I just want to travel

A couple days ago I announced to my mother I had made another career change, and then five minutes later I took it back.
"I don't know what I want to do! I just want to travel, that's it, just travel." I whined. Living back at home I've become such an amazing whiner.
"Then why are you plopping yourself down in Texas for a year?" Mom responded defiantly - Mom has also become very snappy. Oh we make a happy household.
"Because I've always wanted to live in Texas! So I'm trying it out. And then in a year I'll go to Nepal for three months, then I'll come  back and make more money then go --"
"ANNIE!" My mom interrupted me with an abrupt yell, "I want grandchildren!"
"Well in order for you to get grandchildren from me I need to find a man, and I don't see that happening any time soon."
"Not at the rate you're going! Why can't you just sit still for a minute and allow a man to actually meet you!"
"If he can't keep up he's not worth it! Oh and Mom, I am your fifth child, why don't you go bother the married children. Or even the ones who are in relationships." Also, side note here, she does have two granddaughters already, but they live in Denmark, and that makes her sad. She wants grandchildren stateside. "Also!" I begin to storm, "I am only twenty-three years old!" Here's the problem with that argument: all of the females in my family have either married, had a child, or had a very serious boyfriend that would quickly lead to marriage by the time they were my age. Usually by the age of twenty-one. My family is used to that. They expect that. I even expected it.
At nineteen I thought I had my life mapped out for me. I had a date picked out for my wedding to "the love of my life." We had a plan to live in Spain for a few years and come back home to start having babies.  Even after things crashed and burned with The Boy I still thought of myself as a girl who would settle down young, with a handsome man, have babies right away - and lots of them, live in the country with the white picket fence and a family dog.
I can't pinpoint when things began to change. But after living in Europe, after halfheartedly going on dates, meeting a wonderful man but losing him again due to distance, I realized that I didn't just want to be a wife and mother. I want to live my own life, have my own plans, be my own complete person.
Yes, of course I would still like to meet a man someday, I still absolutely want to have children, but I am in no rush. I am twenty-three, I have years ahead of me. Right now, I need to figure out what kind of life I want to live, who I want to be, where I want to be. And maybe, someday, someone will come along who wants the same things out of life, and we will continue to travel side by side.

The AMAZING B5 and his Sister (hey, that's me!)

Almost all of my conversations with B5 are about how accomplished he is. It is very well known in the family that he is the most successful, worldly, smart, handsome, respectable. Except in our family, we don't care. Well, my mom cares, B5 is amaaaazing. But us "children" are all about who has the most fun (right now no one is winning because we're all super fun beings).
But the point of this post is B5 thinks he's the top, in fact I bet he sings that song to himself all the time. Not only is he the top, but all of his friends are too. He surrounds himself with friends from Yale, Harvard, and Brown and always talks about how smart they are and how they are going to become President and Astronauts and stuff.

Being his sister - and the absolute complete opposite of him, I surround myself with musicians and writers and aimless world wanderers - I feel the need to bring him down to earth. To my level. So  sometimes, no matter what he says, I dumb it down.
Our last phone conversation:

"I went to my interview with (I don't know, some important tech-y, nerdy, boring place) and I'm pretty sure I got it. I was talking to the Vice President and he was really impressed with my resume and my work in Kenya. And my friend Meredith, she's a sophomore, and she just got offered a job at Microsoft."
"Cool. I'm really proud of you! (because I really am!) I  finished an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's today."
"Uh... that's great Annie. So, um, what are your plans? How long are you staying at Mom and Dad's?"
"I'm moving to Texas."
"What? Why?"
"Because I'm awesome. My new life plan is to be awesome. Heyyy look at that, life plan ACCOMPLISHED."
There is silence on the other end as my little brother wonders how on earth we could be related.
"Um, great. Any other plans?"
"Yep, I'm going to date a musician and he is going to write a song about me. And then I'm going to break up with him. And then that song that he wrote is going to be his *big* song and he'll get all famous and I'll be like, hey, he wrote that song about me."
"Those are your plans?"
"I'm reaching for the stars B."
Then I change the subject to talking about all the awesome wine that I consumed that week. Because I love wine. And because until he turned 21 (last month), B5 was completely against drinking. And it still kind of bothers him how much I drink. So I talk about it. A lot.
To which he replies - word for word - "When I tell my friends about you, they don't believe me."
WIN! (haha I typed WINE first).
And then I squeal, "Oh my gosh you talk about me?!"

Finally he sighs and asks to talk to my mom. To which I reply "Catch you on the flip side, home dawg. Remember, Jesus loves me, and you should too."

Generation gap - And my Gram is pretty awesome - Also I'm probably never going to settle down

It is horrendously cold. I just looked up the temperature in Austin and it is 70 degrees. Also there will be thunderstorms there tomorrow. Which makes me incredibly jealous. Although it will be a balmy 40 degrees here tomorrow it is going to rain cold, terrible, deathly rain drops. And right now the wind is so bad and going right through my window and I just put another blanket on my bed, so now I have four. And flannel pajama pants and a long sleeve shirt, and my smartwool socks. And I am freezing.
Also I hate snow.
Also I hate slipping and the ice.
It is 70 degrees in Austin right now.

I spent the evening with my grandparents. They are the absolute best people in the world. Except that they are old, and my grandfather is going senile, and my poor grandmother can barely walk yet my grandfather is always barking at her to do everything for him. She just smiles and hobbles along. Then she sits down and falls asleep. It's amazing how good she is at that. Doesn't even teeter, just sits, closes her eyes and is out. I'm a bit jealous.
Anyway we had dinner together because it has been awhile since I've sat down and chatted with them, and Bear and I were the only ones home tonight and we were going to order take out anyway (from our own restaurant because this lady is on a spending freeze!) so I figured, hey, let's hang out with the grandparents.
First thing Bear said when we got into the car was, "Does it smell like chlorine in here?" And I'm just about to blurt out "Actually, it smells like old people" because it really did, it was a real old person smell. But then I realized that of course it's an old person smell, my grandparents are old. But they've never smelled old before so this was a new thing. They have officially become old.
At dinner they asked me what I was up to these days and what my plans were. I was dreading this question. Before we left I told Bear we should take bets on how Papa would react to me moving to Texas. So I decided not to beat around the bush. "I'm moving to Texas!"
"Oh dear God" says Papa
"You can't move to Texas! It's too far away!" says Gram
"Texas is really great, you're going to love it" says Papa. Whoa, was not expecting that.
"Yeah, I am really excited to move to Austin, it seems to really fit with who I am, there are a lot of people there who are a lot like me."
"Oooh no," says Gram, cracking up and shaking her head vigorously "No one is like you!"
"Where the hell is Austin? I've never heard of it." says Papa
"Um, it's the state capital." And I try to make the shape of Texas out of my hands to point out where exactly in Texas Austin is, but that's impossible, what was I thinking.
"So what? It's not a city. Houston is a city. Dallas. What the hell is Austin? What are you going to do there? Are you going to finish school?"

At this point I pinch Bear because in preparation for this dinner she has been informed that it is her duty to keep the conversation away from getting my bachelor's. The last conversation we had he literally yelled at me to make me finish. "Go back to Rhode Island and beg them to take you back!"
"No Papa, I left Rhode Island because I was completely unhappy there. It was a terrible experience for me and I never want to return there."
"Who the hell cares about happiness??"
You should know my grandfather never got his bachelor's degree. Also when I was in high school looking at colleges he kept trying to convince me not to go to college. "I can teach you anything you need to know!" Which could be true. Because he never went to college and went from a traveling shoe salesman to a millionaire. But get your opinions straight buster, should I go to college or should I not?
Every year this man has a new opinion. He went from freaking out on me for trying vegetarianism one summer to the next summer telling me that MEAT IS DEATH! I can't handle this.

So Bear tries to cut in and start a new conversation about the shrimp he is eating - weak attempt there - but he cuts her off. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three"
"Uh huh, so this is your last little fling before you settle down and start a real life?"
"I don't know. Maybe not. There's still a lot of things I want to do."
"You know we had four kids by the time we were your age."
To which I try to reply that was crazy because they were married when they were 21, and that was just too quick to have babies (they had one set of twins) and even if I wanted to get married at this point my brothers would strongly object because I am way too young. Also I don't know where I want to settle down and have kids because it's definitely not here, and definitely not anywhere else I've lived. And I can't settle down and have kids until I find a man who wants to join me in this endeavor and I haven't found him yet and I know I won't find him here. Also we live longer now and I want to live in Texas but I also want to live in Kenya and I also want to live in London and I also want to travel all over the world and I wonder what it would be like to live in Asia... But while I am saying all of this he is going "Huh? What? What's that? Joanie, can you hear her?" Joanie's my gram. Papa pulls the "I'm deaf" card whenever he thinks we're talking crazy. Which is almost all the time with me.
Gram just giggles when I'm crazy. She thinks I'm awesome. "If I was your age I would totally go to Austin. Sounds rad." Gram also tries to be gangster. She once put one of those magnetic earrings in her nose and walked around with it for a whole day "I'm a cool Gram!" she kept saying.