My sister Lisa and I just spent the weekend at my brother Chuck's place in downtown Cleveland where he lives and attends the Cleveland Institute of Music. To put it very lightly, my summer SUCKED MAJOR BALLS and it was really, really nice to have the opportunity to get away from the overstuffed reality sandwich I know as Minnesota and be a lazy bum for a couple of days with the two other beings my mother spawned.
I had the best time I've had in a long time. At the train station on the way to the airport when we were leaving for home I had a cartoon bubble over my head of me holding onto the bench with a white knuckle grip while Lisa and Chuck each had one of my legs trying to pull me into the train. Ha!
Highlights of the trip included:
- Seeing my brother sawing away on his viola in an orchestra @ Severance Hall with an amazing pianist named Andrius Zlabys - and then drinking way too much wine at the afterparty in a wine glass that I held with a Starbucks coffee cup sleeve ("I don't want it to get cold!" I was telling people)
- Going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and once again being mesmerized by things like The Who's old instruments (the musical ones), handwritten letters by people like Hunter S. Thompson & Paul Simon, and Freddy Mercury's jumpsuit
- Waiting for the bus
- Eating like a pig
- Not making lattes
- Hanging out with my siblings
Speaking of: My siblings kick ass! Plain and simple. We are all tuned in to the same strange frequency - one where bizarre senses of humor and just being mellow is a 24 hour/7 day a week instinct. I'm not sure if there's any other group of people I could spend 96 hours straight with and still be laughing or not feeling like I need to shove a No. 2 pencil in my ear to stop the insanity. There is no bickering when we're around each other.. I am at liberty to say the most vile, sarcastic, dry, abstract, disgusting, inappropriate things around them (and they do the same - some more than others, *cough cough* Charlie) and there is always an unspoken understanding that it's just a joke. I've had a few run-ins with therapists in my day and they've all said the same thing: "That is incredibly rare - consider yourself very lucky!" Nice job, Moms and Pops!
Anyways, it was a great weekend and I hope to do it again real soon sometime. Now it's time to unpack my clothes, get back to worrying about bills, looking for a job, more bills, and figuring out what the hell I'm going to do with the rest of my life.
"There's no place like home..." Yeah, well f*ck you, Dorothy!
