Iowa recently instated a "No Texting While Driving" law. Pssh, whatever.
Just like the whole speeding thing. That's not going to stop people. Sure as heck isn't stoping me.
I can't help it, people text me while I'm driving and I feel like I should text that back soon.
They might think I'm ignoring them. No one likes being ignored.
The thing is, they can't pull over for suspicion of texting. They pull you over for something stupid, like not stopping for 3 seconds at a stop sign. Then they give you a fine for texting too. It's like.. $1000. Ridiculous.
I'm still doing it. It's my little way of 'sticking it to the man.' Or more to just Chet Culver. Whichever.
My dad got a letter in the mail on Wednesday, from his little brother. Oh dear, what is it with this family and letters?
Okay, so there's a story behind this.
My aunt died when I was about 5. I remember being extremely sad because she was my favorite aunt. She died of liver cancer. She drank a lot.
Anyway, so awhile after her death, our family got into a fight. One of my cousins told me (keep in mind I'm a little kid and I have no idea what's going on) that someday I was going to grow up and be a whore. He was a lot older than I was and he was really mean to me.
My dad yelled at him. Who wouldn't? I mean really, who says that to a little kid?
Then my grandma yelled at him. Everyone got mad at my family because we yelled at my cousin. Keep in mind his mom had just died a few months ago. Still, he shouldn't have said what he said.
So there was a rift in my family for a long time. Shortly after the incident happened, my grandmother wrote a very nasty letter to my family about what happened. We no longer talked my grandparents or my uncle/cousins (the one that yelled at me).
We didn't talk to them for a long time. We never went to another Christmas, Thanksgiving, or birthday. Obviously, this caused a huge uproar with my other uncle (the one that wrote the letter in the beginning of the story) but he still talked to us.
Then my brother graduated from high school. That same uncle ^ wrote my brother a very nasty letter explaining why he wouldn't come to his graduation (I don't remember what it was about, something about his job - McDonalds - and my aunt was his manager.. idk). So we lost contact with that uncle. That's two uncles and my grandparents that we no longer talked to. That left one uncle (aunt, and cousins) and an aunt left in that family.
My family recently (well,within 7 years anyway) made up with my grandparents. It's weird, talking to them again. They missed a lot of my childhood, so it's hard to consider them my grandparents. I always told my friends I only had one set of grandparents, my mom's parents. The other, well we just didn't talk to them.
But now I had them back. I'm still not extremely comfortable with my grandma, but whatever. Life goes on.
We hadn't talked to my uncle since he wrote that letter.
So Wednesday my dad got a letter out of the blue.. apologizing to him. I was in shock. I haven't spoken to him in.. 9 years? All of a sudden, bam.. here's a letter. He said that his life has been really bad since my aunt died 17 years ago. He thinks it because he's not following God's plan. A pastor told him that good Christian's don't hold grudges, and that brothers aren't supposed to argue.
(side note: this uncle had done something bad to the only uncle I talk to, causing a rift between them too. So he had no brothers)
So he wrote a letter to each brother, apologizing to them.
My mom is for accepting his apology. My dad, not so much. That's the stubborn side in him.
I'm not sure how I feel.
What he said (I think) in that letter was mean. He had no right. And why now? It's been almost 10 years. He said that it would be nice to be a family again.
A) I haven't seen those cousins (and the ones that yelled at me all those years ago) for almost 15 years. I have no interest in getting to know them. I personally don't care about them. They're not my family, not really.
B) Whatever. I just don't care. It would be nice to be able to get together sometimes, but seriously. They haven't been apart of our lives for a long time. It would be weird to just let everything go and pretend it's all good again.
One of my biggest thoughts is that none of this would have happened if my aunt was still alive. Dawn Krueger was the coolest person I had ever met. She let me do whatever. We would all go camping and canoeing together. God, we had fun back then.
But then she died. And we never really got over it. When something is wrong, or you're feeling sad, the thing to do in this family is to ignore it. We don't talk about that kind of stuff. We're supposed to be tough, not talk about our feelings. All of us are like that.
I'm trying to change, but it's hard. I've never told anyone how much it hurt to see my favorite aunt, the woman I looked up to, lie in that casket. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to face in my 22 years of life. That's a hard thing to deal with for a 5 year old.
I just wonder what life would be like if she hadn't have died. I'm sure we'd all still be talking. I would got to grow up with all of my cousins, not just a few..
Anyway... sorry about that. I didn't mean to tell the whole story, but I guess I did. It's all out there now. Whatever.
Subject change:
It's Sumner Days this weekend, whoopdi. Seriously, everyone makes a big deal out of it. It's really not that exciting. I just go for the food, to get a tan, and the fireworks. That's about it.
My roommate is coming up to spend Saturday at SD. That should make things better. She's never been to a "small town little festival" before. Well, this one is kind of boring. Oh well, we'll make a good time of it.
Anyway.. that's what's on my mind today. Family issues. And the law. And small town-ness.
Sorry for just laying everything out there, but I felt like writing it down. I type a whole lot faster than I can write too. 
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