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Were there little ones in my life, apparently I could be a “helicopter parent” and would need to be chased off by some Universities.

Colleges Shoo Away Helicopter Parents

I’ll admit that the concept of “helicopter parent” is still somewhat foreign to me, despite what I have read. The rallying cry of my childhood was, “I’ll do it MYSELF!!” and my folks did everything they could to let me “do it myself” right up until the point where I would injure myself. When it came to college, my folks helped me move into my dorm room, and then I seem to recall chasing them off like they had some highly communicable disease.

I still remember being exceptionally conflicted one winter break when my Dad told me, “Hey, our office needs a receptionist over Christmas break, would you be interested in doing that instead of temping?” While the job sounded great, I also didn’t want to be “Don’s daughter” at the office, lest people think I was just a dingbat whose Dad got her a Christmas job. On top of that, everyone adored him, and I didn’t want to disappoint him, and also wanted NO treatment that was different than anyone else because he was my Dad.

I ended up taking the job and it was great – because everyone (including, and maybe especially, my Dad) was more than willing to dump any and all work on me that they thought I could handle. Right there I knew that I wasn’t a token timesheet. However, I will admit that a perk of working with your Dad is that he will make sure you get lunch before the cafeteria closes for the afternoon. The worst day was the first day – I busted my butt to accomplish anything and everything asked of me – and I wore heels. Then Dad wanted to go Christmas shopping afterwards. I certainly wasn’t going to say, “No Dad, my feet hurt!” I seem to recall walking around Tower Books & Records in Tyson’s in my aching stocking feet, and trying very hard not to cry from the pain. (I’m fairly certain I wore flats for the rest of the engagement.)

The only real time Dad intervened was when I came walking downstairs one morning with a skintone somewhere between green & grey – he took one look at me and said, “You go back to bed, NOW. We can cover the rest for the day.” He was right, as I was rather violently ill for the rest of the day. (Occasionally, parents do know what they’re talking about.)

But that was really the extent of my parents involvement in my college and professional life. Had I asked for assistance, they would have gladly provided it, but they never said, “Let us handle this for you.” It was always, “If we can help somehow, let us know.”

Now, if I had a little one of my own, I am quite sure I’d be insanely protective of them. However, I would also like to think that I’d raised them in such a manner that when the time came to do things on their own, they could do it without my intervening on every level. I really can’t comprehend getting terribly involved in their college careers other than providing $$ for tuition and board, and being a sounding board when they needed it, or getting involved in the job process other than, “Want me to fake interview you?” In my mind, beyond that, you’re not helping, you’re just hindering their independence.

First, I overslept. While you are asking, “How does a degenerate beach bum oversleep?” well yes, it can happen. Some of us like to be up and at least mildly alert when the market opens. That did not happen this morning – plus I was extra distracted by wacky dreams, so I was mildly annoyed just coming out of the gates.

Then, it took FOUR calls to Sears to get a human being to confirm delivery of my new fridge tomorrow. While their voice automated system happily parroted back everything I said, it had an unfortunate tendency to disconnect halfway through the call. Once I got to a REAL lady on the other end of the line, I found that they had not finalized the delivery schedule for 8/18/2010. Yippee… However, to their credit, their “tomorrow’s delivery announcement” call did arrive and in theory my fridge will be here between 11:15 and 1:15 tomorrow. (Donald says 4:00PM. But I have faith.)

Last night, my awesome little brother noticed a burned-out taillight on my car. It’s inspection month anyway, so – problem solved by getting the car inspected! I even told them about the light when I dropped it off for the inspection & oil change. I missed the “Your car is ready!” voicemail by TWO HOURS, but the message didn’t say “respond or we torch your car” so I think they were OK with my tardy response. I then picked up the car with the the same burned out taillight that I left at the shop. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Bonus: got the light fixed for free. Oh, and the “recommended ‘mini’ tune-up – yeah, they didn’t have the “right” spark plugs for my Jeep.

Missed the alarm on my phone to send my friend M a reminder text. I am quite certain the alarm went off, but I either missed it or was so distracted by everything else going sideways that it didn’t register.

I’ve also spent more than a few minutes sanding down my bamboo knitting needles, cause Carmen thought they were SPECTACULAR chew toys. (She doesn’t understand that the spectacularly wonderful binkie she had in the shelter came off MY knitting needles.)

Then I saw the weather report for tomorrow: I can condense it to: Monsoon. During which time my fridge will be delivered. Said fridge which has to go through the side yard and backyard to the back door to fit inside my house. The delivery men are going to HATE me. Oh, and Lily decided it would be great to explore the Great Outdoors while I attempted to measure the front (not quite wide enough) door!

All I ask is for tomorrow to be really, really quiet and uneventful.

High school reunion this weekend. I’ll fully admit that I waited until the very last minute to decide to go for a variety of reasons, ranging from the fact that my biggest accomplishment in the past two and a half years has been not taking a hit out on my grandmother, to the fact that there are always going to be some people you’d just as soon leave completely in your past. But in the end, my desire to catch up with the people that I really liked back in high school won out.

Was incredibly happy to run into some folks that I didn’t know would be there and haven’t seen ages – it was so good to see some really special people again and I didn’t call it a night until about 3:30 AM. I’d say it was a success. Maybe we’ll all do a better job of keeping in touch this go round. “Hit me up on Facebook” just wasn’t a phrase you heard 10 years ago.

The funniest thing I found was that we’re all twice the age of when we left high school – and nobody has really changed at all. It’s nice to have a few constants in life after 20 years.

In my last post it apparently sounded like I felt completely trapped by the “can’t walk away from grandma” situation. I was actually trying to articulate the realization that while, no, I cannot walk away from the situation with my grandmother, I **CAN** walk away from other things that are really not working for me in my life – with no horrid repercussions!! I had simply let the “can’t quit!” mentality go oozing into the rest of my life, which isn’t super healthy. The “Whoa…” title was actually a Keanu Reeves-like reaction to the realization that I had *LET* myself feel trapped in ALL situations, when in fact I can simply say, “This ain’t working for me!” and walk away! And the vast majority of the world would say, “Well, yes, you should walk away!”

In short (too late) – I was celebrating breaking away and warning those to not let themselves decide that “can’t quit” must encompass all parts of ones life. It seems it was a horridly written post – but it did and still does make perfect sense to me, but then again, I did write it, so I’m quite biased. Regardless, the support was incredibly heartwarming – even if it might have been very lovingly misguided by my lack of clarity with my words.

Second, I am bouncing about like a PE class red-rubber-dodge-ball between “this will be fun” and “holy crap, this is the worst idea I have had in a while” when it comes to my high school reunion this weekend. If nothing else, there is an open bar for a couple hours and I have booked a room at the hotel, so hey, breakfast in bed on Sunday morning! No matter what, I suspect some fun will be had. :)

And finally – I joke about being the mother hen to my little chickadees that are at the pub when I am there, but at the same time, I’m pretty damn serious about it. These were the folks that were there for me as I came in for late-night bacon cheeseburgers & beer and explained that the reason that I was back in the neighborhood was cause my Mom died and I was moving back into the family homestead, and they provided shoulders to lean on and ears to listen when I needed them. And for that, I am very, very protective of my friends at the pub, and there is nothing that raises my ire faster than someone – anyone – messing with them. If you are someone I count among my friends, there is good reason that you are there – and that is why I get very upset when someone is messing with anyone in that circle. So, note to all – don’t screw with my friends, OK?

I will fully admit that going through 2008/9 being on call 24/7 with my grandmother, and her taking 125% advantage of said situation really left me in a state of paralysis. I couldn’t quit, couldn’t walk away, couldn’t consider other paths. Had that whole scenario been a regular job, after about 6 months I would have walked up to my boss and said, “I am really sorry, but I totally suck at this, I am not an asset to this project by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s beyond time for me to go, because there are folks out there that are MUCH more capable than I am. Nice knowing you, but it’s time for me to go.”

But, eldercare doesn’t come with an HR department or sane employer. So, you’re kind of stuck.

The stuck part will ooze it’s way into other parts of your life and you won’t even realize it, and you keep trying to power through it, because your brain has gone into “can’t quit” mode. Thing is – you may not even realize that it’s gotten it’s hooks into you – lord knows I didn’t until today.

In a completely and separate part of my life, I realized today, “This isn’t working. I need to just walk away.” It wasn’t some massive life changing portion of my life, just something relatively minor that I kept feeling the need to just power through instead of considering going another direction rather than running through the roadblock. I just hadn’t even considered the option of going another direction before today.

I swear, the minute I realized I was on the hook 24/7 with my grandmother (until I such time I could pass it on to *competent* caregivers,) I should signed up for 3x a week therapy so I could figure out how to keep it from getting into the rest of my life.

Let me be your cautionary tale: Don’t let yourself be trapped.

Thank you, West Wing:
“You want to tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing?”

Apparently I did when I joked about buying a new fridge vs. cleaning the drip pan. Honestly, I thought it was just a gunky, disgusting drip pan overflow, and I was truly kidding about buying a new fridge vs. cleaning up the old one.

Except the drip pan theory was the wrong theory. And it took us a while to figure that out.

Night before last there was a small puddle of ‘god knows what’ next to the corner of the fridge. My brother & I both looked at it, and he said, “Cat puke, and I’m pretty sure it’s Carmen.*” I have had cats for 26 of the 27 past years, and cat puke is a very reasonable explanation for many kinds of ‘god knows what’ that may show up on tile or carpet. And we asked Carmen to not puke in the kitchen in the future, and it was cleaned up, and we thought that was that.

Except we were wrong. Which was the point where I though, “Ahhh, gunked up drip pan! We live in a house with 2 cats, a fluffy dog, and ME. Quite likely the coils are in need of a vacuuming, and the drip pan needs to be emptied and hosed off.”

Wrong again. Wherever the drip pan is, it ain’t at the front of the fridge. And we looked again, and again. Donald had already looked at the innards of the freezer in an attempt to find some item that had exploded/leaked or such and found nothing. And we then looked again. Oh crap. The leak had been melted ice cream, that had melted out of the (CLOSED!) container, onto the bottom of the door shelf, under the gap between the shelf and the “shelf wall” then down the interior of the door, and into the INSIDE of the door seal, and then dripping out the bottom of the door – which manifested itself as a leak from the underside grate, because I just couldn’t see exactly where the “leak” was coming from.

Well, I am fairly certain that melted ice cream is NOT a good sign. And then I noticed the ice in the ice tray had melted and refrozen. Not good either. (The fridge is still nicely cold for the moment.)

So, tomorrow is fridge/freezer hunting. Fortunately, little bro has said, “the kitchen is your domain, don’t go cheap, go with what you want” – while I will still be very conscious of price, at least I don’t feel that I have to go look for the cheapest fridge/top freezer combo on the planet, and we will again have a freezer-on-the-bottom-combo.

But really, I was just kidding about buying new vs. cleaning the drip pan!!! Totally joking! Seriously, it was a total goof to say it…

Here’s to helping the economy with a new fridge.

*I have apologized to Carmen. I think Donald still owes her an apology as well.

Let’s say you needed to go out and buy a fridge. Here are the places that I can think of to shop for one:

Local Maytag shop
Sears
Home Depot
Lowe’s
Best Buy (really, REALLY don’t want to go there)

Is there some obvious retailer I’m not thinking of?

Second, I don’t have a water-line setup for an ice maker. Well, at least I think I don’t. In the 25 years since my parents bought this place, we have never had an ice maker in a fridge, though that could be simply because my folks felt it was something else that could go wrong. I can also find no evidence of a water-line pulled over to the fridge area from the basement. (I can’t be 100% sure until I move the fridge to see if a water line is there, and it’s just too heavy to muck with right now.)

Now, most of the bottom-freezer fridges out there just come with a ice maker whether you want it or not. Is there a way to properly remove an ice maker, or am I just stuck with looking for ones with either no ice maker or the ice maker being optional? (I know I could get a top freezer model with no ice maker for almost nothing, but I’ve really grown to love the bottom freezer versions since I’ve had them.)

I think the freezer is dying.

The drip pan on the fridge is decidedly gunked up.  (Or at least that is my diagnosis after some googling of “What the hell is leaking out of the bottom of my fridge??!”)

I’ve already vac’d the front grill, but I am just dreading pulling that thing out to clean it. I know for a fact it is going to be SO INCREDIBLY DISGUSTING it is not even funny. Of course, at the moment, I’m not even sure how to pull it out – I can’t tell if the grill is snapped on or if the screws that I can see are actually holding it in place. Google keeps saying it snaps off, but I suppose we’ll find out for sure here shortly.

I wonder how much my I can pay my brother to do this task for me?

Ick.

Stability results were moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.

Orderliness results were low which suggests you are overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.

Extraversion results were medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting.

trait snapshot:
messy, disorganized, not rule conscious, rebellious, rash, weird, ambivalent about chaos, likes bizarre things, anti-authority, not good at saving money, not a perfectionist, leaves many things unfinished, low self control, strange, desires more attention, romantic daydreamer, abstract, impractical, unproductive, leisurely, likes the unknown