The Rave Scene

I have just returned from a vacation to Miami for an Electronic Music festival, Ultra Music Festival. Coming home to my parents and my aunt (who is now living with us temporarily) after partying for 5 days straight is the biggest buzz kill since … well coming home to your parents after partying for 5 days straight. They requested my presence at dinner tonight, “Let’s eat together as a family,” my Mother yells to me as I'm running out the door to work this morning. Ugh I think, and respond, "Uh yeah text me or whatever." Now I’m all for eating but I have been a strict diet of alcohol, music and as little sleep as possible so this whole meal thing seems as foreign as quietness. I come home from work and try to catch up on all things digital and my mom calls from the kitchen, “ Come put on some of the music you listened to this weekend so we can hear what you were doing.” I laugh out loud thinking, Lady not only will you probably call it noise but I wasn’t listening to any music you would recognize. I was feeling some serious bass in my whole body and dancing like a maniac for multiple hours straight. But I concede, I figure her take on the whole thing will make for interesting blog fodder if nothing else. I decide to show her some videos of the actual performances, she’s impressed and says she can appreciate the music. Then she asks, “ Were there a lot of people on ecstasy there?” I immediately go into child-mode, “ Ummm.... Ahhhh I don’t know… “ then I rethink it, I mean from the looks of the crazy ass body painted people the videos its pretty obvious. “Well I guess so mom, there were a lot of people with glow sticks in their hair and pacifiers.” She responds “Oh yes, but of course the usual rave accoutrements.” 

Never coming home for dinner has its drunken perks but little did I know my Mom was so hip to the “Rave Scene.”

Another Day, Another Shot?

I promise I didn’t used to think about booze this much before I moved back in with my sober parents. Granted I am really happy for them, I mean the fact that they get up at 6:30 every morning for a meeting is definitely a step up from me always being the last kid to be picked up after dance class. But never have I ever fantasized about booze more. Hot toddies and White Russians slosh nicely through my sub-conscientious. I crave a shower beer, half for my mouth, half for my hair, it’s a really good conditioner and its takes the edge off. I told my parents I would be home tonight around 7:30, well when I strolled in at 9:45 the questions came rolling out much like the now loudly raging river going through our backyard after all this rain. “What happened to 7:30?” hmmm well some sushi with a friend in town, a large Sapporo, large sake and Sade’s the 10’ x 10’, 80 year old, 70’s rock playing, hole in the wall bar happened to 7:30. I love a place where no one knows who I am, especially since I’ve moved back to my home town, I do my best to keep it a secret as I don’t plan on staying long. I am constantly on craigslist looking for rooms to rent and jobs to get even though I know I am staying here for at least 6 months. It keeps my hope of independence alive, kind of, or it just rubs in the fact that I won’t be the “friendly, on the quiet side, perhaps a student who is somewhat clean and thoughtful of others” to anyone for a long time.

Midnight Snacking

11:00pm Just got home, 3-5 beers deep, interview tomorrow 10:30am.

F-ing starving, really should have stopped at Jack in the Box or maybe I should have eaten today instead of sleeping and watching that Millionaire Matchmaker marathon. Anyway, there is nothing to eat here. I mean the fridge is full of vegetables and stuff but who wants that when they are craving deep friend tacos, yeah not me. After completing my rounds of the late night internets and listening to a  Dolby Surround Sound quality snore/sleep talking fest,  (my parents really have quite the orchestration happening at night) I remember my dad was eating Ritz crackers all day as he came in and out of my room to see what I was doing. Who I was talking to? Where was I last night? How many drinks did I have? What kind of drinks were they? What am I going to do later? Did I want the cat in here? Etc, ad nauseam. Also, yes the novelty of how cool my parents are has worn off in this brief month. Like I was saying, these Ritz crackers, I’m thinking they would go really well with the rest of the cranberry goat cheese I ate yesterday left over from some Christmas gift basket. I go into the kitchen, no delightfully buttery Ritz to be found, just one crumbly peanut butter cookie that has obviously been carried about in a shirt front pocket. My Dad can often be found with some kind of sweet treat in his front shirt pocket. I eat some crumbles of this, not very good, I have grown to despise peanut butter cookies as they are his favorite. I remember I have some Kale salad from when I went to Whole Foods and was trying to pretend I was healthy in front of some old friends. Kale salad it is then, not exactly fried tacos but it will have to do. My mom walks into the kitchen barely out of her sleep talking stupor, “Where’s the Ritz?” I ask. She looks at me as if I am not her only child, “Ha, your dad ate all of those, here’s some other crackers.” Let me tell you, stale water crackers and kale salad do not a semi-drunk midnight meal make.

My Mom

My Mom has the same text message alert as me, it alerts her quite a bit more often than my phone does. She just started texting in 2009 and she’s old. Who the hell is texting her? and why the hell am I not receiving more sexts?

My Mom has a Facebook, I accepted her friend request and she promised she wouldn’t look at my pictures. The next thing I know she’s commenting on them and telling everyone in our large extended family that they should join. I really don’t want her cousin in LA privy to my drinking habits, but that seems to be the road we’re going down. Speaking of which I should go untag myself in like every picture since I moved home, at the very least New Year’s.

 My Mom has been sick since before Thanksgiving. I came home today and she said she has a sore throat. She has self-diagnosed full body Candida. I mean I self diagnose with the best of them, I’ve had cholera, cat scratch fever, endometriosis, and skin cancer but unlike my Mom my symptoms discontinue and I’m not trying to cure them with colonics. She loves a natural “cure.” I only hope enough H2O2 inhalation can solve this two-month cold.

Life at home never proves dull, but that could be because I am rarely home. One month down living at home. I have an interview on Monday, I have been cast in the dance ensemble of a local play and according to my Mom I constantly smell of booze. It could be said I am living the dream, It’s just not my dream.

An Amazing Date

I went on a great date the other evening. We made plans to spend an afternoon and evening together. I picked him up and got us Starbucks on the way. Then we stopped by his house so he could change and pick some things up. Went to Whole Foods and got sushi, we took the sushi down to some picnic tables at the beach, and sat and ate an early dinner, while he commented on the amazing view. Next we went to a movie where we snuggled and shared a box of sour patch kids. Then we went back to his place and fell asleep in front of the TV.

It was really a sweet evening...

Okay, okay, in reality I was babysitting my seven year old cousin. His mom had to go out of town for the day and asked me to  pick him up from after school care. I brought him a chocolate milk while I savored my Earl Grey Latte. We had to go by his house to get the twenty bucks his parents left us to use for dinner and so he could change shoes since there was sand in the boots he wore to school. At Whole Foods we got sushi and I waited while he went to the bathroom. We sat on some rocks at the beach and ate our sushi. While asking me how the birds could stand on the seaweed beds he spilled soy sauce all over himself then chased around a little boy from Russia.  The movie we saw was Princess and the Frog and he insisted on ordering the tickets, "one child and one cousin!" He did snuggle up to me in the movie and I watched as he picked his nose and then offered me some Sour Patch Kids. I drove him home while he insisted on downloading games he could play on my iPhone.  After he brushed his teeth we watched cartoons until he fell asleep.

Wishful thinking that I would have such a wonderful date with someone my own age and not get paid at the end of the night.

Madonna Pointy

We go to the movies. "Everybody's Fine," has been falsely advertised as a feel good family comedy for the Holidays, it's not. It takes place in Summer, and it's very sad but true to real life. Everyone is trying to live up to their parent's expectations and lying when they don't. All in all Everybody is not fine.
After the movie we get lunch, and are talking about Tums vs. Rolaids. My Mom prefers Rolaids, I say i have been getting indigestion lately, she says it's cause I lay down after I eat. She is confusing her habits with mine, I don't do that.
I say," No its really only when I drink beer."
They say, "Don't drink beer."

Then my Dad says,"When I drank beer I would just do a bunch of coke too."
I'm thinking oh Yeah-yo?

Walking back to the car, we pass by some display windows with bras.
Dad, under his breath: " Pointy bras are back huh? I hope they don't get Madonna pointy cause someone could get an eye poked out."

Someone certainly could.

Yesterday

My parents are recovering alcoholics, (this is one of the things that has changed for the better since I moved out) they get up and go to meetings every morning at 7, while I sleep in til 10 or 11 and hope a job will find me. It's only half way into my second week at home and my Mom keeps telling people I'm taking mental health days so I am continuing to milk it while I can.

Yesterday afternoon when my Mom returned from her meeting and errands she found me still in my pajamas, I told her that I had a really weird dream. She then proceeded to diagram my dream on paper and interpret it. My mom is an old hippy but also  a jesus freak that is into a lot of alternative/ naturalist ways of thinking. Our house is covered in icons, angels, milagros and dia de los muertes skeletons. I myself don't adhere to any real religion. I'm thinking there is probably something bigger than all of us out there but I'm not sure what it is, could just be the milky way. The interpretation was that I resent my best friend or that I was everyone and everything in the dream, depending on which kind of dream interpretation rules you follow.

This is what my Mom prayed for before our dinner of leftover meatloaf:
"Dear God,
Please bless Tiger and help the Gatorade people see the error of their ways.
Amen"
I struggled not to laugh, because she was totally sincere, and rightfully so one could argue. Tiger Woods could use a few friendly blessings.

As dinner was finishing up my Dad was reading excerpts from his Rolling Stone Magazine:
There was something about Pete Doherty's drug use. He pronounced yayo "yeah-yo" and then let me know that is cocaine. Again all I could do not to laugh aloud. Do they think I learned nothing in College, in life?  But the really funny thing is that Dad used cocaine heavily back in the day, the day being about 8 years ago. I'm pretty sure "Ayo for Yayo" was a song by then, I'm pretty sure he had seen Scarface, but apparently the pronunciation of drug pseudonyms escaped him.

I guess it is good that all of this is still entertaining me though, I have a feeling the time might come when they make me want to pull my hair out. or just do
this.