I've been a bad, bad diarist lately, and it's because there's been a lot going on that I'd be hesitant to address even if I knew quite how. Foremost, there's my monumental and ever-growing affection for K.; there's moving next week; there's the problems with my cousin and related money issues with my grandmother; there's my parents; there's my other grandmother. You could do worse than to think of these things as resting in that order on a continuum from Amazing to Heartbreaking. [ed.: Also, there's watching my high school, dear old Interlochen, go down the tubes. File under Depressing but Not Surprising.]

Last weekend I flew to Norfolk to see my parents and steal a few hours with K. Mom and Dad have grown dirt poor and Dad's still unemployed. He's in treatment now for alcoholism as well as (Thanksgiving surprise!) valium addiction, but oddly still drinks. Supposedly detox would be too hard on his system. I think that's an excuse. My mom is the breadwinner and apparently Dad doesn't do anything but sit around and watch TV, as his dad did before him once he got too old and bitter to do anything else.

My parents are ensnared- yes, that's a good word for it- by the dehumanizing rituals of American medicine, of pathology (sin) and diagnosis (confession) and treatment (penance). They take it as an article of faith that they Work(ed) Too Hard and consequently Need Fixing. And like so many of the oxycontin-addled clients we get coming through this law firm, I can only wonder whether they'll ever get loose or whether it'll end, for Dad at least, in a state of voluntarily, legally smothered consciousness.

I'm starting to hate doctors with an enraged passion.

By the time K. got in Mom and Dad were driving me crazy- they'd been so kind and so happy to see me when I'd first arrived, but that quickly degenerated into the usual badgering and self-aggrandizement and bickering. But once K. stepped off the bus I didn't think about anything but her, nor have I since, really, and my only regret as far as the time spent with K. is that we bothered to sleep at all.

I'd been keyed up for days over it and anxious and everything, and some of my fears weren't unfounded- Dad could have been a little less obnoxious over dinner the following evening- but overall I don't think I'll ever forget the texture of that evening, the tenor of the lazy conversation in the Thirsty Camel (home to possibly the slowest service on earth, but also some damn fine steak and eggs), and the grasping at time once she had to get going again. It was agony to watch her get back on the Greyhound, despite knowing that I'd see her again soon. "Soon" has never been less like "soon enough."

My cousin Sean still isn't speaking to me. He thinks I moved down here and used everyone and now I'm cutting and running when I should "bloom where planted," as he says. No one would ever accuse him of favoring the accomplishment of principles over the principles themselves. He dislikes that I'm borrowing more money from my grandmother so I can move. Heaven forbid he should waste an opportunity for censoriousness. And yet maybe I am (as he thinks) a defrauder of old ladies (one could make that case- long story), a master redistributor of petty wealth and efforts, a parasite, and to be avoided.

I still need to finish Snow. I'm too busy rereading The Name of the Rose. No, actually, I'm too busy having long phone conversations with K. which don't make the time pass much faster but do make me deliriously happy anyway.