With an hour before bed, the thought occurs to me in the shower that I have an oppurtunity to devote either an hour to the slightly urgent need to catch up on my reading for my Torts class, or an hour to catch up on writing, a need not of timely urgency, but of passion and intellect. One represents the practical progression of my life, out of fast food and small paycheckts and into a respectable working world. The other, the eager advancement of my skill and mind, or, at the very least, the slowing of it's regression.

The trouble is that, being an average American, I, faced with such a dillemna, normally end up spending that very hour in front of the TV.



Thus, a short explanation of why my blog has gone unupdated, and also why I won't score as high on my final as I did on my midterm



I am listening to a track of sentimental clarinette music, set to nature sounds. When I started this post, it was "It's a Wonderful World", now "Strangers on the Shore", or, as I like to call it, the song that the redhead learns to play during the montage scene in Mr. Holland's Opus. Next, it will be "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", a song I would almost go so far to say should only be performed on the clarinette, if not sung.

I love the restrained quality of the clarinette song, and have been looking for a chance to expand on this observation, in the most public and pretentious way possible. It's a strange tone, perculiar to the clarinette, the way each note seems to end as if there were something more behind it, something held back with the utmost care and control. To personify it, it's as though the flashy, provocative saxophone had a child with the conservative bassoon, making for a subtly beautiful and thoughtful child who's fantasy world is...jesus, I've taken this metaphor too far. I don't have that same "held back" quality, I regret to say.

A quick nod to the fact that I've been aching to play my saxophone lately, aching to practice and get some of what I never claimed when I was first learning, to let Zack here me play (for the first time, notably) and show him this whole side of me that has gone yet unknown. Unfortunately, I have two saxophones, one that's pewter and gorgeous and that produces a quality sound unlike any I've heard in any alto, but needs half a grand or so worth of repairs to be playable, and the other which is cheaper and sounds it, but working, which is unfortunately being undefinitely borrowed by a friend's brother. I sorely need to get that back (so that I can sell it to fund fixing the other one.)



The clarinette and nature songs are from a CD I bought for Zack's (natural) Dad for father's day. I opened the CD and ripped all the songs to my hard drive before we gave it to him, having toyed with the notion of immorality in this. Zack's other father, his Stepfather, was given the soundtrack to The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. That was the movie we bought him for christmas, and both were my best guess, being that Zack rarely has much to say about presents. Before he met me, he was accustomed to giving his entire family Wal*Mart gift cards for christmas, a habit which I quickly broke him of. I bought my father a two CD set of Dean Martin music. For Zack's Dad (Chuck) and step-dad (Tim), the CD's were hand-delivered, an act which was accompanied by an hour's conversation, hugs, the works. Such was the reception when Zack showed up announced. As for my father, I called beforehand. My mother answered, and when I asked if Dad was there, she said yes but didn't give him the phone. She asked why I had asked, and I explained it was Father's Day and that I had a gift for him. She said to drop it off, they probably wouldn't be there, they had a very important trip to Wal*Mart to make. I ended up leaving it on the table with a note written on half a torn envelope from my credit card statement. A few hours later, I tried to call to make sure he'd found it, but they weren't home yet. I didn't bother asking my sister to have them call back.

Among other things, such as the fact that "they're just not my kind of people", this is probably why I feel so much resentment towards Zack's family-- I act like the cold distance is the way I prefer things, but, in reality, my jealousy over Zack's relationship with his family runs both ways: I've always been willing to admit that I'm jealous of how much he loves them (because love is love, afterall, and a girl always wants to be the center of her partner's world), but I'm also jealous of how much they love him. My family stopped really being a family years ago, when my sister first got pregnant, and it just went downhill from there. Also, I find it somewhat bitterly ironic that Zack has two loving and supportive fathers, and I have...my dad.

I should give credit where credit's due, though. Things have been a lot better with my father since I've been married and away. Someone, my grandmother I think, made the observation that when I got married, he realized how quickly I'd grown up and left home. Realized, perhaps, that he did love me, and that he'd just given up his little girl.

I wonder, but I don't think that's at all what it is. I think he just likes Zack, and likes me better now that I'm associated with him.


Who knows? All I know for sure is that this post is clear evidence that I need to work harder to stop the regression. Fucking stream of consciousness crap.


On with it.