It's After 2am on Monday, er, Tuesday

Thank god it's a holiday week, huh? Praise him with great praise. I tried to sleep but I was too cold and couldn't concentrate enough to fall asleep.

Ed (aka "El Jefe") has a one way ticket to Dallas tomorrow and Beth said she "might" be in late afternoon so I's gots nothin' to worry about workwise. Other than waking up in the morning.

I'm f'in tired but I just can't sleep. There's a lot going wrong right now. Things were going ok, even heading in the "right" direction a little while ago but now I'm slippin' slippin' into the same old patterns. Drinking too much. Smoking way too much. Getting fat again. I'm really starting to hate the holidays.

I feel like the happy pills aren't working as well as they were when I first started taking them. That's bumming me out. Really, I can't be expected to talk about things! Dear god.

Ok, that's twice that I've mentioned the big man and I don't mean Clarence Clemons. RIP.

I'm losing it.

OK. I admit it. I've been thinking about my dead father a lot recently and wondering about how I'm going to deal with my mother dying. It's a holiday thing. I always get like this at this time of year. Death. Yeah, I feel guilty about not seeing my mother but I don't know what the point is. I saw her, what?, 2 or was it 3 years ago? and she was so childlike and strange. She was like a "patient" and not like "my mother"... She's not there any more.

And I'm scared to death that I'll end up like her. Though I expect I'll be more like my father. Even though I know I'm a curious blend of the two. A creature made up of the weakest parts of both of them: a senile drunk.

It's that kind of cold, that wet cold, that gets deep into your bones. Because it's 44° (aka 7°) which isn't that cold, but it's that kind of cold.

And it's all about the holidays that I'm feeling blue. It's every year. Thanksgiving used to be my favourite holiday, now I can barely stand the thought of that 5-6 hour drive across the state, into Maryland and Delaware, where the "family" is. The family that isn't what it used to be. I look forward to seeing people in Philly, my real family, whether they know it or not, not the blood relatives or in-laws.

She was... and it's always her, never him, though he was always the "elephant in the room" so to speak... she was so... she persevered. She did what she thought was best. But what she thought was best was always way off the mark. Sadly, I think I respect my father more. I think I understood him more. And I talk about her as if she were already gone. But she is. She's this tiny creature with strangely beady eyes, like an animal. I think she always was. Always living like an animal... How can I say that? Because I observed it.

And my brother, saying "she stayed with him"?!?! Does he even have any idea? Yes, she did stay. But what she went through...

What she put us through...

She didn't know any better.

That's what hurts. SHE DIDN'T KNOW BETTER.

Yet she deserved better.