Tony Orlando

I tried to get to sleep early tonight. Earlier than midnight anyway. But I woke from a near sleep to the phone ringing at eleven. My sister in California decided to call. She doesn't usually call me unless she is wanting me to do something or she has been drinking. Tonight, it was both. I love my sister. I really do. With all my heart I do. She has done immeasurable things to see that I am doing ok, raising my daughter on my own. But I worry about how much she drinks and the way she is dealing with her own life. Emotionally. And ultimately, physically.

Apparently, I am expected to be there for Christmas this year. I wasn't aware that I was, but my adoptive mom told everyone that I was going to be there. My sister wanted to know when. It wasn't an option or even a consideration that I had no plans to go and never said that I was. I called my mom last week and we did not even discuss Christmas at all. We talked weather, her health, her granddaughter and her trip to Panama. From what I could understand, they have already decided when we are going where and who we are going to go see. Ugh. It is hard to talk to her when every other word out of her mouth begins with the letter F. I just sort of sit back and let her go on about how I should tell my job to go suck a big one (I really didn't ask her to elaborate on what the "big one" was) and just take whatever time I want, off. She doesn't understand the depedency of a decent paying job, and the absolute value it has on a single parent. You put up with a lot of junk when you know it is better than the current alternatives. At any rate, whenever I talk with her in that state of mind she is in, it sort of leaves me...sad. I don't know how to talk back to her and tell her how much it hurts my heart to hear her. How I feel like she is this incredible person, but yet the burdens of her life have twisted her up. I hear the frustration and sadness in her own words of F-this and F-that. She drinks everyday, a lot, but yet sees no problem with it. And our mother received a liver transplant last year why? Sure, she had hepititis, but she doesn't think the Bloodymary breakfasts' and Screwdriver chasers had anything to do with it?

I am just not sure what to say to her. I'll check my calendar in the morning.