It seems easier for some people to hit bars alone. I suppose it makes a difference if you know the bartender or the regulars. I don't. Anywhere. Today is the first day of the NCAA tournament, and I have a half-day off at work. I would like nothing better than to watch the bevy of basketball brilliance at a sports bar with high-tech HD televisions, but going alone feels ever so much like I'm entering a meat market. Hey, I figure if that old guy, Tom, with the missing tooth in front and the scruff around his dirty chin can be smutty at the entrance of Walgreen's, I don't want to enter an establishment with the less than sober, who probably have better vision, more equilibrium, and won't be so easily dodged by a a quick left down the cosmetics aisle. The only time I haven't been put off by comments at a pub is when that lady bartender told me I was pretty. And she made sure to let me know she wasn't trying to come on to me. Of course, Nick was sitting right next to me...so maybe she just didn't want to make him jealous. That's what I like to think.

But then there's laundry and plenty of housework to tackle here at home...computers to network, surfaces to dust, blah blah blah—but my mother always told me that the dishes and laundry will always wait for you. I should hit the gym. It's been almost two weeks...the last days being bogged down with post-work activities and utmost lethargy in between. I went to an info session for Edgewood College last night...trying to right the one and only one part of my own history that I truly regret...especially, as I told Nick last night, now that my Mom (who knew the whole story of why I left school) isn't here to rally on my side while I'm rallying against. 20/20 hindsight really is a bully sometimes. Makes you forget the ugly stuff and you start questioning your decisions. Truth is, my decisions now couldn't have been my decisions then. A divorced nearly-orphan with medical issues can't possibly have the same hold on her life as a fresh-faced, first-time-away-from-home college kid whose parents are picking up the bill.

But anyway, I'm drifting. We're leaving early tomorrow morning to head to Chicago to watch the Badgers play their first (and hopefully not last) NCAA game, so I want to have a fun time this afternoon...before the stress of Illinois traffic and crowds make my temples throb. Where to go? Bug Jeff who is probably catching the games somewhere? Risk another Tom? Tough one.

No, no, silly. I'm not dead. I haven't been too busy to write. Things certainly haven't been boring. The Internet situation HAS TO GO. You see, somewhere around last Tuesday, we started experiencing excruciatingly slow speeds with our broadband connection. I remember it well, as the timing out of the Cyber-God's deliberation caused me not to post all about how Nick told me that I could totally be on that model show with Tyra Banks—except for my lacking height and thick legs—to sum it up.

The old Laura would have had Charter Communications on the phone right then and there to remedy the problem, but the new Laura simply does not rely on a virtual reality any more. "It'll get better in time," we both reasoned. But it did not, in fact, remedy in time...and Nick was the one barking at the service reps at the cable company while I got my highlights touched up at the salon.

Meanwhile, he managed to tear the house apart.

Fix his own months-dead computer with a new power supply.

Kill my laptop's surfing capability.

And the speed never...sped up...

...until days later when he extricated a cable splitter from the wall.

Tonight I was all primed to tell you about how I used my sewing machine to hem a pair of pants by hand, my relationship with my mechanic (and how after my last interaction with him over an oil change I exclaimed whimsically to my aunt, "He's like the father I never had!"), how Nick and I spent the weekend in Chicago watching the Big Ten Tourney (and how Nick talked up my drinking abilities to a few of the enemy Ohio State fans when they suggested that I wouldn't finish that 30-some ounce tankard of beer—"SHE'LL HAVE TWO!"), my overwhelming happiness with Ikea (which I visited for the first time EVER on Sunday) and the nifty little joyride they give shopping carts there, how broke I am paying off my butt-care, how the perks of working with my aunts (much less living in state!) pay off with a loaf of homemade banana nut bread delivered to my desk, and that we scored free tickets to catch the Badgers' first game in the NCAA Tournament this Friday. (Did I really manage to squeeze that all in [illegally] to one sentence? MASTERFUL!) I could give you a detailed blog on each of these subjects, complete with corresponding picture, but you'll just have to imagine instead...

And yes, my highlights really are that cute...when my stylist pointed out that I had a bump on my noggin, a bump of which I had no knowledge, I told her that maybe Nick was beating me in my sleep. She laughed a deep belly laugh and then stopped abruptly. "That's really not that funny." I calmed her fears by telling her Nick was more of a shin-kicker anyway...unlikely his aggression was focused anywhere but my thick legs.

Nick's bootleg copy of Photoshop isn't anywhere near as spiffy as my bootleg copy of Photoshop, so I find the end of my nose turning upward as I refuse to so much as re-size a picture there. Sure, I could go over and do it on my laptop (Nick hasn't broken that part of my computer so far as I can tell), but then I would somehow have to get the images back over to Nick's computer...and while it isn't impossible by any stretch, the spirit just isn't willing.

So, today, I was going to give you a run down of the goings-on in my life, or at least one of them...probably the thick legs that I plan on clubbing Nick with while HE sleeps (He later exclaimed after an afternoon of under-the-breath epithets, "I MEANT TO SAY MUSCULAR!"), but after some-thirty minutes of guess-and-check passwords to my blog software's administration suite, my energy for all writing of an artful sort dissipated and you're left with a rant, a grammatically poor one at that—but really, should a rant be anything but? I think not.

The end. My thick legs bid you adieu.

"Some days, I question whether or not we should be together," I called up from the laundry area a couple of days ago. "We share the same affliction in putting away our laundry...aren't couples supposed to balance out?"

We go on to dissect the matter and unveil the neither one of us minds doing laundry, neither one of us minds folding laundry...we could do it all the live long day...but putting folding laundry away is a torture akin to the likes not seen outside of a dungeon. Currently, we both have piles and piles of folded shirts and whatnots on the table near the dryer downstairs, along with baskets we've loaded with our folded belongings and carried upstairs to be placed near our respective closets. I know mine's been there for at least two weeks. It has to have been, because now I've reached the point where I farm there for the next day's work skirt.

And, by the look of Nick's rifled-through basket, I'd say his has aged similarly.

I guess, on the plus side, neither of us is irritated or impatient with seeing a basket full of folded clothing sitting here or there...rather, it is a relief to know there is no rush in doing away with our own. Phew.

Oh, Charlie...

I remember our shouting matches, that more often than not became screaming matches, straying toward hair-pulling, biting, and then, later, timeouts. The early years, ah! We hated everything about each other when left too long with just each other...yet, there were pockets of time even as young brats that we bonded and set the mark for all of our cousins and social acquaintances.

The tween and teen years were most difficult, when there wasn't much cause to bond, and we were at the age that you're so busy hating the world, why not throw your brother or sister to the top of the heap—because, you know, I have more acne than I care to accept, my hair has a mind of its own, I want everything while being able to afford nothing, AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.

Then, I moved away...a long ways away...1,200 miles away. The night before I left, you wouldn't even look at me, you didn't say goodbye, saying instead something ugly that, by grace, I've forgotten entirely. It was no skin off my nose, because I didn't care for you anyway. Maybe a small part of me was moving to get away from you.

So there.

Mom kept telling me, as she had for the past two decades at that point, "One day you'll be happy to have a brother, and he'll be happy to have you." You and I would both smile a fake smile when she'd say this, to appease her gentle heart...and then we'd smirk at each other behind her back as if to cheer silently in unison, She thinks I'll LIKE you one day! And then for a startling second it felt as though we were on the same side of the row, and that wasn't right at all.

But, in ways that make no sense to me, the distance brought us close. When you visited me in North Carolina, all I wanted to do was hug you and I even cried the night you, Mom and Dad flew back to Wisconsin. I missed you before the plane had taken off. This whole brother thing was a lot easier to deal with when I hated your stinking guts.

And then, Mom got sick. Once again, we had cause to unite, one that we didn't have to explain to anybody, this uniting of sworn enemies. Mom made us her world, and we made her ours. I don't think that either of us had a higher priority during those years than her, and I don't think that either one of us regrets that decision, nor will we ever.


The past year has been a quiet one. It's harder to go to holiday meals when the woman who made the holiday any sort of special is no longer here...and it felt awkward to be together at times after having constructed such a tripod with Mom...the balance was missing. I will never forget the words you spoke to me when I got to the house the morning she died, and I sobbed that I hadn't gotten there in time. You told me that she was still warm, still like Mom, go say goodbye now, because the room still felt alive with her presence...and then you quickly left the house on that January day as your own tears began to fall.

We've grown to be a lot alike, you and I. We're both quieter, knowing when to listen...we're both tenderhearted, striving to empathize with the world...our touch is light and our voices soft...see, the "problem" has been that we both carry so much of Mom in us. (Which, considering our heated death matches, makes me wonder about her relationship with her sisters, know what I mean? Or are we blaming that one on Dad, who used to roll around on the floor, wrestling, with his mother when he wouldn't eat his green beans or clean up his room?)

But it's better now, I feel it...don't you? It's a joy to see you now, a subtle hint like an eyelash fluttering over my cheek, I feel the smile tapping the side of my mouth, vying for attention...and I know it's because I have you, I have a brother. Someone who shared something incredibly hard with me and the only one who can only feel that particular emptiness the same way that I do...someone that will be there for me always, no matter which direction life goes...Charlie, I DO like you—I'll even go so far as to say that I love you.

So there.