I'm sitting on my back patio calling to two loons who are calling to each other (cup hands like there's a creepy-crawly inside and blow through aligned thumbs, "hoo-OOO, hoo, hoo, hoo"). I'm eating beef jerky (teriyaki), Pringles, and drinking beer after beer (Avalanche-Breckenridge Brewery). So, I'm a bit drunk, which lends itself to the most open, honest, and profound communication, I believe. Alcohol=Inhibitions dropped, same as tequila=nudity (another entry, another time).

Despite the intermittent winds, this has been just about the most beautiful day ever. I sincerely mean ever, as it has been beautiful from sun-up (which I watched) to sun-down (which I just witnessed). I got up early and have done nothing except sit outside in my backyard, play with my idiot dogs, draw, read, sing to the radio, and enjoy my solitude.

The Girl is currently in Montana, in the dinky little town we call home. Now that school's over, she has a couple days off in a row, and had planned a trip home because she missed the X-mas trip back home and hasn't been in a year. Oh, her grandpa died too.

Now that I see it in written form, I realize how incredibly callous I can sound in matters concerning death. Granted, my eyes started leaking while reading about Dusty's Mima, but I can be quite sappy and he's an amazing writer.

I do lack a certain empathy for those who have lost a grandparent, though. Allow me to explain why this is so. I've never really had grandparents of my own. Both sets had one die before I was born, and the remainder didn't have much to do with me, or my folks, while I was growing up. Nothing so dramatic as an unplanned pregnancy, murder, or any sort of feuding that caused the rift, just basic apathy and distancing, I suppose. I've just never known my extended family.

I grew up with the philosophy that you make your own family out of those that love you and those that you love. This love doesn't have to be anything overt (thank Dog, because these are rural folks we're talking about, and they aren't much for emotions other than anger-turned-comedy, which is all that I tend to show in this diary). It's just a love that you start to feel, and, in turn, they start to reciprocate. Before you know it, you are part of the family. I actually had an Aunt (not my own Aunt, of course) tell me that she knew she liked me when I showed up for every special occasion, be it a wedding, birthday or other event, but she knew deep in her heart that I was family when I started attending the funerals. Again, people that I loved died, yet I didn't know as intimately as the family that I had "adopted" myself into did, so I could distance myself. Protect myself from the inevitable grief that follows.

Now, when I go home, I spend around 4-8 hours with my own father and step-mother and her family, and stay the rest of the time with my "adopted" families. Adopted� christ, these people have had a stocking and presents under the X-mas tree for me since I was 16. I like to believe that most of them knew that my father was a worthless fuck as a parent and they were glad to be able to offer some semblance of a "normal" family upbringing. Meals together at the table, chores assigned to each person (I've shoveled more shit than most people have ever SEEN), and a certain freedom and respect allotted to each person in the family. My own horse, use of a vehicle (ranch trucks are shit, but they get the job done) and a certain comfort level when it comes to our interactions. I'd get scolded for fucking up, just like their kids, and I got rewarded for triumphs (shit, one set of my "adopted" parents came to more football games and band concerts than my own father).

I know what it is to have family, without all the trappings of the familial guilt ("Why didn't you come to YoungFuckUp's graduation?", "What do you think of SlutTurnedAngel getting married to CompleteManWhore?" "Did you see CompleteLoser got another DUI?"). I consider myself very lucky I'm not expected to have input into certain matters. I'm the classic example of the village-raises-the-child theory. I have only those attachments that I've chosen.

Now comes the depressing part. I'm alone again. With the Girl gone, I realize that my days, my weeks, are devoted to her and the home, the family (fish, dogs, etc.), that we are building here. Daily, I feed all the animals (dogs and many fish), I clean, cook, do the shopping, etc. So, without her here, I am free to do whatever I want, right? Shoot pool, drink beer with the hockey guys, go to the hang-out bar and booze it up with the colorful characters that we know there, rent any movie I want, masturbate to internet porn, kill kittens, smear myself in Crisco and slide around instead of walking� anything. I have the hall-pass, right?

So, why am I so lost? It's almost like my whole persona is predicated upon taking care of someone or something. It feels like I've spent my whole life being taken care of by those that were not mine, but borrowed, and conversely, taking care of myself while I had to spend that interminable time at home with my worthless piss of a father. Now, it seems, I'm unsure of exactly who I am.

I love being the funny, goalie guy to my friends, and sensitive, care-taking-Katy-homemaker to the Girl, but, without that context, do I know who I am?

Without context, do any of us really know who we are?

From Pork's diary, I get a better understanding of depression, because he explains it so eloquently, but I still have a hard time relating to such feelings as I've never felt them the way he describes. I'm not "depressed", I'm unsure of things.

G.I. Joe

"Knowing is half the battle", the G.I. Joe cartoons would tell me in my youth. Is this why it's so important for me to KNOW what's going on?

Knowing, having a firm grip on things, is the tantamount to me as being completely content. If I can only know what's going on, I can formulate a plan on how to handle things from there, if action is needed. Without knowing what is needed, I am lost.

Important to me as well, is being able to express these feelings. That's what a diary is, isn't it? A place for expression. Writing about what's going on should make things better, eh?

Why do I still feel like this then?

Fuck.