flea

Can I just mention how deeply unfair it is that my little brother, who is 29 years old, and just graduated from college last summer (assuming he got the paperwork together and actually bothered to graduate), and doesn't really have a job right now (he does some freelance work for a video game design company he used to work for, but if he made $10,000 a year from them I'd eat my hat), is getting to live in my grandparents' house in Woods Hole, MA? He is paying (modest) rent and there's another tenant as well, but still! How is this fair? He dawdles along into his 30s and can't seem to grow up and get used to the fact that nobody is going to pay him to sit around and have cool thoughts (he is currently interested in neurobiology or something like that, but will he even consider taking a job in a lab? No, because that's menial.) And I just know some stupid shit will fall in his lap, and he'll get to spend his whole life living in Woods Hole, and he'll probably even get married and have kids and my mother will leave him the house, MY HOUSE, when she dies. And I work my little ass off with a stupid job that pays the bills and taking care of kids and going to school and not killing my husband, and I have to move to Cincinnati, home of desperate public schools and segregation and small minds and MY FATHER, and this is going to be my REWARD.

Which is all a prelude to, should I get my brother a Christmas present this year? I always do, a fairly nice one (usually clothes) and he either gets us nothing in return, or only gives us presents by dint of my mother or my sister taking him firmly in hand and essentially doing the shopping for him. (For example, I doubt he actually purchased me a creamer from England on Ebay last year. That one has all the hallmarks of my mother, despite it ostensibly coming from him. She probably even paid for it.) I'm considering stiffing the stiff this year. We're staying home, so I won't have to do it in person or anything.