Uncle, aunt, relay for life, and the phone that never rang

A lot has happened to me since my last post. I would hope so. It has been over a week now. It's a bit late, so I'll abbreviate. . . Damn. . . I'll try not to write this whole thing in verse. What could be worse? . . Sorry. . . I'll start with Tuesday (though the past weekend was good to me). My aunt (yes myfavoriteaunt) and uncle were in the state, so I made the trip to my hometown to visit with them on Tuesday. My Aunt and Uncle are in that gargantuan category of people who I should keep in touch with but don't. My relationship with people in this category kind of snowballs in my head. I start to feel guilty about not keeping in touch. Then after a while that guilt turns into a kind of dread. What must they think about this horrible person who won't even email or send a card to people who've played a big role in his life at some point? They must hate him. They'll probably be cranky. Things will be uncomfortable. I should avoid seeing them if at all possible. I actually considered not going to see my Aunt and Uncle on Tuesday. What a dick thing to even consider. I'm so enormously glad that I did go, however. They were so warm and open and caring toward me that I feel embarrassed to have been so misguided as to have thought that the visit would have been anything other than pleasant. They gave me a nice candle and talked me into going to the bigrealdeal writers conference in June. They have a really affective tagteam sales approach. My Aunt is very loud and aggressive, and she kept hammering away at the point, offering to pay and what not. Then when the storm had just started to clear, my Uncle appeared with his soft, low voice, saying "We would really like to see you go to this." That probably pushed me over the edge. I've pretty much snubbed these people my whole life, but they still have enough of an interest in me to not only suggest and offer to pay for this wonderful opportunity, but also to make me feel as if my going to this conference would be pleasing to them, that my doing something toward one of my biggest life goals would make them happy. Amazing. What have I done to earn such affection? Nothing. Amazing. So I have my spot reserved in the conference. I just need to call with my credit card info. Cool.

Wednesday I had an interview for a manager in training program at a local video store. It went alright. The interviewer smiled a lot as if she were really connecting to what I was saying. Then, in the end, she said, "We'll let you know by Friday if we're interested." Well, Friday's almost over. I haven't heard from her yet. I think I kind of missed again. Close. But not quite. I wonder if maybe my problem was that I wasn't entirely honest in my answers. She asked lots of cliched questions like what was the biggest turning point of your life? and who has influenced your life the most? And I lied when I answered both. The answers seemed too personal to be telling some woman I just met (by the way, we did the interview in the store, between a couple of racks of videos with customers frequently passing by). Anyway, so it looks like I won't be working there anytime soon. One thing that kind of sucks about applying to places that you sometimes go, is that if you don't get the job, you never want to go back. I don't want to go in to rent a movie and have the guy behind the counter thinking "Hey, you're not good enough to work here." Ah well.

So I walked in a Relay for Life today. The weather was beautiful. I would've walked for hours, but I was with my sister's family, and we had other things to do. But surrounding the walking area were luminarias decorated in memory, honor, or support of people who have cancer or who have died of cancer. There were a lot of them. It was overwhelming. And they just kept bringing out more and more of them as the afternoon wore on. I. . . I don't know what to say. . . I. . . I had a moment that I can't explain. I saw these little paper bags decorated by the loved ones of people afflicted with cancer, and I felt the love that went into all of them. And I think I felt love for all of them. For those with cancer. For their loved ones. I felt soft and warm and concerned. I felt sad and happy and tired. For a moment, I felt everything.

That's all I got for explaining it right now.

I'm grateful for ice cream sandwiches (20).