Here's the dizzle Amy: I don't really like to make posts right before you come home because then I always either end up telling you everything in the post, or try not to tell you anything in the post, and it just doesn't really work out. Hopefully, though, this weekend, we'll be pretty busy, so it won't leave much time for us to lay around and me feel like I have to tell you something about whats been going on around here.

In reality, I can't really tell you what's been going on around here, because I've been gone. Here's what I love about being gone while mom and dad are also gone: when I get back, I don't feel like something crazy and huge happened while I was gone, like I feel every time I leave the house.

And this feeling of being left out of something huge isn't for no reason. This paranoia isn't irrational, it is born from a fair amount of what I like to call, "family non-communication"

One of my biggest fears is "family non-communication, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, heres a definition written by non other than yours truly:

Family Non-Communication is when something happens within a family and they never discuss it even though they all know that they're all thinking about it. You know they know. They know you know. They know you know they know. You know they know you know. Family Non-Communication also includes the failure to communicate to an absent family member that something absolutely huge and family-shaping has happened.

This has happened to me on a number of occasions.

Let us travel back to 2005 or maybe 2006. I don't remember which year and I am practicing Family Non-Communication Resentment, so I"m not going to ask anyone.

Anyway, back in the day, I went to my friends house, and when my family picked me up at the gas station in the big fifteen passenger van before going to "the Living History Festival", there was a distinct absence of noise. Not silence, just an absence of noise. Now, Family Non-Communication is something that breeds the absence of noise, and that's what I was picking up on. Even though I was like seven.

Now at the time I was looking forward to "the Living History Festival" so I passed it off as "Joseph isn't in the mood to pester me and everyone else is tired," but I knew, something was wrong.

So the whole day went past, and I was surrounded by whispers and giggles, and I thought, maybe, just maybe, I would be able to pick up on what the secret was if I just stuck close to Diana and Angela and pretended like I wasn't listening, but NO, that didn't even work.

And it wasn't until probably ten hours after I got in that van and realized something was wrong until my mother told me that Daniel was "courting" Catherine.

THAT's what all the whispering was about? Dude, its not THAT big of a deal! I thought someone had died or got pregnant or something!

And that was the first time it happened. Since then its happened may times, (once when Daniel got engaged, once when Diana broke up with one boy and started dating another, and once when Kristin got engaged.)

In my pact against Family Non-Communication I have perposefully tried not to pick up any hints or signals so that when my parents finally do decide to tell me something, it will be the first time that I've heard about it. That, or I pick up on it way before they do and then when they tell me and I don't act surprised they think I'm some selfish droid. (yes, I already knew that Diana was pregnant. or at least guessed it. When they're popping them out like popcorn its not exactly 'surprising'. Not to say that I'm any less excited or anything, I just was totally expecting it.)

So help against Family Non-Communication, and remind your parents that 'If They're Whispering About It, It Concerns You' they need to know that every time we hear a whisper out of them we instantly assume the worst. So its just better if we know.

Now if it actually is "the worst" that's a whole different story.


PEACE OUT AMY. SEE YOU IN HALF AN HOUR!!!!

-Michelle