Weekend with my brother

Since I'm actually trying to get a lot of work done today, I'll have to keep this as short as possible.

A while back, I invited my brother to see Transformers with me down here in Columbus, long before the film ever hit the theaters. Well, he saw it with his friends and absolutely loved it, but was still willing to see it with my husband and I so we set up our plan: he would come down on a Saturday, we'd see it on Sunday and I'd send him back on the Greyhound. It took awhile but it finally happened, and while I didn't exactly love the film, it was better than I thought.

Unfortunately, I was being very negative and I feel as if I ruined the movie for him.

What I found out later was that it was the day before my 'cycle', which meant that I had turned into a raging bitch with about as much emotional control as a person has over a whirlpool; it takes you where it wants and there's not much else you can do but ride it out. It's still no excuse for running my mouth and talking about how much I hated certain parts of the film. There was one character in particular that made me so angry that I punched my palm out of frustration [Which is better than where I usually punch myself when I'm on the phone and don't want to betray that I'm angry with the caller; right above my knees.] I know he loves this movie and has loved the Transformers since he was a child, but he started to see flaws in the film and talk about what he didn't like...and that's when I started to feel incredibly guilty.

I wish the audience we had seen it with had been into the film more, because it would've been very easy to get me emotionally caught up if other people had shared his enthusiasm. I probably still would've complained, but maybe not as much.

Even though my husband told me that I didn't really hurt my brother the way I feel I did, I sent him a MySpace message thanking him for coming down and apologizing for ruining his film. His response was simple yet heartfelt; he told me about how he had been wanting to see a film of his favorite childhood show since he was 8, that he was glad that he saw it (and me), and that he missed me. The message made me cry a little the first time I read it (and now the tears are pouring as I remember the message) because I wish he could've stayed longer. All we got to do this weekend was drive down (he actually did the driving in my car...which I guess he didn't know we had gotten a new one until I picked him up from work), have lunch, see the movie, and then immediately drive him to the bus station to catch the 5:00 bus back to Cleveland.

He had never ridden the Greyhound before [Somehow, he's been on an airplane more than a dozen times (2 trips for me) but had never ridden the Greyhound (whereas I had ridden the bus more than a dozen times since junior high).] so I made sure that he was in the right line, and I used the last dollar I had to buy him something to drink for the trip back. We left him there roughly 20 minutes before he was supposed to board, and I didn't want to leave until I saw him on the bus and I have a feeling he didn't want me to leave just yet, either, but my husband wanted to go home, so I left.

[We paid for just about everything this weekend except for the movie itself; I had some silver passes and my husband had a free pass, so that much was free. Greyhound has gone up since I'd last rode with them.]

While I am a bit of an emotional mess right now (and I hate crying in public, but nobody can hear it, I hope), but I do feel very protective of my brother and I cherish and look up to him. I used to get into fights with people because he was he didn't speak to others until he was seven [They tell me he talked to me and I served as his mouthpiece] and while his manner of speech sounds a little slow (due to attending a special school because he was a stutterer, while all the other students had very significant developmental problems), he is in fact, quite intelligent and was the first of all of the siblings to graduate high school on time [I was the second and, so far, the last to do so. The rest...well, let's just say there's still hope that the youngest will pull it off]. My husband understands how important he is to me, so he knows that I would rush to his side if anything were to happen to him. What's funny about it is that my husband and my brother share some characteristics. They both wrestled in high school, they both have the same weird habit of laughing when they lie, and they're both into martial arts. I think it's kind of funny that they say a girl looks for her father's characteristics in the man she'll marry, but I got someone who was a little like my brother.

Funny enough, this didn't take that long to type, but I've definitely got to get back to work. I had a great time with my brother, and I miss him, too.