I suppose that a more detailed inventory of my time at home would likely be in order. There were several main components: family, friends, and Mexican food. We’ll start with family. Aunt Mary’s awesomeness need not be explained, only reiterated. *LOVE* My uncle Tom also made a rather strong showing. Politically and ideologically we seem to think very different things, but for the same reasons. I’ve often held him and several other family members up as the kind of Republican I wouldn’t mind having in the White House. I see them as the people the party has betrayed over the past decade.

Continuing on the family line, there’s the question of my father. Breakfast went remarkably smoothly, not least because of a new venue and the presence of Uncle Tom and Aunt Debbie. There was however a point at which I veered off the path of etiquette and quietly laid into my dad regarding his own parents. I think he has a lot of guilt where the people in his life are concerned, and much of that has to do with his parents, but just as he and my mother will never come to see me without some sort of ultimatum, his parents will sit in Chico and wait for people to visit them. When my dad agitated for a visit from me while I was living in WeHo, it made some sense as I had a car and he worked crazy hours. It was fine with me that he never even really knew where my apartment was. However, when I got guilt trips to visit his parents more often while I was in college, the expectation was not as reasonable. I had no means of getting there, and they never once made the effort to come see me, even turning down the invitation to the only college graduation any of their grandchildren will ever have. The café at the Long Beach Museum of Art overlooking the water was likely not the best place to bring this up, but it just tumbled out when he started spewing forth the guilt he felt about not being able to visit his family more often. I guess my point had been that the difference between the two groups of people was that my family at least puts in effort.

Third on the family list, is my sister. Working and paying bills have grown her up such that she now acts roughly her age. She’s matured more in the past two years than she had previously done since high school. It’s great to see. As part of that though, I think she feels the need to assert herself both as an independent individual, and as being my big sister. I began to wonder about this with regards to the birthday gift she got me, the LG Chocolate phone, which doubles as an mp3 player. I’ll start by saying that she’s an incredibly sweet and giving person, and it’s in that spirit that she gave me something so extravagant in comparison with our family’s established gift giving practices. I simply think that she might also have wanted to demonstrate that it was something she could do. I’ve been the independent and educated one, but she’s able to provide something for me. Is it terribly cynical of me to think that? Oh well, I’ll accept it as good will and hope she got some sort of amazing deal by virtue of being a Verizon employee. It doesn’t hurt that the phone is dead sexy.

I think this is getting long enough that the other two points will have to wait until later.