Madeline's mother makes me happy. She's got some spunk, or quite a bit of it, actually. She manages to be spunky even when sorting through her mother-in-law's old coin collection. She's wonderful. Plus, I think it's endearing that she moved to Tulsa almost purely because Leon Russell came from Tulsa! What a crazy thing to do!

Actually, I think I am adopting Madeline's family as my own. Sure, I've got to give my time to the obligatory functions with my "real family." 

I feel like I am the new exchange student at madeline's house. 

Anyhow, I felt closer to my host families in Himachal Pradesh, than I ever did at home with my family. It's not that they are terrible people, or that we don't get along. We do get along for the most part, but there's not really a cohesive bond keeping us together except circumstances. I have the same relationship with my mother that I did before, when I was in India. I live in the same house now, and yet it's reverted back to a "long distance" relationship. I never see her really. I'm rarely home.

I enjoyed driving to Caney, KS for the heck of it on Sunday. We saw a lot of dead things-- not just roadkill. We saw a deer hanging up by its feet, gutted, in one of the carports of Caney's fine residential areas. Yes, it was indeed a very exciting thing. It had a bag of ice sitting inside of it, probably to cool the carcass. 

As a vegetarian, I would think that I should have been bothered more by the sight, but I've never been the squemish type. I don't mind gore. I don't mind innards. It just reminds me of dissection. I learned a lot from dissecting in Anatomy and Physiology in highschool.  I just don't really enjoy the unnecessary exploitation of animals and our environment. I try to do as little of that as possible. 

I'm getting back into the punjabi folk music again. I had to stop for a while, because I got too depressed (i've been missing my host-families and friends like a mutha!). I'm either numb to the pain by now, or I'm lightening up about it-- because I might get to go this summer. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

On a completely unrelated note, I've been fighting with some terribly ridiculous emotions lately. I can rationalize as much as I want, but it doesn't change the feelings that I had or that sort of let me get attached emotionally. I don't feel empty-- that's not the feeling. I feel just like things should have gone differently. I couldn't have done anything differently. The burden lies completely on the other person's shoulders. I was terribly dissappointed in them. Almost completely dissappointed by them. The worst part is that I hadn't had enough distractions up until recently to get myself to reconfigure my priorities and opinions.  I'll stop thinking about what they should have done, thought, or said, because I know it doesn't really matter anymore. I've moved on, but I am still nursing some serious wounds. 

I realize that I am not mature enough to invest my emotions in other people. I've just recovered them from the dumpster that they were tossed in. Moreover, I feel terrible about the way I've treated other people's feelings now; I really need to learn how to be more delicate.