And even after today, I don't feel like saying, "I hate my dad." Because I don't. I love my dad. He is without a doubt the most important person in my life. And I think that's why it's so hard for me to watch him go through this period of time where he seems to be losing hold of everything. He seems so depressed and his perception of the world is so skewed and I constantly find myself frustrated with him. I expect him to be able to just snap out of it although I know it's unrealistic expectation. Which is why I feel bad now for pushing the issue with him and telling him right out that I thought he was emotionally screwed up and that he needed to get his shit together.

It wasn't good. First of all, I came home on Friday night and told him that my car was dying. Then I went into my room and found a huge bird cage with a little parakeet inside (my graduation present) and Bette Midler was singing "You are the Wind Beneath my Wings" on my stereo on repeat and there was a little bird-themed "I'm so proud of you" note from my dad that made me cry. So I went out and gave him a hug and it was all really nice until he started talking about how much my mom hates him. And at this point I got on him about being hard to live with and about nobody understanding what he wants and why he can't be happy. In the end, he stormed off and I started crying.

Then he came downstairs when he got home from church while Erica and I were sitting around watching TV and gave me a kind of weird look. And I reciprocated with a combined "What do you want?"/"Why are you looking at me?" sort of look, at which point he snapped, "What did I do now?" And Anna's going: What the fuck? So then he gave me one of his infallable lines: "I appreciate what you said last night" (If he says the "I appreciate . . ." part or something to the same effect, then that makes him the nice guy and therefore untouchable for the rest of the conversation) "But I find it interesting that the things that you said are the same things that mom has been telling me." In case you didn't catch the significance of that, he discredited everything that I said is essentially saying that he believes my mom has roped me into her cult. Yes, this is the way my father thinks. Anyway, having had more than enough of his bullshit (this has been building up for a couple of months now) I retorted, "Yeah, Dad, it's a big fucking conspiracy." So I got a lecture about being disrespectful, but it wasn't in a lecture sort of tone. It was kind of mean.

"All I've done is been accepting of you, and this is what you give me."

Parenting 101: Don't use this line on the lesbian daughter. As if I owe him more because he has not chastised me for aspects of my life that were biologically predetermined. That may very well have not been what he meant, but that's how I took it and it hurt.

I'm surprised with myself, however, because I am not angry about the whole situation. I concede. I'm not going to fight about it with him anymore because that's not going to make things better for him.

I guess I'll just avoid him and keep saving to move out. The move out fund is currently at over $300. We're almost a third of the way to meeting our move out fund goal, kids!

Of course, that fund may be wiped out soon because Evelyn (that's my car) is sick and is going to have to be taken to the mechanic. I'm praying that she's fixable because if not, that's really going to fuck with my financial plan for the year.

As mentioned before, I have this bird now that I have named Miguel the Feathered Latino Wonder and I am absolutely in love with him. He, however, seems to be terrified of me. He'll get over it . . . or die of anxiety. Whatever. He started fluttering around his cage more today and was chirping for the first time, so I'm taking those as good signs.

Last night, I spent an hour emailing Bridget. It wasn't all that long, there was just a lot of type-reread-delete action going on. In essence it said that I had recovered from my hormonal infatuation with her (yes, I used that exact phrase) and because of it, felt like I was getting to know her better and growing to like her more and more. Of course, with my luck she is probably on of those people who is lax about checking email and I'll end up waiting a month or two for a reply. No, I won't wait that long. I'll call her before then. Because I have determined that she, along with Miguel, will be my summer entertainment.

I reread the email before I sent it to her and thought that it was a really great reflection of how well I had been prepared by my high school english classes. Not only did I edit before I sent it, but I made use of proper grammar and sentence structure, wrote in complete parapraphs that transitioned well into one another and even managed to bring the message in it's entirety full-circle by closing with the same image that I had opened with. It was pathetically "correct." And it was only a stupid fucking email to a dorky girl.

A dorky girl that I like very much, but nevertheless . . .

How did this become so long?

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