The Summer Off

I'm finished with finals now, so I've got the summer off. I purchased Worlds of Warcraft to give me a fun way to spend some time this summer. I'll see if I can hook up with M. and E. in Atlanta on this front.

I'm also thinking of taking guitar lessons for a couple of months. I'd like to work on my finger-picking skills.

The other major thing that's going on is I'm in the market for a house again. This time I think I'll be able to see it through. I've already gone through the loan approval process--now I just have to see if I can find a decent house not too far from where I work.

I did the uber-geek thing and bought opening night (midnight) tickets to see the next Star Wars movie. I'm pretty stoked about that.

This is Mother's Day. I've been thinking about my relationship with my mother and the issue of whether or not there's anything to celebrate in that. I think there is.

When I was growing up, she did provide for all of my material needs. My emotional needs on the other hand were not only not met, but damaged. I recovered from that pretty quickly when I got out on my own, but the end result was that I never really had a close relationship with my mother.

One of the other things that happenend when I got out on my own is that I got in way over my head in credit card debt. I've spent the last four-and-a-half years paying that off, and I'll be done with it in June. My mother has always had perfect credit, so when she offered to "buy" one of my credit cards (basically putting it in her name so she can get me a 0% interest rate) as long as I made the payments, it showed an enormous amount of trust and respect for me.

I can see now that she is (and has always been) an emotionally damaged woman, and that she's trying to do right by me. While I don't think we'll ever be extremely close, I think we can at least move past the hostility and guilt engendered by my disastrous childhood. Now that I'm a happy, healthy adult, the things I went through as a kid don't seem as important to me. I guess if she can let go of it the way I have, she can start to find happiness. So, for this Mother's Day, I wish that my mother will find happiness for herself.