelting me with rocks whenever I'd show up to see my grandparents, but she does this thing where she just will not acknowledge my presence. I guess she either got mad or jealous from my uncle having spent so much time in care of my grandparents and caring about my sister and I, or something happened that made her really bitter, I mean, if you saw her from a distance, without even knowing her, she looks miserable.

I've basically adjusted to that display of attitude, I just started to pretend that she wasn't there too. I noticed that she'd be really friendly to my sister whenever we're both around, and it's tolerable but irritating to say the least.

So we've got this really interesting but annoying dynamic going on here. My grandparents may be old, but they're not dumb and they could see/sense the tension between my aunt and I, my uncle for having to serve two masters, his wife and his parents, and my sister, for now suffering from the mistake that she had made in picking a mate more out of not wanting to be alone than anything else. I thought about e-mailing my uncle about all this, but I haven't yet, because who'll really change? He's not going to talk to his wife about her attitude because she'll just bite his head off, and why accomodate to the way I wanted to feel when I'm hardly ever there at home in the first place? I know, that's a lame excuse.

My sister and I eventually talked out our differences, but I'm sure that won't be the end. We're catching up on years worth of differences, you see, we didn't exactly grow up together. We do have on common goal though, and that is to try not to make our grandparents worry too much over us. They're old and tired, and there are some stuff that they just don't need at this point in their lives.

On a lighter note, I did get to eat lots of good Chinese and Taiwanese food though, not to mention some really good local Austin favorites!

I flew up to Austin from Houston to meet up with the GF, not only the plane was late but this one beefy male flight attendant was giving me the attitude, it was like reverse-air rage and of course I did what every concerned customer would do, I called the airline and reported him. I doubt anything would be done in terms of any sort of customer complaint follow through action, but I do hope for him painful and explosive ass-explosions. :-)

We took it easy in Austin, shopped for GF's snow boots, took the dog to his beloved Greenbelt dog park and watched him run himself with joy, until exhausion. We slept in late, ate some really good foods, and even got our tarot cards read at bookpeople, this local book seller. That same guy read for us about 3 years ago. He said that the GF is going to embark on a new career (he's right), and the world belongs to her. I got the death card, indicating change, and I hope it's for the better!

I checked online while on vacation for my pay stub and found that "they" jacked with my pay again, and I think that was the key to helping me decide that I've got to do something different with this job thing. Don't get me wrong, this current job is great, but unless I can get a civilian equivalent of my position there, my pay will never increase unless I get a military promotion, to which I've still got a year before I'm eligible for. So here it goes with the job searches for the new year!

I want to compliment my GF because she has put up with so much from me, and I want to wish her good luck with her new learning/job endeavor. I really suck at expressing how much I love her but I'm trying!