From the Trenches

Guess who has spent $150 this week on gas? This girl!

Seriously, though, I've been driving back and forth from my life and a "family" "situation" which is why the Collective schedule has been all fucked up. Sorryz. My "family" "situation" isn't something that is emotional for me, but it does involve dealing with a lot of emotional people and I've lost count of the glasses of wine I've had this week. For example, I know I've had at least four Thursday night because that's how many I counted and THEN these AWESOME people I am related to kept refilling my glass. (White wine, for those counting. I don't know which kind because I kept mixing them which is APPARENTLY a crime, but whatevs, I'm 23, I'm immune to alcohol-related crimes.)

Speaking of people I'm related to:

I have one sibling. His name is Jeremy and he lives in Chicago and he is three years younger than me. Our relationship now is fairly awesome, but when Jeremy and I were little babies we were not BFF on account of his inability to play fair, nice, or be fun at all. Three ways he totally marred my childhood:

Playmobile Pirate Ship

This thing was huge and took up up at least forty percent of the bathtub at any given time. We had several pirates that went with it as well as a sizable army of dinosaurs, city folk, and legos that filled in has pirates, and had developed several story lines to follow when playing with it. However, my brother would get tired of the story lines and push the boat down just enough so that water would start to fill the lower cavities of the ship and eventually sink it, Titanic-style.

WAR

This was the only damn card game Jeremy would play. I spent many years trying to get him to do something--ANYTHING--different including the old standbys like Old Maid, Fish, etc. I wasn't asking him to learn all the rules of Poker or anything, I was asking for simple stuff. But noooo even Egyptian War was too outside the box. He would make me play War until someone won which can take upwards of three hours when you've only got two players and I totally did it because it was my only opportunity to play cards. He still refuses to play other card games and I DON'T KNOW WHY.

Ranger Rick magazine

We had a bit that seems very bit-ish to me in retrospect, but maybe as kids it was real, true life. Whenever he came across one of millions of Ranger Rick mags he would flip to a macro image of a particularly repulsive and slimy bug and then push it in my face. I would scream and run away. And then he would chase me around the house menacingly.

These days we bond over video games and the internet. More neutral ground, I think.