A Cast of Characters

I know I promised to write a cast of characters, but then I realized that I won't really be seeing any of the most important people for 3 months, so it wouldn't make too much sense right now. While in Italia, if I am reminded of any stories featuring important people, I will give background information then. Also, I'm pretty sure the only ones reading this blog already know each other, so it's probably not necessary.

So instead of a list of friends and family, I will now describe what it's like to be at home for a month longer than any of your friends. I'm sure you're all thinking, "I know exactly what you're going to say, it's awesome!" Surprisingly, you would be wrong. To say that it's terrible is what we in the English major would call an "understatement." I spend my days running errands with my mother, who for some reason thinks that her obsessive need to know what I'm thinking/doing and who I'm talking to/what they're saying is normal. She also doesn't understand why I could possibly not want to tell her exactly what I'm saying to my friends or why I won't let her see every one of my pictures on Facebook. It's never anything particularly horrible, but she doesn't have the same sense of humor as a 21-year-old college student and might get the wrong idea.

Then my father comes home from work and proceeds to make lists of things for me to do because he can't stand the fact that I'm on vacation and don't have anything to do all day. He tacks these lists on top of the ones that he's made while at work and ones that he has emailed me while at work. I'm pretty sure he does nothing all day but make up things for my brother and me to do. It's usually stuff like go to AT&T and check to see what kind of roaming plan I have on my phone even though he already asked them when I upgraded my phone 3 weeks ago. Really urgent, important things.

At 6 we watch Jeopardy, then we cook dinner while watching Seinfeld, then we watch more TV until my father goes to bed at around 10:30. While cooking we start drinking wine which my mother and I continue to do until about 1 a.m. when my father comes downstairs and yells at us for being to loud. The weekends are basically the same, except my father is home all day so instead of making lists, he just tells me what to do. Occasionally, they'll both be gone and I sit in my room smoking cigarettes out the window in a paranoid panic, because that's pretty much the only time I can smoke.

Basically, I'm about to pull my hair out. I was really excited about studying abroad, but now I'm really just looking forward to getting out of this house. Please, pray for me, I might lose it.