A Peculiar Absense of Jealousy

My parents are going to Australia today.

I'm confused about my feelings towards this.

When my sister and her husband went to Australia in 2008, I was HORRIBLY jealous. I mean I was jealous to the point of being depressed. I'm not sure if I've ever been that jealous of anything in my life.

With my parents, it's different...maybe even the opposite. I'm excited for them almost to the point of probably being annoying. I've been obsessed with their holiday, eager to talk about it with them, and help them plan.

My parents go on holidays quite frequently, and I take a mild amount of interest. I usually have a general sense of when they're leaving and returning. When they get home and my dad posts his photos online, I look at all of them (usually hundreds!) and make a few comments.

Last night, as I went to bed, I kept thinking about how my parents were now on the plane. I wondered what they were doing and if they felt as tortured as I feel on long flights. This afternoon, I started counting down to the hour that they landed. I'm so overly interested in what they're going to do in Sydney. I want details. I want emails. I want photos. I want long funny stories about their adventures.

I'm trying to figure out why I have these feelings, and why they're so different from the last time.

Here are my various theories.

a) my relationship to my parents is different from that to the one I have with my sister. Some of the jealousy I had may have been due to basic sibling rivalry. I naturally have less rivalry with my parents.

b) It's been two years since my sister went to Australia. I'm still equally obsessed with Australia but in a much more emotionally stable way. Back then I was desperate to live in Australia, and depressed about having to leave there. I hated that my sister was there instead of me. Now I've learned to love Australia from far away.

c) My parents now take my obsession with Australia much more seriously. They're very respectful of it and even read my blog once in awhile.  I think this makes me feel validated in some way. I WANT to share my passion with them. I want them to go and have an awesome time. I think my worry now is that they won't like it. I'm afraid they'll come home and say, we still can't really understand why you like Australia so that much. We really didn't think it was that great. OR I'm afraid they'll say they liked New Zealand better. Ah! They better not. I won't speak to them for months!!!!

Don't worry. I'm joking people.

My other idea is that maybe in my little delusional mind, my parents went to Australia FOR me. It's probably not true. They go to many places and seem to be on a quest to see the entire planet. They've even been to Sydney and Cairns before. But in the beginning of my obsession, my parents weren't supportive I wanted to move there, and they were NOT happy with that. Therefore they were also not too supportive of my interest in general. Now they are...much more supportive. They read my blog. They praise my blog. My dad listened to Australia music that I linked to on my blog. So I guess I like to imagine that to take this support a step further....they actually decided to GO to Australia.

I'd be much more impressed with them if they went to Australia for several weeks, rather than a few days via a cruise. But this is a good start. Hopefully, they'll return someday and visit a lot more places.





P.S-This is totally a different subject. But anyway....I've been wanting to buy some new clothes for our Hawaii trip. I usually do most of my shopping at Goodwill, but decided to splurge a bit and dedicate some of my clothing budget to other venues. I've wanted to get some t-shirts...ones that express my interests and opinions. I decided to try one of those online stores where people come up with their own designs. I found a few that I sort of liked. But then I found out I could make my OWN shirts. I had so much fun last night doing this. I made a vegetarian shirt, a neurotypical shirt (although borrowed someone else's idea for the logo), a True Blood shirt, a True Blood/anti-bullying shirt, and three shirts promoting my blog. We bought some of the shirts for me, and one of my blog t-shirts for Tim. Jack also bought a shirt that he made. Tim came up with the logo for the blog shirt he's promised to wear. The front says, Lord Wiki says.... I thought that was clever. You can check them out if you want to see how damn creative I am. AND/OR you can go and make your own shirts. If you make something clever, please share the link. This is SO fun. Have any of you already known about this? Well, shame on you for not telling me!!!! I'm joking....sort of.