"Look, look we had a scuba, we drink some white wine, we talk about life and we cannot help it. It is like love at first sight. She make like the fire in my trouser. "

Okay. So, The rent is paid, as is the kids� health insurance. Now I just have to worry about paying the utility type bills before shit gets shut off, and we�ll be golden. A slight weight lifted off my shoulders. Slight. That, and my head feels better today than it has in a while, so maybe it�s not cancer.

Also, a slight observation. Dunkin Donuts coffee tastes like shit. What�s all the fuss about? My husband would have this shit in an IV drip if he could. I got one this morning since I ganked Hub�s $5 card from Hilda, and it was nasty. Ew. No wonder back in the day when I was a Dunkins fan, I ordered that shit �extra extra�. The last thing you want to do is actually *taste* the coffee.

Anyway, thanks to all who commented about my parents� wedding pic yesterday. They were a pretty fly couple. These are the same people who�s �song� was �Ob-la-di-ob-la-da� by The Beatles, to the point where they conceived a child to that very song. That child being me, and while I was not so thrilled with my dad for sharing that information with me roughly ten years ago, I do get a kick out of it. The song took on new meaning for me and does make me chuckle a little to hear it. So some of my ooftie sense of humor comes from these people. I mean, �Ob-la-di-ob-la-da� ?!? Who picks this as their song? Only people who could spawn a person like me.

Jennifer had a good point in that she hasn�t heard anything about my brother Gary. This is true, I think I may have mentioned him once or twice, but barely. He�s no Ned, that�s for sure. But, the story of my older, half brother is fairly interesting so this will be my topic of discussion today. Hey, it�s better than reading �boo-hoo-poor-me�, right?

This is Gary:

I totally got this picture from our high school alumni website. This was probably three to four years ago. He�s totally metrosexual, I think. At least, he looks so here. In reality, I have no idea. I haven�t seen Gary since 1987, and the last time I spoke to him was in 2000. It�s a sore spot that I don�t talk about much.

My mom had my brother in 1962 �out of wedlock�, so to speak. She was only 18 years old. I know very little about the father, although I�ve been far more curious about the man than Gary has. When we went to England the last time, when I was 13, I asked my grandmother about him. She didn�t have much to say about him, except that he loved my mom and Gary, and wanted very much to marry her, but she did not want to marry him and not even a baby was going to change that.

I grew up with little influence of my mother or her mother, and yet I am so much like them, it�s scary. Especially when it comes to the motherhood thing.

Anyway, yeah, 18 years old and unmarried and she had her kid anyway. I often wonder what the social climate in England was at the time, as you don�t hear too much of that kind of thing happening here in the States back then. Wasn�t that back when pregnant girls were sent away to a home to have the kid, and then have no choice but to give the kid up? Anyway, my questions about my mother�s pregnancy grew when I had my own son on my own, but this was long after her passing, and two years after the death of my grandmother, so they�ve never been answered. My father�s mother was quite taken aback when my father announced that he was marrying a woman who had a son and had never been married before, let me tell you.

My mother was able to raise her son, with the help of my grandmother, and go to nursing school and successfully become an RN, something that I look up to very much. My grandfather, mum�s dad, had died in WWII, I believe, and my uncle Phil�s dad, the man who helped raise my mom, died of cancer. I�m not sure whether or not Marcus, Phil�s dad, was alive when Gary was born. I�ve always assumed he wasn�t, but I could be wrong. The fact that Gary�s son�s middle name is Marcus, tells me that the man had some influence on him.

My parents met in 1967 or 1968, so Gary was about 6 or 7. My dad�s name is �Jacques� as in Costeau, and is meant to be pronounced that way. When they met, my dad was stationed In Norwich, England, Mum�s hometown (even though I was born and raised here In the States, I called my mother �Mummy� like a British girl, and used a lot of British words for certain things. Like underwear. Until I was 8 years old, they were �knickers�. I never had a raincoat, I had a �mack�. Etc., etc), with the USAF. According to my grandmother, my parents met at a �disco�. At a club! Boozing it up! Yay! Anyway, they shared the same group of friends. Some of Dad�s AF buddies were hooking up with Mum�s friends. So, it was a big social circle.

Anyway, back to my point. All these guys called my dad �Jacques-O�. I guess that�d be �zhauck-o�. Well, Gary heard this and couldn�t quite pronounce it right, so my dad�s nickname got changed to �Charcoal�, and that name was still in use when I was a kid. I thought my dad�s name was Charcoal for a long time.

Yadda yadda yadda, my parents got married in the mod-a-go-go style as you saw in my entry yesterday and Dad wrapped up his time in England. They bought a 1969 VW Beetle and sometime in January of 1970, while grooving to �Ob-la-di-ob-la-da�, they conceived moi. In July of 1970, they put the vee-dub on a ship and hopped on a plane, with Gary as well, to the US to start their lives together.

Now, when they first came back here, they had no place of their own, so they moved in with my dad�s parents, my Memere and Pepere. And the rest of the damn family, too. It must have been absolutely chaotic, and my Memere loved to talk of 1970 and having 11 people living in her house, but I think she relished the time. We had my parents and my brother, my aunt and her three kids (her husband had just left her), my great grandmother (in the grand old fashioned French Canadian way, we called her �Old Memere�) and my grandparents. If you add that all up and then me, that�s 11.

My Memere was definitely old school Catholic. You do things the way God wants (as according to the church and the Bible) and that�s that. She probably did wait until she married my Pepere before she had sex with him. Although we�ll never know for sure now. So, my dad married this woman with an �illegitimate� (oh trust me I fucking hate that term) son and that was a big old pill for her to swallow. Not only that, but they pissed her off royally by not inviting her to their wedding. She told me about It more than once. She knew that they didn�t invite her because it was in England and she most likely couldn�t have gone, but she felt slighted.

There was some resentment in my Memere for my mother and brother, you see. She tried her best to hide it, but some things are obvious no matter how you try to hide it. She didn�t outwardly treat them differently, especially after I came along, because while she was old-fashioned, she wasn�t cruel. Anyway, I think Gary always felt different from the beginning, because of that and because, well, he had his little English accent going on and was 100% Brit, right down to the socks with sandals. And horn rimmed glasses. He managed to lose both after a few years in the States.

When I was a kid, my brother Gary was my hero. He was enough older than me to know everything (as far as I was concerned), yet young enough to still be a kid. And he was just so damn cool. Everything he did was just cool. To this day, I don�t think that Gary has ever had a moment of uncoolness in his life. Look, I�m 35 years old and he is still carved into my memory as the coolest guy I�ve ever known.

He taught me about music. The first favorite band of his that I can remember is Aerosmith. He would show me their albums and play the for me. He�d say, �The Beatles are okay, but nothing like good hard rock�. I remember when he discovered Led Zeppelin. At least, when I learned they were his new favorite band. Gary was all about rock and in the late seventies was one of those, �Better dead than disco� guys.

He had such an influence on me as far as music goes, I don;t think he even knew how much. If I thought Gary wouldn�t like it, then I wouldn�t. I remember when my friends were trying to convince me that �Another One Bites the Dust� by Queen was disco, and I argued and argued with them. If it was disco, then I couldn�t like it, and I LOVED that song. This was a crisis for me. In my defense, I was like 9, okay? Anyway, when I finally asked Gary If that song was disco, he didn�t answer me, he just asked, �What do you think?�. And I had no clue.

Gary introduced me to MTV. I walked Into the house one day with a friend of mine, and he was watching It. I asked, �What�s this?� and he told me it was a station where all they play is music videos. I sat down and watched for hours, I was hooked. He got sick of it shortly, but I never did. That was back in the day when they showed videos 24/7.

Gary was really protective of Ned and me when we were kids. He could torture us all he wanted, but nobody else was allowed to. I remember one summer, we were having problems with the kid across the street, Kenny. He was 12, I was about 7 or 8, and Ned was maybe 5 or 6. That would make Gary about 15 or 16. Now, Ned and I were little shits, and we did our own instigating of Kenny, and my brother knew this. However, Kenny would take it too far. He was kind of a weird kid. So, when Kenny would get us scared enough, we�d run to Gary. He�d go threaten Kenny every time, and every time he�d tell us, �That�s the last time�.

I remember one time, we totally set Kenny up. He had been picking on us about something, and we ran to get Gary. Gary hid behind a tree, and Ned and I went out front and called Kenny a few names or something. Kenny started throwing rocks at us and my brother popped up and said a few intimidating things to him. Kenny ran away like a little girl and Ned and I were all kinds of psyched. And then we got Gary�s obligatory, �That�s the LAST TIME I�m doing this for you� speech.

Gary was about 16 when my mom got sick. He knew a lot more than we did about what was going on. I�ve learned from him since that he and my mom were very close and she confided in him a lot. His description of their relationship really reminds me of Beavis and me. Anyway, he helped out a lot more with us as my mother�s health deteriorated. My mom got to the point where she�d get angry very easily and some days she couldn�t get off the couch. She wasn�t the same person anymore.

An aside to this, I�ve been painfully aware for the past few months, since my 35th birthday, that I am now the age my mother was when she got sick. Not only that, but my kids� ages and sexes closely mirror that of her kids when she was my age. I try to fathom now what my mother must have faced then. For the longest time, no doctors could figure out what was wrong with her, just that it was neurological in origin. Her health was deteriorating so rapidly that she retired from working right before my 8th birthday. I have no idea what her exact symptoms were or how it affected her psychologically. I can�t picture getting that sick, not knowing what was wrong, and having to worry about my kids fates, too. My number one fear, and this is mostly due to what happened to me as a kid, is dying on my children before they�re old enough to take care of themselves. I don�t know what I�d do if I were faced with that right now. Freak out or something.

Back to the story. Which I realize is rambly and unorganized and poorly planned out. Story of my life. Definitely the story of this diary.

December 3, 1978, my brother came home from school and found my mother laying unconscious and face down on the living room floor. He called my dad and an ambulance. By the time I came home from school, my Memere�s car was in the driveway, and my mom was gone. Aside from a couple of visits home in the next few months, she never came home again. You�ve all most likely read about it here before. It was a turning point in all of our lives, the day my life as I knew it went to shit.

We were living I Litchfield at the time. My dad was working 3-11 and had difficulty taking care of us on his own. Gary, too, had a job and wasn�t able to be home with us. My Memere came to our house after school everyday to take care of Ned and I until Gary came home for the rest of December. Then it was decided that Ned and I would stay In Nashua during the week, and I would go to school there, and we�d come home on the weekends. Gary was old enough to care for himself, so he stayed in Litchfield with my dad.

What happened in the next six months (until my dad and Gary and us moved into the apartment on the other side of my grandparents duplex), was basically one big party. My brother Gary was a partier from a young age. I can remember seeing him with his friends out in the woods drinking beer before my mom got sick, and then going home to innocently report that, �Sure, I saw Gary, he�s out in the woods with his friends drinking beer�. Go, Jackie. And he had some cool-ass friends, too. So did my dad. I didn�t get to see firsthand, but Gary has told me that those days were not any place for kids. My dad was Gary�s step-dad, but didn�t act very fatherly. More like a pal.

Anyway, then we moved in next door to my grandparents. By this time, my mom was in a �persistent vegetative state� a la Terry Schiavo, but worse. Going to see her was painful, and we rarely talked about her. It was dysfunction at it�s finest.

My brother was still a huge influence on me. He noticed how lazy Ned and I were, how we�d leave our plates at the dinner table for our dad to clean up. He made a big production one night of having to talk to us. He took us aside when my dad left for the store. He said it was time for us to help out more around the house. He said we needed to clear our plates and rinse them then leave them by the sink. Make sure our trash gets INTO the trash when we throw it out. I don�t know what prompted this �talk�, but that�s all it took for me. I did everything he said every day after that. I think that if my dad or my grandparents had asked the same of me, it would have been more of a fight (because I was a little BITCH back then, lest we forget), but because Gary as asking, I knew it had to be done.

Gary graduated high school in 1981. He did an extra year because he took the five year plan, like myself. I remember his girlfriend Lisa, who was a really cool, very pretty girl, and him going to the prom. I remember going to his graduation, and his class song was �Imagine�. I remember the day he brought home Ozzy Osborne�s �Blizzard Of Oz� and teaching me all about Ozzy and how he was the best thing to come out of Black Sabbath. I remember him turning me onto MTV that summer. He got a job as a graphic artist at a place on Main St in Nashua just after graduation.

1981 was significant because that�s the year my mom died. If there�s one thing that stands out in my mind about my mom�s funeral (which was, to add further suck to the suck that sucked as much as a suck could suck, the day after Christmas), it was standing In front of my mom�s casket with my both of my brothers, and seeing Gary totally lose it crying. I�d never, ever seen him cry before.

After my mom died, Gary didn�t fell like he belonged anymore. He�s told me this. It was nothing we�d done. Honestly, I know that he�s my �half� brother, but in my mind, he will always be my �whole� brother. I never called him my half brother, and never will.

Anyway, in February of 1982, Gary left for the Air Force. He did training in Illinois and Texas (not in the particular order) and then was stationed in Altus, Oklahoma. I missed him so much and wrote to him all the time. He came home briefly that summer, and the two summers after, but never came back to NH after 1984.

He met a woman named Betty in Okie. Interestingly enough, she had a young son (named Larry, I swear to you, I�m not lying!) with a father who was not involved. Betty�s dad was also in the USAF, and had met Betty�s mom, a Japanese woman, when he was in Japan.

So, in August of 1985, my dad, me and my brother Ned went down to Oklahoma for Gary and Betty�s wedding. I had a blast out there. Betty had this wild little cousin named Kathy who was 16 at the time, I was 14. We hooked up and she was all about finding booze, I was all about finding boys. Betty�s brother Curtis, who was 19 or so, took us out one night for a time he�d regret dearly. Kathy got all kinds of shitfaced and made out with some random guy and I was flirting away and he just knew that people (ie; Gary) were going to kill him. He didn�t, but Gary did remark to me that �the next time you go out, I�ll be right behind you with a shotgun�.

Gary and Betty had a baby boy in July of 1986, Lance Marcus. He must be approaching twenty now, ey? It was a year before we got to see him, as Ned and I went down in August of 1987. By then, Gary was out of the Air Force and had moved to Dallas, Texas. Garland, to be exact. Dallas is some cool shit. I have to say, as attached as I am to this area, if I were him, I�d have stayed out there, too. If there�s one thing I remember about that trip, it�s that I was a spoiled little bitch. I wish I hadn�t been, but I know I was.

Anyway, that was the last time I saw my brother. We lost touch as much as we had after that. Ned still stayed in touch, and actually spent most of the summer of 1990 in Dallas. Gary was one of the first phone calls that I made after Beavis was born. I remember telling him that I�d given him the middle name Craig, which is his last name and my mother�s maiden name, and he was just tickled about it. Other than that, and maybe some Christmas cards (back in the day when I did those), we didn�t keep in touch.

In 2000, when I first got online, I�d located him via email. He was going through a divorce from Betty and Lance was living with him. For about three or four months, we emailed back and forth a lot. He really wanted to share his experiences with our mother with me and told me a lot about her and them that I never knew. I wish I�d saved those emails. I learned so much.

Anyway, as quickly as it started, it ended. His emails started bouncing back, and the one time I called him on the phone, he just didn�t sound like he wanted to talk. I�ve sent some since, but never get a reply. Ned calls Gary a lot still, especially when he�s drunk, but I�ve taken the hint. I don�t know why, and it does sting, but my brother doesn�t want much to do with me. Maybe I remind him too much of our mother, or maybe I remind him of a painful, difficult time In his life, one that he�d like to keep behind him. Whatever his reason is, I respect it and try not to take it personally. Hub doesn�t like it, and it kind of bothers him, but he wasn�t there to go through what we went through, and can�t understand..

That�s why you don�t hear much about Gary. There�s nothing current to say. Obviously, though, he was a huge influence on me, and I can�t say that I have nothing to say about him at all. Six pages in Word says otherwise.

Okay. So. This took five fucking hours to write. I wanted this up by 2:00, but Hub came home early and Butthead has been here all day and GOD FORBID I should be sitting here typing away without them hovering over. Now everybody�s gone from the internet forever, until next year, even! and won�t be here to read this huge post that I put so much into.

Boo hoo poor me!

Happy Fucking 2006. Don�t drink and drive.

Listening to: Modest Yahoo. Personally, I don't get it.

Currently reading: Nothing! HA!

Thinking about: A smoke.