Long Weekend

I drove 5 hours to my mom's house on Saturday so I could spend the weekend with her for Mother's Day. (And fix her computer.)

Visiting my family always brings a host of mixed feelings for me. Even the drive itself gets me thinking about people and experiences from my past, some good, some not so good.

My family makes me feel stressed out. My mom and my sister fight with each other constantly. When my sister is out of the house, my mom only wants to gripe about my sister, or my ex-step-dad. Stories, complaints, and flawed rationale that I've heard so many times before. It really wears on me.

On the other hand, after my mom has gotten it out of her system, she starts to ask me how my life is going, and we start to have real two-way conversations about family, life, and the world. It's really nice to actually talk *with* her instead of being talked at.

My mom and I went to the beach and walked around the tide flats for over an hour, having a really good discussion. Along the way, we found a tide pool absolutely full of sand dollars. Fuzzy black discs, half buried in the sand, all along the bottom of the pool. Then I realized they were in the sand outside the tide pool too, and there were so many, I was afraid I might crush them with my clumsy feet.

We drove up to Skagit Valley to see the tulip fields, but we were a week too late. All the tulips were gone. We saw a few bright stagglers mixed in with the wilted daffodils, and a few fields of green tulip foliage with no flowers. The drive was still nice, I love the Skagit Valley any time of year.

I spent hours working on my mom's old Windows 98 computer, thinking she had some virus, only to discover it was bad RAM. Fortunately she had two sticks, so I was able to just remove one and reposition the other.

I tried to play piano this weekend, which I always find relaxing, but as soon as my sister heard me playing, she started wailing on her electric guitar, totally drowning me out. I was a little frustrated with her for that. I never get to play piano anymore. :(

Three days at my family's house is about my limit. I was very ready to leave this morning. Another 5 hours on I-5, and I'm back home, thankfully with another day off tomorrow so I can recover from the trip before I go back to work. I could definitely use a day alone to recharge before I submit myself to the chaos at the office!