I'm back, finally... We've been back home since about 6:30 Sunday night, and here it is Tuesday, but I always was a world class procrastinator.

Thanksgiving with Jevim's family was an experience; I'd met his mom and dad the last time I was here, but I hadn't met his younger sister, Cindy.

I grew up as more or less an only child; I had older siblings, but they were much older than I, the next oldest being nine years older, to the day. My parents divorced when I was only about 5, and my younger siblings were my dad's (think Brady Bunch), so for most of my growing up years, it was just Mom and me; one older brother did stay with us for a while when I was about 5 or 6, and again many years later, and he always seemed to like to torment and tease me, and it would always make me cry. So, when Jevim started giving Cindy a rough time Wednesday night, I tried to get him to let up on her.

Unfortunately, my tactics looked to him like I was siding with Cindy, and he got upset; later he said it sounded like I was always going to side with his sister, and to be honest, I guess it did. When asking him to be nice didn't work, I threatened him with tickling (thinking that was safe and wouldn't really make him upset), but when I did, he gave me a "look" that said he was getting upset, and I made the mistake of not letting up.

He stormed out of his sister's room and into his, and I followed; he flopped down on the air mattress that was put out for me and sulked, and I sat on the bed, not knowing what to do. I apologized, but he wouldn't say anything to let me know if he heard me or even cared, and I started wondering if the whole trip wasn't just one big mistake.

I got upset because it seemed like everything was my fault, and when I was just starting to cry, he turned over and held his arms open, waiting for me to come sit down beside him. I did, and finally broke down, and though we really didn't talk things out, we eventually got ourselves calmed down and at least talking again. In the end, I decided the best thing to do was just stand back out of their way when they got to arguing and teasing, and let them work it out on their own, even if it did bother me. After all, that's how they grew up and what they're used to; I can't expect to just step in and wave my hands and make everything perfect, can I?

I'm wondering what Jevim will say when he reads this entry, since we really didn't discuss it much, after that. Anyway, that's beside the point...

Things were much smoother after Wednesday night's upset. Thanksgiving dinner was good, and after a college football game (WVU -- Cindy's school -- vs. Pittsburgh), we watched some of the X-Files marathon, and eventually headed up to his room to watch the last of the X-Files, play some Tetris on the community GameBoy, and go to sleep.

Jevim had his old bed, and I had the air mattress, and I woke up several times in the night, wishing I could snuggle up to him. Of course, my mom had been adamant on the phone about us obeying his parents' wishes as far as sleeping arrangements, so I stayed on the air mattress by myself.

Friday all the big after-Thanksgiving sales went on, and Jevim and I slept in while his mom and sister checked them out. We did eventually get dressed and go out to Wal-Mart, just as the 5-hour sale was wrapping up; I bought a pocket GameBoy and a Tetris Plus cartridge, and Jevim bought "Men In Black" on video. After that, he took me on a tour all around town, so I could see where he grew up.

That afternoon, we played with the GameBoys for a while, then Cindy pulled out the old photo albums and Jevim and I went through them. I never knew he was blonde when he was little; his hair is a medium-dark brown now, like mine, but until he was about eight or ten, it was fairly light. That evening, we went out to see "Flubber", then came home and watched ice skating on TV.

Saturday morning, Jevim plopped down on the couch with my GameBoy and played, and played, and played; the TV was on, but I really wasn't interested in that. I did little things to try to get his attention -- running my fingers lightly across his arms, and so on -- but he kept on playing, and I got extremely bored. Eventually, his father came in to question him about the problems he's been having with the Financial Aid office at the university, and as I sat there with him, I could tell he was getting tense and upset, and I started getting upset as well.

When his father finally left, I had a terrific headache, which had merged with the neckache I had from sleeping wrong the night before (I'd managed to work up some chest congestion as well, which didn't help how I felt), and I was sure that Jevim was going to go back to playing with the stupid GameBoy, so I said I was going to go upstairs and lay down. He asked if he could come too, and I said yes, though all I really wanted to do was be alone and cry. He came up, and I cried anyway because I was feeling miserable (I hadn't yet associated my extreme mood swing with Jevim's dad getting on his nerves, and mine), and so we curled up together for a while on the air mattress, until I'd pulled myself together enough to get out of the house.

We went to Arby's for lunch, and then swung by the theater to see when "Anastasia" was playing. We had some time to kill, so we went back to Wal-Mart where I picked out a couple little cross-stitch kits (I'd brought the afghan I'm crocheting for Jevim to work on, but I usually watch TV when I crochet, and I was getting extremely tired of watching football, college or otherwise), and got some cough syrup to help clear up my congestion.

After the movie, I was feeling a good deal better, and so we went home and he watched the Virginia vs. Virginia Tech (his school) football game on TV while I cross-stitched, and then we watched more ice skating, and eventually went upstairs to bed so we could head out early on Sunday.

We left his parent's house just after ten, and between rest stops, food breaks, rain and traffic, it was after dark when we finally got back to Jevim's apartment. He called his mom and I called mine, to let them know we got back safely, and then we spent the evening watching TV, namely X-Files, which we watched curled up together on the floor.

I spent most of yesterday trying to catch up on the afghan and cleaning up the kitchen. Jevim brought home a beta of Windows 98 from someone at work, and he installed that and played with it. To sum it up, he's going to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 95 OSR 2 tonight... the beta is still pretty flakey. It's really not that different on the surface, but it makes some things run awfully slow on this 133 MHz 5x86.

I've already spent another couple hours working on the afghan today, and if I keep up this rate, I should be able to get it done in time... I've already moved all my important files off to somewhere safe for tonight's reinstall, but I have yet to clean the kitchen from dinner yesterday, and to decide what we're going to eat for the next week and a half. Tonight we're going out to dinner, then to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things, and on to get groceries. Exciting, huh? It's time for me to get back to my afghan, so I'll quit rambling for now and get this uploaded. TTYL...