My Bros

     I first started writing this in January of 2005, which was months before I started nursing school and months before I got kicked out of my house. My mom gets mad when I put it that way because I didn’t actually get kicked out, it was more of a mutual understanding after a few horrible arguments that both of our lives would be better if we didn’t live under the same roof.

     If you’re bored and you take the time to look through the old old archives, you will hopefully see how much things have changed. I think, for me, the biggest change in my family life has been the strength that has formed in the relationship between me and my brothers.

    My favorite (recent) story starts the night it started snowing. I was supposed to work my second job that night, but when we got a foot of snow in 2 hours, I figured it was best not to risk getting stuck. I ended up walking to a bar a few blocks away to join in happy hour with my brothers and sister-in-law. They’d been drinking since about 4 pm and it was nearly 6 at this point. Which, if you don’t know, is a long time in our family. We pretty much injest everything – food, water, pop, coffee, air – as fast as we possibly can. They were many, many drinks in by this point. Tree branches had already started falling down outside because of the heavy snow, and I looked like a snow man by the time I arrived at the bar after a 10 minute walk in the treacherous weather.

     My siblings and I are very different. Simply, I am the impractical one like my father and Fro is the level headed one like my mom, but we’ve all got a little mix of all the best of our folks in us. Jerry and I tend to like dive bars, while Fro and his wife prefer martini bars. Jerry and Fro are very into business and money and economics, while I obviously have nothing to do with the business world. Fro’s life went off without a hitch (scholarship, job, marriage, MBA, all by age 28) whereas mine, uh, didn’t. (I do have more bachelor’s degrees, though.) Fro is the middle child, and he once said, “You know, no matter how different we all are, if you get us all in one room and provide us with enough booze, we all turn into our father.” He is 100% correct. Fro, the most conservative of the 3 of us, was drinking dirty martinis like shots and pounding Guinesses when I arrived.

     He took one look at my snowmanesque face and shoulders and said “Fuck. Is it snowing?” I politely asked him if he had looked outside, and he said he assumed the predictions weren’t going to actually come to fruition.  It was generally agreed that no one trusts the weathermen on tv and we all thought that when they called for 2 feet of snow, we’d be lucky to get  6 inches.

     The drinking progressed and we eventually headed to Walnut Street. Jerry, the baby of the family, drove me while Fro and his wifey walked. Apparently, they fell down about 5 times. Jerry nearly killed us after trying to parallel park, and we all decided we were staying put for the time being. We went to Cappy’s, where Fro, in a drunken moment of emoness, said something along the lines of how nice it was that we weren’t snowed in at our parents’ house in our hometown and how cool it was that we were all together in the snowstorm, just like we were little kids again. Fro even took to throwing snowballs at us, which was made better by the fact that he was wearing glasses, a necktie, trenchcoat, and a cardigan.

     The wifey got tired and, in a rare instance, Fro, Jerry and I found ourselves out at the bar. Just the three of us, which happens all too rarely. We talked about politics, work, money, our parents, and pretty much everything we could think of, until Fro decided he wanted to put on a puppet show.

     He then took a $1 and a $5 bill and put on a play in which Abe Lincoln invited Washington to the play. Washington paid for the good seats (the rim of a martini glass) whereas Lincoln had the cheap seats (the rim of an ashtray). The play ended with Lincoln getting shot in the head with a spitball.

     Fro decided he wanted to walk home, and Jerry tried to stop him. This ended with Jerry saying “Look, you’re a grown ass man. You do what you want.” Jerry and I stayed until closing, and then we walked out into the winter wonderland.

     Jerry was alive in 1993, but he was very young and I don’t think he remembers the last time we had snow like what we got that night. When we walked out onto Walnut Street, the snow had hidden all the cars and it was quiet and actually very beautiful. I followed his footprints down the road, and he insisted that I stay at his place because he didn’t want me to fall walking home.

     I settled in on the old comfy couch I gave him when he moved into his apartment, and he made me grilled cheese. He did his Woody Allen impression of the Moose bit while I ate, and then he helped me dig out my car the next afternoon. Little brothers are pretty much the best.

     Fro texted us sometime the next morning to let us know that he had only fallen down 6 times on his way home, but he was shit faced and wearing dress shoes during the walk, so I guess that’s pretty good.

     It’s nice to know that there’s two awfully big guys in the world who can make me laugh and treat me like the baby of the family, even though I’m the oldest. I guess that’s how brothers and sisters are, and how it is when you’re the only girl.

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Throw Back

Holy crap. Throwing it back to the very beginning.

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Polly, my ankle

     This past snow storm we had (you know the one) was a little bit insane. Usually when it snows, people who live in the suburbs or drive into Pittsburgh from Ohio or West Virginia to work in the city can’t get to work. This time, it was a little different. The suburb dwellers made it in, for the most part. Those of us who park on the city streets had a more difficult time.

     About 10 days after the snow hit, the city finally came to my little neck of the woods and began hauling away the snow. Literally. Hauling it with dump trucks and bulldozers. We were part of the “snow removal blitz” and, when the finally made it to Walnut Street, I was one of the people sitting at Mardi Gras cheering as they covered it on the news. I wanted to buy them a Starbucks as a thank you. Then I realized I’m a yuppie.

     The yuppie thing is a post in and of itself. Let’s stick to the point: the snow was rough in the city. Even after we could get our cars out, there was no where to park. You could spend all day digging yourself a spot, only to have someone steal it by the time you got back. People stopped caring about the parking chairs, and there was even vandalism and violence over this blantant disrespect of Pittsburgh authority. The sidewalks were clear, but you had to climb over a pile of snow 2 feet high to get to the sidewalk. It was, all in all, not fun. But especially not fun once I fell down.

     I was walking into my apartment Tuesday morning and, nearing the curb (which had been hidden by snow for about a month), missed a step and bit it in the middle of the street. Hard. Like, I couldn’t stand up, only I was in a pile of snow in broad daylight on a street in Shadyside and it was embarrassing as hell so I forced myself up the stairs, all 3 flights, to  my condo.

     My ankle swelled to the size of a softball within an hour. It developed into a lovely shade of purple and blue and I bought the tightest ankle brace ever to enable myself to walk despite all my nursey senses telling me to stay home.

     Long story short, I opted not to go to the ER again this morning because last night, I removed the brace while I was at work and realized that I had probably caused most of the pain myself because the brace was too tight. It was then that I realized that I had bought a medium sized brace which, if you know my feet, is not the correct size. I am a jerkass.

     The greatest part of the whole experience was when I twisted it again Sunday morning. You know how when you stub your toe, there’s that delay as the sensation rushes to your brain? You hit your toe and you have enough time to think, ‘Oh man, that’s going to hurt like a bitch’ , and then it actually hits you? Well, it was like that. I slid on a tire track in the street, about a foot. I got all stiff, as people do in such cases. I stopped and was forcibly turned to the right, at which point I knew pain was coming. And it did. I hobbled myself up the stairs again and cried at how unfair the weather is, vowing my revenge.

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And that’s enough of that…

     That whole “going through my drafts” thing lasted until I hit April of 2008 at which point I decided it was best not to rehash the exact way I was feeling when O ended it the first time, nor of delving back a few more months and remembering how happy I was. I need to be reminded of how stupid and pathetic I was/am, thanks.

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Part of a Draft: 12/13/2008

I’m sure that I am deluded about what I really am. In a way, I think everyone is, everyone sees themselves in a much different light than the general public. Those who are closest to you see all your flaws and all of your virtues, while those who don’t know you so well tend to only see one or the other. But when it’s you who begins to analyze yourself, you can explain away all the things that may tarnish your image because you know the context of the action. What spurred it, what you were thinking, how you felt, etc. I know that I’ve fucked up a lot in my life. I know that I am an emotional, ridiculous, condescending asshole sometimes. But I also know the good in me.

That all being said, I realize that my perception of people probably isn’t accurate, but I still find myself not really trying to put myself into other people’s shoes. For example, I don’t care how you are feeling inside, it is never ok for you to mess around with someone else’s husband, even if you “did it for you”. I don’t care how sincerely or repeatedly you apologize, somethings can never be forgotten. If you’ve proved yourself to be a dick to me despite your nice guy image, you will from now on be considered a dick by myself and everyone who holds me dear to them. And they will stick up for me when I cannot stick up for myself. Even when I beg them not to.

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