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So I’m writing this post at Jiffy Lube while I’m waiting for my oil change. I’m doing it using my new iPod touch and Jiffy Lube’s wifi. The future kicks ass.
My mom has breast cancer. I’ve had that piece of data for 24 hours. It’s an odd thing to rattle around in the skull. The extremely good news is that she has the best type of breast cancer to get. That’s something I’ve heard and read a lot in the past 24 hours as well. I find it funny (in the way that only I find things funny). It’s like saying somebody has a really good gunshot wound. It’s technically Stage 0, which I hear is good because it means it hasn’t done anything or gone anywhere. It’s just chilling out in a duct. Success rate is about 95%. These are good things. But it’s still breast cancer.
Less than 20 minutes after I found this out, my mom and I were talking about iPods and what music we want to trade. I have and odd family. Am I worried? Yes. Terribly worried? No. And if my mom wants to talk about music, then I’ll do that. I’m the emotional swiss army knife of the family. My dad will be over-protective and over-analytical. My sister will be over-emotional. So I fill the gaps. I give her normalcy, because she wants normalcy.
I have a theory. We’re part of a lost generation. Too young to be Generation X. Too engaged and self-aware to be Generation Y. We’re X and a Half. We grew up in two decades of wealth and prosperity from our parent’s generation leading the world. We were in the shadow of Gen X and watched as they tried to re-invent culture only to see it be co-opted, diluted, and sold by the very people they rebelled against. To that degree I can’t blame hipsters. They saw what became of their elder sibling’s ‘cool,’ and they are so very afraid of it happening to their ‘cool’ that they don’t want to share. We grew up watching our parents show us that happiness was a nice house with a decent mortgage, 2 cars, and a nice suburburn school district to send your kids to. Generation Y has bought into this. They are the definiative ‘me’ generation, lacking deep individual culture, but focused on replicating the success of their parents. Generation X, meanwhile sits back and shelters themselves as they fade into the suburbs, still bitter at their cultural defeat by the hands of Abercrombie and Jive Records. So we’re in this limbo, trying to define success as financial gain and stability, while also trying to define success through idealism and expansive world-views. To succeed at one seems to fail the other. Gen X on one side. Gen Y on the other. Who are we? We really need another Reality Bites.
Normal is sometimes hard for me to do. But when you mom needs normal, you turn off your inner monologue. I am what people need. Whoever that is.
So as it turns out, Plano has the richest median income in America for a town or 250,000 or more. So, yeah, I now hate this town more. I’m frightened that the median income it over $77,000. On the flip side, I made my first royalty check today. It wasn’t much, but it’s something. My friend Mikey got a much bigger check that puts his yearly income above the $77,000 mark. Fucker. I would get out of this town if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s good pay, free health insurance, and a fun place to work.Not much else on the news front. I’m going to spend the three day weekend at the lake, which will be nice. I do this, despite having a friend in town, who I haven’t seen in a while. And a hot female friend also in town. But I’ll have fun at the lake. Where everybody has a boyfriend/girlfriend/fiance/wife/husband except me. God damnit. Why couldn’t I pick a female dominated career.
