Lunch is a lot of things. Lunch is complicated.

I'm hoping everyone along the way lets me sleep on couches. Sleeping on a couch is somehow so much nicer than sleeping in someone else's bed. I finally slept in today, til 9. 

Then of course I went to another Half Price Books just to get out of the house. My uncle was home maybe doing work and I always have the feeling he doesn't know what the hell to say to me. Like he actually seems somewhat bewildered by me. 

My aunt on the other hand I never talk to when I'm not here and then I get here and remember I really like her. 

So back to the Home for Aged Hebrews for lunch and then I watched TMC for a bit with my grandmother, some comic short that I actually found rather funny about this couple that kept trying to win on quiz shows. Now of course I can't figure out what it was. I'm using search strings like "comic short couple radio Errol Flynn sneeze" and it's not working. It reminded me of Robert Benchley in comic sensibility. 

My grandmother went to the dentist and came back and we went through another box of photos and as god or someone is my witness, I will not, this vacation, look at another photo of a person who was relatively happy and now is dead or someone now very old looking like all the 1970s in one fashion choice or a lovely house torn down to make way for some faux Tuscan monstrosity.

She would pick up a picture of my mother and aunt thirty years ago and say "you know these people" and pick up another of the same and say "you don't know these people" until I wasn't sure quite what joke she was making and whether this was enjoyable for her or a little bit of agony. I kept commenting on the places in the background and the time periods and she didn't have much to say about it. 

It all made me terribly sad and fortunately I find the dull expanses of north Dallas and Plano soothing. Sad isn't really the word at all, though. Something more anguished and full of doubt. I kept wondering if it was about actual misgivings about my life choices, which is what it felt like. 

My grandmother last night asked me about what things I'd like when she died. With someone who is 92 it isn't convincing to say "don't be ridiculous" though I did lead off with "ask me again in ten years" and she said "I won't be here in ten years." Five years ago it was possible to believe she might, as her health was remarkably good and her mother lived to 99 or 100. (Birth certificate in the old country, you know.)

Then her son died after a long, awful illness and now she seems very old. 

I said I wanted the giant Buddha head if nobody else did. There are also these insane mid-century lamps but I didn't want to sound like I was shopping. Jesus. 

The thing about my family in Dallas is they are family in some sense I never aspired to. They all lived along Hillcrest Blvd the last fifty years. My aunt's kids went to school close to home and the two boys have lived there again since college though the older one just bought a place (shockingly, off Preston! Which is to say, a mile west.)

Partly this is generational but actually they both make a decent living and Dallas is cheap and I could never fucking figure out how they could stand to still live there. 

So then in a certain state of emotional agitation I think what if the whole problem is that I can't figure out how they could stand to have spent so much of their lives so close to home. What if that would have been better, and I would have been nicer, and have some core to my life. It continues overheatedly down that line. 

I had dinner with my other cousin who I was close with when we were kids but haven't kept actively in touch with for years and years. We went for exactly the kind of Tex Mex that doesn't exist in the northeast. That did me some good. And we talked about the Cousins of my Existential Doubt and he and his wife also find it nuts, and that was probably good for my sanity. 

He did though ask me in a discussion of The Big Question of Where Next whether I would consider Dallas and it was like having a somewhat ego-dystonic kink discovered, because of course I've daydreamed about it but I don't know that I've ever admitted that to anyone (oh, hi!) for a number of reasons. 

I like it here. The air smells right to me. Maybe if I lived here I'd hate it. It's not a real possibility.