Tag: meisaj

Its about me.

Candy, or not candy

meisajDaily Life

Listening to NPR this I was a little shocked at what states are now defining as candy. States like Colorado and Washington are now going to tax candy as a way to fill in budget deficits.

In order to do this they first have to define what is candy; and the determining factor as to what is or is not candy, is flour. That’s right. Because Twix and Kit Kats have flour in them they are not candy. But a Snickers bar that is devoid of flour is candy. I find it the most bizarre arbitrary way to define something as candy.

However I am envious of the guy who gets to sit there and have candy sent to his office to see if it is taxable as “candy” or not. I wonder if he makes secret deals with his favorte candy company to be supplied candy for life if he deems it not taxable.

Dream a little dream

meisajDaily Life

I had this dream last night that was to weird not to write about.

I am in the passenger seat of Sarah’s car.  She is driving.  We’re heading down some country road with tall headges lining the sides.  This car in front of Sarah has it lights on, which, because it is the middle of a sunny day, is driving Sarah crazy.    So she decides to flash her brights at the car.  After flashing her brights a few times the car slams on their brakes and pulls sideways blocking the road.  It turns out it is a cop car.  And he’s quite upset.

He pulls out a ticket book and is about to write a ticket when the car behind Sarah’s starts honking.  The driver gets out and is pretty upset at being blocked.  But then he sees the gun the police officer has, and pulls out his own gun from his car.  The cop and him start laughing comparing their guns, they are both toy guns with the orange caps on the end of the barrells.  The cop agrees to move his car, and starts driving down the road.

Sarah decides this is the  perfect time to hide from the cop.  She drives off the road behind the ledges in a little parking lot. I’m not quite freaking out, but do remind her that we are now hiding from the police.  She laughs and says the cop was a jerk anyways.  I see the cop driving the otherway down the road going exceptianally fast.

Then I wake.  Weird weird dream.

An unsent letter to my brother

meisajDaily Life

I don’t have much going on tonight, I’ve been cleaning and going through old mail I never threw out.  I came across a letter my mom sent me full of letters from PJ.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t read all the letter PJ sends my mom, she forwards them in batches, and half the time I’m not sure I’m particularly interested in what they say.  But I sat down and read the ones I came across tonight, and decided to write this.  I don’t have PJ’s address (I’m sure I could find it), so as it stands this is unsent.

____________________________

PJ,

I’m not sure where to start.  I mean we really haven’t talked in almost a year.  For reasons that are obvious.  And yes, I’m still disappointed.  It lingers, what can I say.  I’ve read some of your letters.  Not all.  There was a lot.  And mom sends them a ton at a time.  I hope you’re doing well in the army.

Things here go on as always.  Up, down and back and forth.  Its been a long year full of problems and also fulls of joy and fun.  Cleveland is still a little lonely, but I’m getting more and more used to the city every week.……..

So I don’t know.  I don’t know what to write or how to talk to you.  I still think of how all I really wanted to do is get to know you.  I mean I’m 31 and know jack shit about by brother.  That’s all I wanted last summer.
So where does that leave us.  I’m not sure.  I don’t hate you, I love you, you’re my brother.  But at the same time I don’t know anything about you, how to approach writing or talking to you, or even if I really want to.  Its strange, but when I think about writing all that comes to mind is vagueness and generalities.  I have nothing in detail that I really feel like sharing.   You know so little about me and my life that I’m not sure that it matters what I write.

I guess I just want to write to say I do think of you.  I do wish we had more memories as brothers, but really we don’t.  For the last decade every time I feel like I reached out to you I feel like you shied away from it.  Maybe everyone else in the family is fine, but I just don’t know how to approach you yet.  I do look forward to someday getting to know you, one of my favorite memories of you is going out to that bar here in Cleveland for beers and playing the trivia and just relaxing together.  23 years you’ve been on this planet, and those two hours together are the highlight of my memories with you.  And really that’s all I wanted.  To shoot the shit, relax and get to know each other.  There isn’t another member of our family that I wanted as a bigger part of my life than you, and there isn’t another member of our family I feel further apart from than you.  You’re my only brother.

So again, I’m not sure where this leaves us.  I really sat here and tried to think of a what to write to you.    You’re my brother.  If you needed anything, anything at all, I’d come running.  And I mean that.  At the same time I feel like I spent my whole life waiting for you to be at a place where our age difference didn’t matter and we could be friends as well as brothers, that we could have experiences together that mattered and build a good friendship around those experiences that could lead to us being closer brothers, and I had thought we’d reached that point; but I guess I was wrong.

When I was 18 and left for college you were 10, and we barely saw each other.  When I was 22 and spent a year at home after college you were 14, and we had our own lives.  When I was 28, and you were 20, you finally took me up on the offer to come live out in Buffalo with me.  But that fell through after a month where we didn’t see much of each other even when living together.  When I was 30, you were 22, and I was never more excited than the prospect of us spending the summer together getting to know each other, but that never happened.  Now I’m 31, and you’re 23, and you’re enlisted for what I’ve been told is 6 years and I feel like I don’t know you at all, that other than our family connections I’ve got so little to go on. I’ve never had long talks with you about life like I have with everyone else in our family, never talked about shortcoming or triumphs with you.  Again, I don’t know,  I hope next time around, next time we have more than a day or two together get a chance to build those connections.

I guess, what it comes down to is that, I’m over being disappointed.  Despite how I opened this letter, I am.  It doesn’t matter what your reasons were; you looked up to me, you were afraid of letting me down, you didn’t like expectations, whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  I am sad that I didn’t have the time and experiences I really wanted with you to get to know you.  You’re my brother.  I want nothing but the best for you.

~AJ

The difference an hour makes…

meisajDaily Life

Oscar, my cat, woke me up at 5:32 a.m. by meowing in my ear and nuzzling. I can’t really blame him, I’ve been putting him and Angelo (my other cat) on a feeding schedule. They each get a half cup or so of food twice a day. And while Angelo is the bigger of the two cats, and even thoguh Oscar eats way more than Angelo, it is Oscar who is pining for food every morning.

After shooing Oscar off the bed I took a look my phone and the time. That’s how I knew how it was 5:32. He (Oscar) usually waits til after 6 to wake me up. I really don’t need an alarm clock anymore.

Anyways, even though I felt great and wide awake I realized that I only had five and a half hours of sleep at that point; so I opted to go back to sleep til my normal waking hour of 6:30 a.m. I quickly fell back asleep

An hour later I woke up to Oscar again (and my alarm, within a minute of each other really). This time I felt sluggish, didn’t want to leave the bed, and was just overall tired. And the feeling has continued all day. I got my normal amount of sleep, have drank a sufficient amount of coffee, and eaten decently; but still feel dragging today.

If there is a moral to be learned here, it’s trust that Oscar knows when I should get up.

Dreams and additions

meisajDaily Life

I’ve been having extremely strange dreams lately.  But, as Sarah has said, I have some nice lucidity and quite a linear storyline.  Here’s the last one I remember:

I am leaving a parking lot.  It was a pay lot so I was paying at the credit card swipe machine (it only took credit cards).  Behind me in line was Laura, a teacher I used to work with at Kenmore Middle.  I was having a lot of trouble with the machine, it wasn’t reading my card or something.  Laura was pretty impatient.  She started pushing my car out of the way with the van she was driving.  The whole time she was smiling, not in a vindictive way, but a sheer joy and happy way.

After she pushed my car out of the way she drove by smiling.  I had to circle the block in my car (and pass through several intersections and lane mergers).  I parked by the sidewalk to walk back to the parking lot.  I was pretty concerned I had left my credit card in the machine.  When I walk into the lot I discover this wasn’t the case.  Or at least its not in the machine, I”m not worried though.

Outside of the lot I walk right down the road.  There is a big steep hill.  It is snowy, so I decide to slide down on my bottom.  I use my hands and steer left and right, which I do pretty well considering I have to avoid not only multiple trees that have fallen in the street but also cars driving up the hill.  At the bottom of the hill is a cul-de-sac.  I recognize some of these houses, and immediately see someone I recognize.

Its a woman whom I had interviewed a long while ago.  I apparently interviewed her because she lived in a small house at the time, and I was interviewing people who lived in the world’s smallest dwellings.  Currently she lived with her mother, and her old, small house fit in the living room of her mother’s house (and it was in there).  She took me in the house where we laughed while looking at the small house.  Then I saw a picture of me from when I first interviewed her.  In the picture I was really young, maybe 18.  I was kind of saddened by it.  But I liked it.

We chat it up a bit and then I leave.  I walk out into a large field.  There are horse stables and other sheds and what not.  Some of them have gold Christmas lights on them.  And then I wake up.

As for the new addition…. I’m an uncle, again.  I now have a neice, Takara.  She awesome.  Trust me.