go back to texas

Okay, emo time is over. I re-read my post from yesterday and, boy, I can be sort of depressing when you get me going, can't I? Wowser. But the good news is now that the feelings are words, the words can be, well, erased. Just like that. And we (and by we I mean I) can move on already. From now on I'll try to save that craziness (when it does creep up) for my journal, thank you very much. Because, let's face it, no one wants to be friends with Debby Downer. Nobody.

So in other less dark, less depressing, less pity party for me, more normal news: my little brother is visiting from NYC this weekend! And while this is the same brother who co-authored and co-posted a note on my door to welcome me home from a trip to Dallas that read "Go Back to Texas" (proof below*)...


... after a couple years and now a bunch of miles between us, I cannot wait for him to visit. And the very best part of this weekend is not only is he visiting me, but we're also surprising my youngest brother by showing up at his last football game of the season.

I just love surprises. And I especially love them when someone else is in on the secret. Yes, yes, I know this surprise is likely not at the "Surprise! You're Publisher's Clearing House's next million dollar winner!" level, but I'll take what I can get, when I can get it.

Now, this isn't the first surprise my brother and I have gone in on together... In retrospect, my favorite probably has to be when we decided to take over cooking dinner for my mom one night and made Macaroni and Cheese along with a surprise salad. Bet you're dying to know the surprise, eh? Dum-dum suckers (still in their wrappers, mind you) hidden among the leaves in the salad bowl. Boy, aren't we something?

You know, the impending family weekend has me feeling all nostalgic about my brothers. About my mom dressing us up in coordinated outfits to get our pictures taken at Sears portrait studio. About playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and Jeopardy on our old Apple 2GS all summer long. About raking leaves into huge piles just to jump in them and have to rake them up again. About getting to unwrap just one present on Christmas Eve. About going back and cheering them on on their high-school (and then college) football fields.

It sort of amazing how you can go from telling on each other because someone didn't eat all of their peas at the dinner table (true story) and yelling at them to GET OUT! of your room to calling each other up to talk through a problem or tell a joke. It's like somewhere along the line you all of a sudden realize that your siblings actually are real people with real lives and real friends and real problems... They don't only exist within your familial frame of reference. And then you make this even better realization that they're actually pretty cool people at that. People you would want to spend time with, even if you weren't forced to around the Thanksgiving dinner table.

And as we grow up, spread out, get lives of our own and get further and further from those childhood memories we were sort of forced to have to together, I feel like it's more important than ever that they're not just my brothers, but my friends.

Even if they'd still sometimes rather have me just go back to Texas.

* Okay, okay. In their defense when you flipped the note over, the backside actually said "Lol** Welcome Home!". But still.
** Again in their defense, I think this note was written just around the time LOL was actually considered a cool, legitimate term to use. If it ever really was.