Why don't you like me?

As I've said before, I'm very close to my family. I have one cousin in particular that I'm very close to. Tony is like a brother to me. He is only 5 days older than me and we lived together for about 3 years in LA. After I moved back to San Diego from LA, Tony started dating this girl named Maria. Tony and Maria have been dating for abou 2 years now. I'm not a big fan of Maria, although I really wish I was. See, Maria doesn't really make the effort to get to know me, which bothers me since Tony and I are so close. If ever I was in LA, Tony and I would plan to get together to hang out for dinner or something like that. Maria would never come. One time I was even at their apartment and I thought she wasn't home. She was home. She just never came out of her room! I was there for 5 hours and she didn't come out once. At first, I was just like whatever. Now Tony and Maria live in Chicago. They fly out to LA a few times a year. When they do, my sister and I always make the effort to go and share a meal with Tony. Maria NEVER comes. I understand that she also wants to see her family, but she could at least get to know our family a little bit. One meal at least. She always come up with the lamest excuses too. The latest one she gave this past weekend was that she had to go shopping for a dress. We weren't meeting up for dinner until 9:30 PM. What kind of store is she shopping at that is open past 9?! When Tony first started dating Maria I was so excited for him. I was hoping that Maria and I would become close too. I hope some day this changes. People tell me that maybe she's intimidated by me, but I don't see why she would be. I don' think I've ever been rude or mean to her. I'm hesitant to bring this up with Tony. I'm afraid he'll get defensive and think I don't like her. Then he'll go tell her what I said and that will make things even worse. Plus, I suck at discussing uncomfortable topics. I'm the post non-confrontational person in the world.

Things in three's?

I've heard a theory that things happen in three's - weddings, births, deaths. I hope this isn't true. Why you ask? Because right now another one of my uncle's is on life support. My mom and many other family members are flying out to Seattle today to be there before they pull the plug. What is going on? Within 2 months there are 2 deaths on my mom's side of the family. My goodness. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. Sadly, the odds are against us. See, my mom's side of the family is HUGE. She has 11 siblings, 5 half brothers and sisters and 5 full siblings. The half-siblings are all getting up in there in years. They're all over 75 and for some, their health isn't so good.

I wasn't even prepared for this one. With my last uncle, he was sick for months and we knew it was coming. This time not so much. Here's what happened. Monday my uncle had a mild stroke. He was doing fine after a few days and then he went home. There was a good prognosis and everyone said he'd be okay. I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought everything would be okay. I didn't think anything of it after that. On Thursday he wasn't feeling well again so they forced him to go back to the hospital. They determined he suffered another mild stroke so he had to stay in the hospital again. He went into the bathroom and didn't come out for a long time. They went into the bathroom to check on him and he was on the floor. He had a major heart attack. That's when he went on life support. My mom called me at work Friday morning to book her a flight to Seattle which shocked me. At this point I thought my uncle was fine. No one told me he was back in the hospital. I might not be able to make to Seattle in time. I have things going on at work that I just can't miss. I'm going to leave Monday night, but have to be back in San Diego by Saturday afternoon. I really hope things to happen in three's. :(

Autism Awareness

April 2 was Autism Awareness Day, so this post is a few days late. Autism is something I've been reading a lot about lately. One of my cousin's (he's really more like a baby brother to me) is border-line autistic. He's a senior in high school now and is very high-functioning. He's a very smart kid, he's just is a little off sometimes. He doesn't have very good conversation skills and is very very socially awkward. It's really hard to talk to him. I can only understand about half of the things that come out of his mouth. Lots of what he says in nonsense. He talks mostly about cartoons. He's like a a 10 year with bad manners. The worst thing about it is that his parents ignore it like there's nothing different about him. They never took him to classes or anything of the sort. It makes me so sad and upsets me when I think about it. He was such a good kid growing up. He's very sweet and considerate. Classes could've helped his development so much. He gets frustrated and very easily upset, especially when he's talking to people. It's very hard for him to express himself. Because of this, he gets frustrated when he's trying to talk to somebody and they can't understand what he's saying. So if he's talking to me and I say to him "What did you just say? Can you say it again?," he'll just say "Nevermind. Forget it" and start rambling again about something else. Recently I found out that another one of my cousin's has been diagnosed as autistic. He's three years old. He hasn't started speaking yet, which is why his parents were getting him tested. He can say "hi" and "bye" but that's pretty much it. Thankfully, his parents are taking him to classes two times a week.

This whole autism thing is pretty scary. It seems like more and more kids these days are being diagnosed as autistic. I saw this article on CNN the other day that I found it pretty interesting. Hopefully they can find out what causes autism. I know it will be awhile from now. I do what I can to help. Have you ever heard of Good Search? It's a search engine powered by Yahoo! With every search you do, money gets donated to an organization or school of your choice. I use it as my search engine and I've designated my organization of choice to be Cure Autism Now. You should try it too. Pick an organzation you like and help them out too.