Selected Entries: January 2005

In January 2005 I was sixteen years old. As my junior year of high school reached its midpoint I faced the prospect of yet another disruptive interstate move and the apathy of the parents who were uprooting my life. My growing awareness of their callousness provoked rare profanity, while on January 20 I ruminated over a different kind of mismanagement when George W. Bush was inaugurated to a second term as president.

January 1, 2005

The funeral yesterday went very well. There was a brief scene in the funeral home with the body in open view. Most people (including Powell) went and kissed the forehead of the deceased, but I couldn’t. The idea of kissing a lifeless rubber suit was completely disturbing for me, and so I just leaned over the casket and made a sound like kissing. 

The coffin was carried, without incident, to the cemetery. I liked Grand Pa’s funeral much better. Great-Grand Ma’s service and burial were too automated, too impersonal. At one point during the service the preacher actually had to stop and look down at his paper to remember her name.

At the end of her life she didn’t look like the plump, happy old woman I’d seen when I was fourteen. She was so thin and shriveled yesterday. I’m just glad that it’s over.

January 2, 2005

School begins again in three days. I have no idea why we’re going back on a Wednesday, but that’s how it is. I’m anxious to see how I did on my AP European History portfolio. Not only does it count as my midterm, but I put a lot of creative effort into it. 

Man, I’ve really slacked during this Christmas holiday. I haven’t had a shower in two days! Isn’t that disgusting? Blonde Girl came by today and we talked about school and whatnot. Someone crashed into the neighborhood gate on New Year’s Eve, and now a pile of rubble is in the road. A police officer told me this evening that a drunk driver was to blame. The security people are improvising, but oh, my gosh it's so funny looking.


January 7, 2005

I wanted to go to a Little Christmas church service today, and of course it couldn't happen. Mom had an unexpected business meeting, which meant she couldn't take me at 9 a.m., and Dad didn't even pretend to try, so I spent today in school. Then when I got home, Dad informed me that we're probably moving again soon and asked my opinion. 

Well, let's see: I have an internship with a Democratic senator lined up for June and my name is in the ring for Boys' State, which takes place in May. So any move before the end of the summer could really muck things up. I told him that and he basically said he wasn't making any guarantees on the timeline.

Frustrated, I exploded at Dad that for once I wanted something to go right, for once I deserved to avoid being screwed over. Dad became indignant and now I’m just going to bed. Fuck him. He can take his  forty-one-year-old loser self and peddle his bullshit for someone who cares to hear it. As usual, they make some spur-of-the-moment decision and the rest of us are left to deal with the consequences. Perfection.


January 20, 2005

Dad was diagnosed with diabetes on January 18. I was shocked to hear this. After all, diabetes is the same disease that contributed significantly to Grand Ma Hick Family’s early death (it left her weaker to fight the cancer). Grand Pa Hick Family was beside himself when he found out about Dad’s diagnosis. We’re very lucky, because it’s not advanced at all and still in the earliest stages. If Dad eats healthy foods and exercises regularly, it could go away entirely. 

President Bush’s inauguration ceremonies continue on live television. I watched his inaugural address at noon. As was to be expected, he talked a lot but said very little. I must have heard the word “freedom” mentioned twenty times inside of thirty minutes. I kept waiting for him to say something concrete, or even to deliver some particularly stirring rhetoric, but it never came. 

They’re almost like royalty, the First Family. Watching all the pomp and circumstance this afternoon, it’s so odd to think that Bush’s second term in office was actually decided by a bunch of backwoods bumpkins whose social lives center on the local bar and whose knowledge of politics couldn’t trump that of a doorknob.