My dad is drinking again. I don't know what this means, but it's gotten out of hand a few times, apparently. He quit drinking officially around 1990 after 25 years of idiocy and wreckage, and why he wants to pick this up again he has yet to explain. It came up a year or two ago, when supposedly it was an exercise in self-control or self-possession or something, a chance for redeeming himself to himself. Or that's the impression we got when he relented and spoke two or three sentences on the subject. Redemption for himself seemed kind of selfish, since I'm not sure he's tried to redeem himself to the other people he's hurt. This time around it seems to lack even that pretense of purpose. But we'll see. However personal his mission might be, at the very least I think it's his responsibility to communicate his intentions to the family.
����Also, I'm told he's been avoiding talking to me on the phone because he's mad at me for still not having taken a job anywhere.

����I'm flying out of National Wednesday morning. I'll take the T from Logan to South Station, and get on a bus to Sagamore. Then I'll take a cab to my house and it'll just be me and Penny in the silent, empty, childless house until 5:30 when my mom'll get home. The windy afternoon will ease into a quiet night and then my mom will burst in huffing and sighing, throw some books and folders on the dining room table, and then turn on all the lights and the tv. "Hi," she'll say, "nice to see you," but she'll really mean, "You still don't have a job, do you. Your father's going to be pissed."

����I'm making my parents sound terrible and they're not. I just feel like in 15 years they haven't noticed thousands of minutes passing, one after the other, wasted because nobody made any effort. Please--Mom, Dad (and all the employers out there)--wake up! Smarten up! Make things real, and live, and purposeful. Don't be dumb.

����So I'm going home for Thanksgiving, like I said, and I'll see Matthew who I've not seen in 2 years, and Nicholas, and we'll have fun. There's the annual day-after-Thanksgiving paintball event (in which we the Cannon family and friends drive out to Paintball Heaven and ravage a bunch of army veterans and fanatical teenagers with our superior military-style valor and intensity), and seeing Grandma and Grandpa (in which we witness new heights of absurdity), and mashed potatoes.

����It's Thanksgiving, but I'm not really looking forward to it.



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