Saturday, November 13, 2004
11:36 AM
Home Sweet Home

Scraps from chicken wings and a small, unopened plastic cup of ranch dressing sit beside me on a paper plate. A bottle of "Fit & Active" Ranch salad dressing sits in the middle of the carpeted floor beside a 2-liter bottle of presumably flat caffeine-free Diet Coke. A box of white clothes, mostly socks, underwear and tee-shirts, sits below the TV. Behind the door is a mountain of laundry that could be hiked if so desired. I just lifted some white typing paper and saw it was resting on a bowl of now stale popcorn.

This is my sister's bedroom. She's neither fit nor active, very far from each actually. But I guess she's trying.

Pulling into mom's driveway I saw the largest collection of garbage she's ever had. To her it's not garbage, quite the contrary actually. To her it's a treasure chest piled with broken picture frames, dirty shoes and some stranger's stained apron. How on earth the neighbors haven't called the city to complain is beyond me. They all have to drive past this house to get to theirs, looking at all the junk and wondering "What ths hell is their problem?" The neighbors may not know that it's just my mom's problem. All I want to do is help. But I can't. I take it upon myself to throw some of the stuff away, which I find ridiculous since it was in the trash in the first place. Many, many times she brings home the garbage, it sits outside, gets rained on for months and then eventually gets throw away. Again. Because mom's not the most mobile person, I try to sift through the junk and get rid of it. Again. Once I did this and she came home, began crying and went out to our garbage to pull things from it and put back in the heap outside the front porch. And there it would sit for months until she threw it out. Again.

There is not an empty chair in kitchen. They're all filled with boxes of stuff, most of which do not belong to us. The space between the huge countertop-island and the kitchen table is blocked with a stroller and more boxes of junk. You can't walk through the way you should be able to; you have to walk all the way around to get by. It's pathetically unacceptable. But my stepdad seems okay with it. He just left for a hunting trip with his brother. On his way out he felt compelled to show me that the word freight was spelled "e-i" instead of "i-e," and he recited the "i before e" song. He called me Mr. College, even though I had only graduated from a community college some 8 years ago. Now I'm telling dirty jokes across the country. What the hell do I care?

Mom just got home. I'm grabbing some free lunch and heading to the city to pick up Katie. She's going with me on the road for a few days. Tonight's show is in Muskegon, Michigan, about 3 hours away. Tomorrow we drive a regrettable 8 hours north and through the Upper Peninsula for a casino show on a Sunday night. It's got to be squeaky clean, so after I say hello and tell them where I'm from, I'll be going nowhere fast.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004
8:52 AM

Don't say I never gave you anything. Hope you enjoy some of this American Pie!