A wonderful day of experiences

Monday, 11:47pm
Listening to: various Live (good shit!)

Made plans one day in advance to visit my brother & his family in Pelican Rapids today. Got up pretty early &, after picking apples from the tree out front to bring to Brian, walking Misty, gassing & oiling up the car, I hit the road. I wound up stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 15 or 20 minutes before I finally got out of town. It was all good though, gave me a chance to eat a blueberry Nutrigrain bar. After that, it was easy driving until I got into Pelican & couldn’t find my brother’s house. Damn Yahoo! driving directions. Don’t trust that shit, man. I wound up having to pull over & call him.

It was a nice, chill visit. I hadn’t seen him in nearly a year so I was soooo happy to see him. We kicked back, listened to music, & talked about a lot of stuff. He gave me a book of short stories by Ray Bradbury (The Illustrated Man), concert DVDs of Korn & Godsmack, a cd, & over 6 gigs of music, a lot of it from bands I haven’t heard.

To boot, he gave me a digital camera (an exact replica of the one I have) & told me to see if I could find someone that wanted it (for free). Naturally, Alicia, being my best friend & a sister to me, was the first to be offered it, so it’s hers. LOL When I asked her about it, she thought I was messing w/her. It’s a little sad that people aren’t used to having stuff just.. given to them… just for the hell of it.

Brian grilled kabobs & made pasta for supper. The food was soooo freaking good. To be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a really good home-cooked meal (i eat a LOT of salads cuz I’m broke). In the end, it was a very nice, chill visit. Though, he & I rarely ever fight… so it’s usually chill & drama-free. It was good to see his wife, Missy, & two step kids too. 

I got back into town at 8pm, the trip home seemed a lot faster than the trip out. Driving down 8th street didn’t feel as ordinary as it usually does. That’s what I like about leaving town, if even for a day. I, apparently, need to leave town more often.

Got into a fight w/my mom the other night about my being a Buddhist. I brought it up, solely b/c I wanted to share my joy w/her about finding something that helped me figure a lot of stuff out. I thought she’d be happy for me. Obviously, she wasn’t. I think she’s been crossing her fingers, for 15 years now, that I would find my way back to being a catholic. All I did was talk about Buddha & some of the stuff he said about letting stuff go & dealing w/anger & she immediately started arguing w/me. Stupidly, I did exactly what she wanted me to do: attack her religion.. so what was supposed to be this nice discussion, turned into this huge argument.

Ha, I’m almost certain that if I had talked to her about it to her face instead of on the phone, I would have been able to read the fear of the damnation of my eternal soul written all over her face. She just doesn’t get it. To me, this is my ONE time to exist as this person in this world. I’m not going to waste it worrying that I’m going to hell or pissing God off. I’m going to spend it learning, teaching, laughing, loving, & experiencing. Can I really help that since I was 10, I have been filled w/complete indifference when I’ve been sitting in a church. In fact, I feel downright uncomfortable sitting in a church.

Anyway, I’m not going back into thinking about that & getting annoyed w/her all over again b/c it’s a waste of my time & energy.

In the way of the older days of this thing, I’ll end on a quote (look back through the years & you’ll see what I mean).

"Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one that gets burned."
– Buddha