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My parents are selling their house, which is sad because it's where I grew up and where my memories live. There's an Open House for real estate agents tomorrow, so mom wanted it to be fully decorated for Christmas to add to the appeal. We also steam-cleaned the carpets, due to the damage my brother's dogs did to them. (See "Happy St. Patrick's Day" thread for that story).
Me: "Why do we have so many lights on?"
Mom: "So we can see."
Me: *thoughtful pause* "That's 67 lights, not counting the natural light from 33 windows."
Mom: *frustratrated sigh* "Are you in one of those moods?"
Me: "Yes."
Mom: *busies herself and ignores me, while I sneak around turning off some of the lights*
Mom: "Let's move the furniture."
"We" move the furniture and start steam-cleaning, while mom carefully places magnolia blossoms amidst the pine trimmings on the mantle and the banister and other places. (She gets these blossoms every year by sending me into the neighbors' tree when they're not home).
Mom: *wiping a strand of hair from her face and expelling air* "Whew! I'm craving Frontera for lunch. Sound good?"
Me: "Yes."
Mom: "Give me a minute to freshen up before we go."
A "minute" is a very relative term for my mother, so I go upstairs and out onto the roof by way of the window of my brother's old room, which is now my mom's gym room.
I like high places, and there are lots of tall buildings at and near my school, because it's in Atlanta. I once climbed over a balcony railing and walked along the wall-ledge, and sat on the corner because it was a great spot to look over the city and see Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain is only called a mountain because it's so big, but it's really only one rock, which is the largest rock in the world and 3 buses can fit into the nostril of one of the horses in the carving on the face of it, which is of Civil War generals riding into battle. Before the Europeans came, the Native American medicine men in the area would venture to the top because it put them closer to the sky, which was where the smoke of their fires needed to take their prayers.
I looked down at the street, and people were pointing up at me, which made me worry that they might call the police if they thought I was trying to kill myself or something, so I went back inside and there was a security guard and a man who looked like a professor running up the stairs. I walked casually past them and never got caught, but I stay off of that building now, just in case.
On my parent's roof, I can look south over the downward-sloping land which was my domain when I was a kid, before others moved into the area. My brother and I used to play out there all the time at first, but we eventually met some other kids, and their family was exceedingly wealthy, so they had tons of neat things to draw our attention away from the woods. They had a pool which was warmed by a waterfall coming from a raised hot tub, and a pool house which had arcade games and slot machines and a bucket of coins so we could play "Casino", and a pool table. There was also a big game room inside the main house that had all of the videogame consoles, and probably all of the games, that were available at the time, and there were tons of tapes to listen to, and outside were motorbikes and four-wheelers that we'd race through the northern woods, and their parents bought every kind of snack food imaginable, because their kids were spoiled rotten and would throw fits if the particular sweet they were craving wasn't present.
They also ordered their mother around, like she was some kind of slave, and she was afraid of them because they screamed at her during tantrums, and the father chuckled at them and essentially encouraged them to treat her as they did.
Me: "Why are you so mean to your mom?"
Boy: "Because she's a b*itch."
Others: *nodding in agreement*
Me: "No she's not! She's really sweet!"
Girl: "Get out of here, you stupid tomboy!"
I wasn't welcome there anymore, and in the mornings when we were waiting for the bus to pick us up for school, they'd sometimes push me around or bloody my nose if I didn't stay in a tree until the bus driver was present.
My brother was very popular with that whole family though, so the father called him his "other son," and bought him everything, and my brother became spoiled rotten like the other kids and if my dad didn't also give him everything he wanted, my brother would cry and say things like, "You don't love me," or "Mr. *** is my real daddy." In a way, my father brought it on himself, because when I was 7 and my brother was 9, he came home from work very late one night and took us outside in our pajamas and showed us a mercedes and told us to get in, and showed us how the roof could open and let us push all the buttons. I thought it was neat, but then....
Me: "Where's our car, daddy?"
Dad: "This is our car now."
Me: *realizing it was a tradeoff and starting to cry* "But I like our oooold caaaar."
Brother: *also starting to look upset*
Dad: "Jessica, don't ruin this for me."
Dad: "Parents like to be able to provide for their kids. We aren't going to have to tighten our belts anymore, and Christmas is going to be alot better than last year. We're going to be very....comfortable." *looking at us each in turn* "Things are going to get better. Okay?"
Me: "Okaaay."
Brother: "Okay. Can I drive it?"
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Perhaps I'll come back to this later, but for now, I've lost the desire to write about it.
It's alives!