Happy Holidays?

I got back Wednesday from Florida. A day early. Lots of stress going on, and as I got sick, I got the brunt of it for different reasons from my mom.

My dad lost 68 lbs while he was in the hospital. It's the first time I've ever looked at him and thought of him as old and frail.

Sunday my mom went to church (disappointed of course that I didn't go) and I went into the back bedroom to nap and read. When she got home, she came into my room and said, "Your dad's had a fall... and you were here!"

Turns out dad got up to get ice and blacked out, hitting his head on the way down. Mom started to disparage me, and dad was telling her he didn't cry out or anything, he just sat there till he felt he could get up, throwing ice cubes into the sink. He thinks his blood pressure meds are too strong now since he's lost all that weight.

Well when I got sick, my brother and my mom both kept saying things like "should you be here? I don't want you to get dad sick" duh, I didn't want to get him sick either. So I kept to myself most of the time in the back room.

Mom always makes me feel like I'm being judged. comments about what I eat, and when I eat it; how I'm not christian enough (or at all) and her attempts to make sure I know God loves me, and then the last straw came when I heard her talking to my brother Glenn out on the porch. She said some awful, hateful, bitter things about me- blaming me for dad's fall essentially.

So I packed up my things, talked to my bro on the way out, and left. I got out, went to the bookstore to calm down. I'd felt guilty enough already about my dad. I'd felt stressed before, but this was the tops. I made a hotel reservation. Saw a movie to get my mind off of things.

After the movie I checked my messages. Mom had called, deeply apologetic. Seems my brother scolded her after I left. About how she was misplacing blame that she felt on herself. She told me to call her when I was ready to talk.

I didn't call until I got back to Atlanta.

So yeah, Christmas was weird for me. Presents were great, fine. Nothing to complain about. All I'd really wanted was Dad home anyway, and that happened. It's just complicated with family, you know?

You Learn Something New Everyday

So yesterday at work the team is sitting around having a lunch in honor of our new kindergarten teammate. She puts cheese on her sandwich and says "be right back, gonna melt the cheese". To which one of my coworkers responds "Ohhh, you gettin' all booji now, huh." (spelling approximated- j sound like a French j in joie de vive)

To which I look at them, and say, "Booji? What's that... one of your made up words?" Note to the reader: I'm the only white person on my team. They're all like, no, it's a real word. I look to another coworker and ask what it means. She replies I'm getting all booji now, by askin'. Finally they tell me it means acting stuck up, or thinking you're better than someone else.

So I'm wondering where does this word come from? Could it be bourgeoise? But that doesn't make sense, since to my mind bourgeoise meant common people. So I ask a coworker how to spell it, and I should have known better. She shrugs like she never thought of how it'd be spelled and says "b-o-o-g-y".

Yesterday afterschool I went over to Mr. Artist's place. Mr. Artist, btw, is Black. He knows the word! Better yet, he says it was often a word he'd had applied to him, and he tells me it *does* come from bourgeois. Damn I love a smart man. When I said this didn't make sense to me, given my understanding of the word, he said it was used because the black person wasn't acting "black", but acting as if they were better than that, middle class even. This seems weird to me, but maybe it's because I grew up middle class, and white to boot. Somethings I will probably never understand since I'm not black. And that's ok. At least I can learn.