I would just like to take a moment to say…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
to the best damn little brother on the planet.
DonnieLove, there are not many people in life that you can truly count on to come through in the clutch, or just be there to listen when you need to bitch about stuff, and YOU are one of those people. I only hope I have done as well for you over the years as you have done for me.
Happy 29th yet again, kiddo.
Not that I don’t RIDICULOUSLY miss my Dad, too, because I do. But, Mom & I had developed a great ability to talk politics with absolutely NO hurt feelings whatsoever.
I think it is because we both discovered that we had a lot more in common politically than either of us might had thought possible when I was younger.* That, and she was able to impart a LOT of insight as how the exec branch affected her job**, which was more telling than any press conference could be as to how any administration would be doing things to affect the country.
While I do have a small handful of people that I feel mildly comfortable talking politics with, it’s just not the same. Maybe part of it was knowing that even if I joined up with the Anarchists, Mom would be happy that I found a party I could identify with and support and she wouldn’t give me shit about it. That, and she’s probably nicely quiz me on their platform, if nothing else if to see if perhaps they were a good fit for her as well. ;)
At least little bro & I seem to be running on the same wavelength, so I have someone I can rant to about various political things without worrying about upsetting anyone. But it was always fun to have a partner in righteous indignation on Friday-night-pizza&beer&ranting-with-Mom night. (She always won on the “whose employer is more screwed up” game every week.)
I think she’d be tickled as hell that Obama is a viable candidate. She moved from CA to GA as a little kid and discovered segregation - and being a little one, didn’t understand it one bit. (And regularly drank from the “colored” fountains because there was no line and couldn’t understand why it made a damn bit of difference.) I think she would have liked to see the progression from separate fountains, schools, and everything else to candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Hell, all I know is what she told me over the years and *I* think it’s cool as shit that we’ve managed to come this far in a relatively short period of time.
I still wish she was around so we could crack a couple Guinnesses and split a pizza and solve the problems of the world on Fridays.
* She genuinely wondered where the hell I could go politically, given that folks tend to get more conservative as they get older, and as a senior in HS, she described me as “one step right of Attila the Hun” - it was delivered with love, but also accurate as I was leaning fairly right at the time. I think she’d like the fact that I discovered and have lovingly embraced my inner hippie.
**The most basic description of her job: Government HR rules and regs. Fine line between fairness to employees, screwing employees and protecting the gov’t from it’s employees.
When I initially announced to my friends that my brother & I would be living under the same roof, the reaction was pretty much the same: “I know you two get on very well, but you’ve lived alone for 5+ years - won’t it drive you crazy?!”
I did fully admit the possibility of insanity arising from the arrangement, but knowing that my brother had the same hermit-ish tendencies as I did, I figured we could make it all work. And we have - quite well, since our paths only cross once a day at best in the house.
Everyone assumes that because we live together that we have these awesome, deep conversations. Well, yeah, not so much, LOL. Our “in-house” conversations are usually along the lines of, “I’m going for lunch, would you like something?” (D-love) or, “I’m hitting the store, what do we need besides Coke?” (Me.)
Our very deep conversations over sports or pop culture take place up at the pub. Honestly, for the most part we might as well live quite far apart and have the same pub. (That and he helps when my cable box decides to go Linda Blair on me like it has done this evening.)
That all being said, the bugger has been out of town since Thursday, and I miss having the little git about. It’s not quite the same to text him about how I’m sorry that MNF turned out the way it did vs. being able to holler down the basement stairs.
He’s back tomorrow, and the next lunch is on me. (Or tomorrow night at the pub, whichever situation presents itself first.)
Amazing how you get used to having someone about, even if they’re the perfect “invisible” roommate.
Oh, and in his absence, I have become the SUPER-PROVIDER of biscuits to the pup. The morning biscuits (99.9% me), the “heading to the pub” biscuit (70% me), and the, “I just got home from the pub and you go out and be done by the time I am done going to the loo and getting a drink” biscuit (95% little bro) - I AM THE QUEEN! ;)
*To be sung to the melody of “Come home Snoopy, Come home!”
Well, sort of.
Looks like Wachovia Bank is next on the chopping block. Of course, my grandmother has 2 accounts there…
Given that her FAVORITE activity is to actively seek out things to worry about and to then expect me to have all the answers, this should be fun.
Hopefully a few things will happen:
1. She’s not paying any attention to the news.
2. That it is just a matter of the name changing on the bank - trust me, having her deposits liquidated and sent to her will cause more heartburn than I even care to imagine.
Tickets have been acquired for Christmas in Phoenix…
It’ll be nice to at least be able to take my grandmother out for dinner and not have to worry about her slipping on the ice, though.
That are about 2 hours late, but hey, that’s how I roll.
To be perfectly honest, I have found the easiest way to deal with family holidays with both my folks being gone is to just ignore them. Healthy? I don’t know, but it works for me. We all have our ways of coping.
Saturday evening I was out with the boys, and a round of Sambuca showed up and a toast was made to the Dads. All I could do was look skyward and say, “Dad, I hope you’re proud of me.”
It’s been over 10 years since my Dad died, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of him in some way or another. Honestly, I think he’d be tickled with all the strange turns my career and life has taken, as he did the same. (Well, career wise at least.) 20+ years in the Navy, a stockbroker stint and then found a place in banking that fit him just right. For me, it was accounting & finance, some day trading thrown in that I loved, more accounting & finance, then software support, and suddenly I find myself with actual trading capital. So, stock trading is how I pay the bills and the bar tab now. And considering Saturday’s Den Mother evening, it seems to be working. :)
I really think he’d love the fact that I’ve turned what I’ve got into trading capital. (And am ahead of the game, to boot!) He was the one that introduced me to the stock market in the first place. I remember back in 7th grade we had some chick from EDS come into our Civics class and we had a stock trading competition. Dad & I pored over the stock pages looking for stocks for me. (This was back in the day when it wasn’t unusual or unacceptable for parents to help kids with homework, because it was actually “help” and not “doing it for you” or complaining to the teacher that the assignment interfered with soccer practice.) I went back to class with a request to go short on Alaska Airlines. Sadly, shorting stocks wasn’t allowed, but Dad & I kept track of it anyway. If I recall correctly, Alaska Air tanked, as we had thought it would.
I remember when he was working in the city with Shearson Lehman (which has since morphed into Citigroup Smith Barney.) He had access to a QuoTron!!![1] Holy crap, Batman!! We both thought it was the coolest thing EVAR. Today, I have real time charts and quotes right here on my laptop. I think his head would explode if he could see that. I’m also fairly sure he wouldn’t even bat an eye at the fact that I will head up to the bar with a handful of stock charts to sit and review over a Guinness and SportsCenter. (He’d probably be happy at my multitasking abilities.)
He was a workaholic, no two ways about it. (I got that from him, too.) But somehow, he managed to do that and always be there for us whenever he could (US Navy not always conducive for “being there”, but when he was a civvie, it was never a question.) I remember when he died and his boss brought back the things from his desk (a task I would not wish on my worst enemy) he seemed very upset/concerned/something about the fact that there weren’t a ton of super-personal things. First, he wasn’t in his office *that* much, he spent a lot of time running around town for the job. Second, it’s hard to explain to a civilian that hey, he gets to come home every night - the personal items that some folks may have on their desks to remind them of their family, well, his family was only a few miles away at that point instead of on the other side of the world. I remember telling his boss, “Yep, he was a workaholic and still managed to be a kickass Dad all at the same time.”
He instituted what came to be known as the First Friday Club. Once I was out in the big wide working world, the first Friday of every month we would meet up for lunch. Working in Old Town at the time, we always had plenty of options. I will always remember when we hit SouthSide for lunch (about a block from my office) and I told him we would be eating at the bar (cause that’s where I always ate when I was there) and I got the freakin’ Norm treatment when we walked in. He went to the men’s room and the bartender asked about him (OK, I was showing up with someone who was quite literally old enough to be my father and they’ve never seen him before with me) and I explained it was my Dad. Dad returned from the men’s room and the bartender looked at him and said something along the lines of “I’ve never seen your daughter before in my life.”
I think as far as the running & tris go, he’d shake his head and say, “You’re nuts,” but be right up front at every race. He proved his worth as the best jockstrapper ever when I decided that I was going to do the July 4th 5K on the base in Japan many, many years ago. I’m quite sure I was the only racer that had a support crew - he biked the entire course with wet towels for me whenever I needed them. I think if he had been able to be at MCM, he would have figured out a way to be at every damn mile marker with a cooler full of whatever I needed or wanted at the time, including the steak in peppercorn sauce I so desperately wanted after running through G-town with every damn restaurant kicking off the kitchens for the day.
I wish he could see what a red wine fiend I’ve become! He loved red wines, and it just took me a while to really get into them. He would LOVE Il Vino, and I think be pretty happy with the fact that I can walk in there and if I haven’t been around in a while, Massimo asks, “And where have you been??” I realize now that I also got a lot of my foodie tendencies from him - though he wasn’t a heavy duty cook (but did love cooking with fire, as every Dad should [2]) he did truly appreciate good food and wine. I think he would have loved the cooking school weekend I did down at the beach, and would be exceptionally proud of the fact that I had absolutely no problems with dealing with prepping live softshell crabs for lunch. (Where do you think my first thought of “we should have races to decide which crabs become lunch!” came from?)
I wish he could have been around longer, but the time he was here, he really was a kickass Dad. Not perfect by any means, but kickass nonetheless. I still miss him terribly, even after all these years - there is so much I wish he could have seen, but I just hope somehow he knows I’ve managed to accomplish, and can see how much I am really enjoying life right now.
[1] At the time, the only way to get real time quotes, not available unless you were working at a brokerage. The little people had to either look at the closing prices in the paper or be updated by their brokers as things progressed during the day.
[2] I will never forget the evening that we looked out on the deck to see my father doing a spectacular imitation of the Statue of Liberty. It would have been absolutely spot on had Lady Liberty’s torch been fueled by flaming kielbasa.
So yesterday I spent somewhere between 30-45 minutes trying to get the ice off my car (with the car running), and managed to get about 1/4 of it off. My brother said he’d work on it today - since he’s a fair amount taller than I am, he can reach the roof of it much easier (which had a 2 inch thick sheet of ice on it that I couldn’t get to budge.)
Well, he was out there and the car is now ice free. How long did it take him? 5 freakin’ minutes.
I will be so damn happy when this estate is settled. (
Didn’t get me the mortgage payoff amount either. We really would like to pay that off, thankyouverymuch.
The savings account apparently had an little automatic life insurance thing associated with it, so there was a little extra there, so that’s nice, but I still need that mortgage payoff amount…
And of course, I don’t have access to Quicken cause the laptop is still in the shop, so I can’t compare what they sent to the records I have, and that is going to make me exceptionally twitchy until I can take care of that.
Came home from the airport and crashed out for 4 hours. I may go sleep some more after this is posted. Like I told my brother, the level of tired is like having a massive hangover without the physical pain, but you still feel like you’ve been run over by a steamroller. 2 weeks of sleep deprivation is not pretty.
I’m really happy to have my house back. And I can get up at my normal time tomorrow. And I can go workout, or hell, go anywhere and not have to worry about getting back quickly. I can leave the house after dark! I don’t have to keep track of where
I can have CNBC on TV as background noise all day. The TiVo is hooked up again.
All I have to say, is if you find yourself facing an elder care/companion situation on your own that is going to last more than 4 or 5 days - DON’T. Not saying don’t do it, just don’t do it on your own. Get help. Make sure you get REAL breaks, not just running off to tend to other things. Call in all your favors and have friends/family/neighbors pop over so there is a new face in the place for a little while. Trust me on this one. The biggest mistake that
Tomorrow it’s off to the races with life again.
My Lord, Sir Edmund Hillary headed off to the top of the damn mountain with less drama. Granted, he had better sherpas than my brother & myself, but still…
The wake up. Last night she repeatedly asked my brother to make sure she was up w/plenty of time to spare. Totally reasonable request, but he’s really not the one to ask. I assured her we’d get her up at 6. Well, this morning, my alarm goes off at 5:45 (I knew I’d want at least one whack at the snooze button) and she must have heard it, cause at 6 she was up and dressed. Cool, better than last year where she was *so* asleep, I thought she was dead for a couple seconds. First comment I get when we get downstairs, “Well, good thing we didn’t count on
Then she’s worried she doesn’t have enough $1s for the skycaps, etc. Yes, she does. Her ticket! THERE ARE NO FUCKING TICKETS ANYMORE!! ALL YOU HAVE IS A CONFIRMATION NUMBER! AND YOU HAVE IT! AND DON’T REALLY EVEN NEED IT! “It’s all there, Grandma, no worries.” Her housekeys… “Give me a minute, I’ll find them in your purse.”
In the car. At 7. To be there by 8:12 for the “2 hour deadline” which really is 1 1/2-2 hours and NOT a deadline, it’s not like they’ll refuse you access to the plane if you arrive only 1 hour and 58 minutes before takeoff. Now, I figured this would give us enough time and a few minutes to spare, even with traffic. At 7:25 she is fretting that we won’t get there in time. WE STILL HAVE 50 MINUTES! AND THEN SOME! “Oh, we still have plenty of time.” Well, there was damn near no traffic this morning so we were there before 8…
Dropped them at the curb so
Off to security. This is where my brother almost assaulted a TSA person as he took forever staring at my grandmother’s boarding pass & ID like he’d never seen anything like it before. Now, this is where the escort did come in handy, cause I had told my brother to NOT let my grandmother out of his sight, after the year where security took her to a room and LEFT HER THERE. The escort assured him she’d be with her the whole time and she wouldn’t get abandoned so he could wait on the other side of security.
An hour and a half later of wandering around the airport, she’s on the plane. It’s been a very, very long 2 weeks.
I get OCD when I travel, so while I *am* sympathetic, I’m also going a bit batshit crazy right now, cause I usually try to keep my OCDness to myself. So far tonight we’re obsessing on…
– Waking up on time. (I told her we would not leave for the airport without her.)
– Will her smokes fit in the suitcase (yes)
– My helping her w/her hair tomorrow. (No clue WTF she’s talking about there, it looks fine and I’ve never helped w/it before)
– Her being able to locate her “I’ve fallen & I can’t get up” button thing when she gets home. (It’s apparently either on her bedpost or in the nightstand. Hell, it’s all within a 3 foot radius.)
OMG, Cops is on (OK, I’ll admit, I enjoy it, cause it’s funny as hell most of the time) and they’re hauling off some screaming woman and my grandmother says, “I bet there is nothing worse than trying to calm a hysterical woman.”
I had to get up and leave the room cause there was no way in hell I was going to even begin to explain why I was trying so hard not to laugh. Nope, can’t even begin to imagine…
My brother is broaching the “Christmas in Phoenix” idea… Her reaction isn’t exactly enthusiastic. Shit. Shit. Shit. We simply CANNOT do this again next year. (We focused on the whole “it’s easier for us to travel than it is for you”, but ah well…)
Grandma heads home tomorrow and all will be right with everyone’s world - she’s got stuff she’s chomping at the bit to take care of at home (and has been obsessing about for the past week) and I’m sure she’ll be more relaxed when she’s back in her own house. (Yet another reason we’ll go there next year. When she starts getting antsy about her checkbook or whatever, we can just walk over to the desk and get it for her.) She makes me positively insane, and it’s in no small part due to the fact that she simply can’t relax while she’s here, so she’s constantly on edge, so I’m constantly on edge and all hell breaks loose. At the moment, she’s getting all twirled up about getting her suitcase packed and wants my brother to help her…except that he’s taking a nap cause she woke him up at the crack of dawn cause the dog didn’t want to come inside this morning. (Funny how she never wants my help with anything - she wants his help, she can wait for it. If I offer, I’ll get, “Oh, you shouldn’t bother” - I’m learning.)
I’ve run out of ways to tell her that it will take all of 5 minutes to accomplish so it doesn’t really matter WHEN she gets it packed.
Thank god, he woke up and they can handle the suitcase. There is some suit she wants that belonged to my mother (I haven’t ditched those things yet exactly for this reason cause she has mentioned it before), but I have no idea which one she’s talking about so hopefully she can give me a color and I can see if I can find it. I’m sure she’ll fret even more about it fitting in the suitcase. At least after this, the rest can go and we’ll have some more space around here. (Found it. Woot.)
We’ve also confirmed her flight to the extent that yes, it still shows on US Airways schedule. She’s still a bit stuck in the days of having to call the day before and actually tell the airline that yes, you’re still planning on traveling. Yay for online schedules, cause every time I’ve talked to a US Airways rep, they’ve been less than helpful.
I’ve made an executive decision for this evening. We’re ordering Chinese. I am so incredibly, stupid tired at this point, I don’t want to cook, do dishes, or do much of anything.
and a damn good one. Actually, it was one I had suggested earlier this week, but my brother apparently hadn’t heard me when I said it.
Next year, we’re going to Phoenix. We can get there a day or so before Christmas, leave the day after her birthday, she’s in HER house, her comfort zone, doesn’t have to travel, doesn’t have to worry about ANYTHING, we can drive her all over town, take her out to dinner every night if she wants and everyone will be much less stressed out in general. (And we get New Year’s back. Bonus.)
Sure, traveling so close to the holiday will be a little nuts, but still MUCH easier for us to head out there than for her to come here.
My brother is going to be the one to broach the subject to her - I think it will go over better coming from him than from me. Cause everything goes over better coming from him than from me.*
I am so very, very happy that he brought this up this evening, cause it had been going through my head. (And I swear I said it out loud earlier this week, but it could have also been the voices in my head.)
*Case in point: Her coffee cup is empty. She’ll start to get up (mind you cane + coffee cup = mildly awkward), and my brother will say he will get it and she says, “Yes, I think I’ll let you get this one.” I hop up and tell her I’ll get her a refill and I get, “Oh, you don’t need to be jumping up for me.” I am starting to think that I am making crap coffee for her.
One week to go. Not sure I’ll make it…
Had some Festivus action here yesterday, my brother said the airing of the grievances actually went quite well and I did stay exceptionally calm. Hopefully I’ve gotten across to her that the constant second-guessing has GOT to stop, I am NOT like either of my parents and that she can’t expect me to be like them, and despite the fact that it doesn’t really look like we know what we’re doing, we actually do.
Tonight’s MO was “get gramma likkered up and to bed early” - well, not really, but it kinda worked out that way. (Note to self: Get more Jamesons tomorrow for more Irish Coffees.) Of course, this means she’ll be up that much earlier in the morning… Dinner was uneventful, with the usual dropping of some extra cash on the table as we left. Grandma tips like a typical senior citizen - not a judgment, just a fact. So, I make sure we make up for it appropriately, especially considering that the servers always seem to recognize the situation and are on top of things accordingly. However, given how she was chomping at the bit to get out to dinner before 5 PM, either a) she feels my cooking sucks, or b) we need to move dinner up earlier. The problem is that eating as early as we did, I managed about 3 bites and I was done - just not hungry. My brother was in the same boat.
I am freakin’ exhausted, and it’s certainly not like I’ve actually been DOING anything this past week. I can only attribute it to the fact that I haven’t slept for shit since she got here, since I am basically always listening to be ready for her to either come barging in my room at 2AM to inform me that there is a light on somewhere in the house, or that she’s up and around in the morning and the remote is basically nothing more than a freakin’ brick to her (not her fault, bad vision + remote she’s never used = worthless piece of plastic, it just is what it is.), so one of us really needs to be up so we can get the TV on, etc. I am very grateful to
She is usually up between 5:30 & 6 AM when she’s at home. Thank god she’s not adjusted to east coast time yet, cause 7:30 is bad enough. In my degenerate, irresponsible, unemployed student status, I’ve just let my sleep schedule shift a bit to fit where it wants to be - I don’t sleep until noon or anything like that, but I am not bright & shiny at 7:30 either.
My brother is also aware of the fact that we’re at each other’s throats and it’s because she’s here and we’re pretty much constantly spending time in the same room, which we don’t ever normally do. I told him I couldn’t wait to be alone in the house (even if he was here) - as he said, “Even when I’m here, I’m not really here.” - he’s quite good at arriving and just disappearing. :)
OMFG, now I am the very bad granddaughter AGAIN. Apparently there was a window open in her room and I never noticed it (hell, it was the same temp outside as inside when we got the room ready!) - I’m sure she thinks I’m trying to freeze her out or give her pneumonia.
My grandmother has this great habit of, “Here let me fix what you cleaned wrong” thing - she used to do it to my mother constantly and it always infuriated me when she pulled that crap. It’s not your house, so sit down and shut up and do whatever the hell you want in your OWN house.
Today is was, “Oh, I am going to fix this countertop, it’s sticky.”
Whatever, it’s where we make coffee, it’s wiped down at least once a day and gets sticky again within minutes, it just works that way - I don’t fret about it, cause it’s gonna get cleaned up again soon, it always does.
So, I hold my tongue and she suddenly is going, “Oh, this is AWFUL!!!” and I can’t tell exactly what she’s doing but I can hear that whatever it is, it’s scratching the holy hell out of the countertop.
That was when I threw her out of the kitchen.
I swear, if she tells me one more time not to “put myself out” doing things like making coffee or dinner, she’s gonna get her wish, cause I’ll be spending the remainder of the holidays in a very nice hotel, preferably in another state. I can only think she truly believes I live on nothing but frozen dinners when she’s not here.
My brother & I are also on the verge of killing each other as well.
So yeah, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I just really, truly couldn’t give a shit either way.
Somehow my brother is convinced that “everything is going fine!!â€
I want to know what fucking drugs he has and why the hell he is not sharing them with me.
She’s convinced we’re within days of being destitute and in the gutter. No clean washcloths last night. (Any other linen you could possibly want…) Her pajamas weren’t in her room and I had to go hunt them down. Pair of socks she apparently left behind last year - whereabouts unknown. Dinner tonight - “oh, no need to put yourself out†- WTF? It’s dinner, not remodeling the kitchen, and I DO cook on a regular basis when she is not here. Oh, and there is something wrong with the radio in her room. (Something w/the switch on it - it works, but little bro knows the details of the issue, I don’t.)
She’s got this incredible talent at making me feel like a complete and total fuckup. I really don’t need help with that, thankyouverymuch, I can do that on my own. But, it’s quite literally been this way FOREVER. I have tried and TRIED to get to the point where I can blow it off, but just still haven’t mastered it and frankly, I probably never will.
I just downed an entire See’s Bordeaux Bar and it doesn’t seem to have made a difference.
They really need to start selling Valium over the counter.
Good News: Randy was moved to Fairfax Hospital, had surgery this morning to remove blood clots(??) and will probably be able to go home on Friday. Merry Christmas!
6 hours into Grandma’s visit, and it’s going…well…as well as could be expected I suppose.
First some things I have convinced myself I should not be concerned with, even though maybe I should. When she’s stressed about a particular issue, she repeats herself. At first glance, it kinda freaked me out, but then I realized the couple things she was repeating were things that were freaking her out. The more frazzled I get about any issue, the more I tend to obsessively focus on it. Second, poor Snoopy cat is going to be only known as the “pretty black kitty” cause she’s said she can’t remember his name to save her life. She remembers Mox and Target, but Snoopy is screwed, cause she says she keeps thinking it should be some elegant name cause he’s got such an elegant look about him - and he is so NOT elegant in real life, and well, Snoopy isn’t the name you think of for a cat anyway.
She’s got friends who want her to move to the Forum (assisted living) and she doesn’t want to. She likes where she is. I did manage to get her to promise that if she starts to feel uncomfortable on her own, she’d consider it. (This is a woman that gave up her license voluntarily, so I am not too worried.)
She had a crappy day starting with her cab to the airport showing up over 45 minutes late, which I can understand throwing her into a tizzy from the get-go. She made the plane, and while picking her up I near had to punch out a US Air rep who kept saying, “I need this wheelchair” as I tried to take over. (She always gets a chair at the airport cause hoofin’ it all over National when you have a cane and have been sitting on a plane all day is NOT FUN OR EASY.) I pointed out to the rep that a) it’s not like it would fit in my car and b) she’d have to wait until we were damn well good and done with it, meaning through baggage check and until the car came around. She finally relented and let me take over when she realized I was dead serious and if necessary I would body check her skinny ass into a wall and go along my merry way.
Apparently last year some things were stolen from her house (she assumes while she was here) - haven’t been able to get out of her if it was someone who had access to the house or someone quietly picked the lock knowing she was gone… The things that were taken were things she doesn’t use regularly so she didn’t even know things were gone until much later. If I ever find out who did it, there is going to be such a fucking beatdown. She drives me up a wall, but you don’t fuck with my family.
She is NOT happy that my brother hasn’t secured work yet. She has absolutely no concept of what it is like to be completely burned out from a job - he’s needed this time off, and I certainly don’t begrudge him of it. She’s still convinced that he can’t possibly afford to be out of work for a while.
Despite this, I went ahead and told her I am going back to school. She wanted to know how long it would take and when I would be working again… I pulled 2 years out of my ass. (Cause I didn’t see the question coming, cause I am an idiot.) I pointed out that the proceeds from my townhouse would more than cover my expenses for multiple years, but I don’t think she believed me. I also pointed out that one of my coworkers had a freakin’ HEART ATTACK and maybe it wasn’t the healthiest place to be.
The next two weeks will likely contain a lot of “you don’t not have to worry about us financially” reassurances. We let her know that the bulk of the estate, though in our names, is with our broker, who is a good friend of the family and honestly feels a level of responsibility towards us (he’s sort of the good uncle who is also a broker) so if we need money, we have to go through him and he’s not gonna let us do anything stupid. (I did not mention that I am separately saving for a condo at the beach. My one smart move of the evening.)
The lamppost came up again. At least we could say the wiring is fixed (and at 1/2 the price of the estimate!) - we just have to find a replacement lamp fixture for the top and hook it up. (I honestly thought I could get it from the electrician the way I buy replacement stuff from the plumber…)
Almost every request this evening has been directed at
The chair I happen to be sitting in had a wine box next to it… One that I brought home w/ 5 bottles of wine some time ago from Il Vino. I was quite sure that I’d taken all the bottles out and the box was empty and just happened to be sitting there and we’d not gotten it out to the trash. Nope, 3 bottles in it! So, took them out and was putting them on the counter and
The notebook that has my brains in it has disappeared. This is not good. This is SO not good.
Grandma is totally panicking about Christmas. She wants to get me a sweater, and I know the shop she wants to get it from. It will be fine, but frankly, I’d rather have another thermal top or even better, an Icebreaker top… So…do I let her get me what she wants to get me (with me driving to said shop and checking sizes) and keep the tags/receipt, or have
The “D’OH!!!!” moment of the night. (Well, one of many…) When the new 4 door Wranglers came out, I was ready to go jump on one IMMEDIATELY. But - how do you explain to Grandma that the color of your car has changed? (I wouldn’t necessarily expect her to remember the exact style.) Well, as we were waiting for
I seem to recall saying that if anything in the house broke within 24 hours of my grandmother’s arrival, I would be packing my bags and leaving town. Well, so far we’ve had the vacuum cleaner die, and the entry hall closet door is broken. Can I go now?
By some miracle, things are at least in a state of “good enough” - I will be quick to point out to my grandmother that we just got a ton of stuff out of storage and are still getting organized.
2 weeks.
Things still suck mightily in general. The past 4 days have been massive karmic retribution for something horrid I apparently did in a past life.
No word on my friend from work, either.
We have to leave here to pick up my grandmother in approximately 20 hours. Now is not the time for the vacuum cleaner to break.
I’m in a completely foul mood and it will likely not change for the next two weeks.
I honestly can’t remember at this point when this time of year was actually about Christmas, instead of being about surviving my grandmother. Christmas is just this additional piece of stress on top of it that gets really no attention because everything has to be focused on her.
If I thought that she would ever accept that I have different priorities and just be happy to be here, it would be nice. Instead, it becomes putting aside everything that I care about to cater to her damn whims.
Makes for quite the meaningful holiday.
So, Christmas is in a week.
I’m still sick as a dog and trying to slog my way through getting things ready around here, with pauses to debate, “Pass out or throw up?”
I’ve been fucked over by a couple people I trusted. (You would think I would have learned with 34+ years on this planet to not trust people, but apparently not.)
My grandmother is pissed at me and she’s not even here yet.
What I need is about a week of uninterrupted sleep, which obviously, I won’t get.
Shit, and I JUST remembered that I have to meet with a contractor at 2PM. Rescheduled due to car trouble. Never thought I’d be happy for someone’s car crapping out.
God, I hate this time of year.
Everything sucks.
I’ve been sick all weekend. I have another contractor to meet with tomorrow. Still don’t have a replacement light for the lamppost. My DSL crapped out again and they are just sure it’s the modem and sending me a new one, which won’t arrive until Tuesday, so I am stuck on dialup or a hijacked connection. The earliest I would be able to switch over to cable would be January.
My grandmother called and gave me her flight info today. If she hadn’t done it before now, I would have asked her today anyway. Apparently I should have asked ages and ages ago from the attitude I got on the phone.
So help me god, if for some reason the storage container doesn’t get picked up on Tuesday like it should, I’m gonna have an aneurysm. I have a research abstract due on 12/31 - looks like I’ll be writing that during the wee hours of the nights over the next 2 weeks given that I don’t imagine my actually doing any work on it during the day will go over well.
God, things had better take a good turn here soon, cause I am at my wits end today.
This may end up sounding rather angry, but really, I’m feeling quite good about things right now.
So, I had a little revelation this evening, which has been years overdue, but hey, I always have been a procrastinator.
I’ve struggled with Christmas for many years. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas, I do. Lots of things I don’t like (Macy’s decorating before Halloween, people getting in fistfights in malls, the whole $$ spent on presents = love), but there are lots of good things. Giving. People actually being decent towards their fellow man, even if they can’t manage to carry it past New Year’s. Christmas cookies. Christmas lights. Spending time with people you care about. (Yeah, that goes on all year, but there’s something about it at Christmastime…)
The struggle comes with my grandmother. She has stayed for a month every year. This year, it’s only two weeks. We’ve never had anything really approaching a good relationship. I sort of understand the reasons, but she’s basically been a thorn in my side my whole life. How many 6 year olds ask their mother, “Why doesn’t grandma like me?” Yeah. There is nothing I can do that is right in her eyes - never has been. I’m used to it, but I still let it get to me. But it makes it incredibly difficult to enjoy a holiday when you have someone in your life who pretty much disapproves of everything you do, and lets you know it, and you can’t avoid them.
A while ago, I told someone who was letting some jackass get to them, “Do you really want to give them that kind of power to screw up your whole evening?” Hmmm, physician, heal thyself.
Tonight I decided, I don’t care anymore. When she arrives, I am sure she’ll find something wrong in the house in the first 24 hours. She will resent every time I leave the house, be it to go get groceries or actually go spend some time with friends. She will tell me “I’m trying to do too much” the minute something burns on the stove, and then obsess about the oven blowing up. I am sure she’ll have some choice words about my decision to go back to school. There will be fantastic dinners but the portions will be too large.
This is my life. The key word being there is MY. Not hers. If she doesn’t like what I do with my life, my time, my money or my house, that is HER problem. Not mine. Realistically, she has no power over me whatsoever - there is nothing she can do to me if she doesn’t like the way I live my life.
I will probably have to remind myself of this several times over the course of her visit. But, I like Christmas and I’m not letting it get fucked up yet again. I just want to enjoy this holiday, and I fully intend to.
Little bro is back home, which I am very happy about - sounds like he had a really good time in NYC, so I’m happy about that - can’t wait to see his pics - apparently the building he was staying in had a killer view and he got some great shots of the city from the roof.
Other than that, though, today was kind of a “blech” day. Did my scheduled ride on the trainer cause when I looked at the radar this morning, it looked like there were storms coming through - of course, they didn’t come through until much, much later so I could have been outside after all.
Despite the “blech”, it was a fairly productive day.
I have health insurance! Well, I’ve got new health insurance - my individual plan is in force now. My brother went through the same company - he was good to go in a couple days. Mine took 2 weeks because apparently the computers ate part of the quote and as a result it went into limbo until someone pulled it up and got the missing pieces in.
Made a bunch of phone calls on the townhouse to start my day. Have someone coming in to give me an estimate on interior painting for the townhouse next week. They said they can give me the numbers on the spot. At which point I will likely hand over the keys and say “Knock yourself out.” Waiting on landscaper to call back. Get the last of the stuff out that is there and then it goes on the market. Yeah, it’s taken too long, but it’s also taken this long to get to a point where I don’t wake up in the morning completely over my head in work stress. What can I say, when I burnout, I go all out. It was more important to get myself feeling better physically first before tackling anything else, cause I was seriously dragging tail for a long time. Guess it sounds kinda lame, but it is what it is.
Also have an appointment for all three critters to get their checkups and shots tomorrow so they will be good to go for the kennel.
So, definitely a more done than undone kind of day.
I would just like to state for the record that
That is all.
No fate but the fate you make for yourself.
