(Now, y’all overlook the picture quality, I’m not up to speed on my new phone yet)
See that little “2″ up in the upper right? Right under where it says “Range”? Yep, that’s the number of miles til empty. And, yep, I cut it way too close for comfort today.
Lawd have mercy, children, I need to wash down a big ole nerve pill with a glass of vodka this morning. Bear with me as I weave through the details as best I can so you can suss out what exactly is going on. (Extra points if you can actually do that, I haven’t been able to.)
A little background. My crazy mama has, save for the few days she spent in the Loony Bin a few weeks back, been shacking up with Kenny (the uncle of the last gentleman she dated, mind you) since about Thanksgiving. Now, as mama’s men go, Kenny seems a prize–he actually has a job, his own home, and a working automobile. How exactly things progressed from something resembling a date to mama basically living there the past two months is beyond me, but I’ve gotten the impression that whenever a discussion of her heading back to her own house for a spell comes up, Mama mysteriously falls ill and must stay on at Kenny’s because Lawd forbid she sit alone with a cold, a stubbed toe, or not have someone to wait on her if her ears start ringing. But that’s all conjecture on my part, and it may be that Kenny’s idea of true love is a woman who keeps the paramedics on speed dial and has a room at the psych ward decorated to her taste. There’s a lid for every pot, isn’t there?
Mama has not called me since I had a little chat with her therapist a few weeks ago. Until this past weekend that is. On Sunday, she called, with some “reminder” about how she, my sister, myself, and one of my oldest friends had once “Lit a Candle in the Circle of Friendship” (I have no recollection of this, and I suspect it’s something she saw on a Lifetime movie once).
“I need your help!” she said. This is her common greeting, in as much as most people might say “How are ya?” It goes without saying that if the phone rings and she is on the other end, some sort of help is needed. On this occasion, she had decided it was time to leave Kenny’s and go back home. When I asked if they’d had some sort of falling out, all I got was some fragments about how she had asked him to make her a doctor’s appointment. In case you haven’t gathered already, Mom’s life somewhat revolves around her doctor’s visits. Between the psychologist, psychiatrist, general practitioner, gynecologist, rheumatoligist, and neurologist, Mama keeps a full schedule of appointments at the best doctors that government entitlement programs can pay for. If there is any sort of health scare on TV, she has it before Oprah can even do a special. Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Fibromyalgia, Osteoporosis, Restless Legs, Arthritis, Pre-Menstrual Dysphoria, Degenerative Discs, Erectile Dysfunction–if there’s a commercial on TV, she has it. The truth is, and I truly believe this, she has Munchausen’s Syndrome. (Read all about that HERE)
Anyhoo…
She went on to complain about her cell phone plan and how it didn’t have enough minutes. (Which she pays NOTHING for thanks to some hairbrained government program). But the meat of her call was that she had two flat tires and needed help.
“Why are they flat?”
“I dont know”
“Will they hold air?”
“How can I tell?”
“Put air in them?”
“How?”
“A pump?”
“Me??”
“Um, well yeah. Or get someone to do it for you.” I may as well have told her to chop down a rubber tree and fashion two new tires herself. The smallest most mundane tasks must be HIGH DRAMA and cause for the input and “help” of every friend and family member, after all.
There was some more chit-chat and she asked when I planned to come up for a visit next. I told her I’d likely come sometime next month.
“Can I come back with ya?”
Now…I have made it clear 100 times that she is welcome to come for a visit anytime. But I will not make it my responsibility to get her here or home. The notion that I wouldn’t want to drive 600 miles one weekend only to turn around and do it again a week later is lost on her.
“Well, if you get me there, I can find somebody to get me back.”
“Find that someone and we will talk about it.”
Now, here’s where things get swirly. Apparently, the next morning she called my grandmother (the sweetest 84 year old you could ever hope to meet) and moaned that she “didn’t want to go back” to her own house, that she “needed out of there” and that “no one cared or will help her”. I’m not sure what she wants here, for someone to take her in? Ain’t gonna happen! And I believe mama realized it wasn’t gonna happen, so when Kenny took her home she “fell” in one of the bedrooms (imagine that!) and had to be carried off in an ambulance. Further, in her absence, someone had broken into the house and “made off with all her joo-ree!”
And, that, my friends, is the real tip off. The imaginary thief! I can think of at least four times when “thieves” have come into mom’s house and made off with her jewelry (and, usually, her medication). One of her ex-husbands twice stole her joo-ree, last year “home invaders” knocked her to the ground and made off with more jewels and all of her medication, and now once again, mama finds herself whisked off to the hospital with vague injuries, leaving behind an imaginary crime scene, where greedy ne’er-do-wells have stuffed their pockets with her jewels. She never even had more than 5 pieces of jewelry that were worth anything! These stolen jewels may sound plausible to whatever man wasn’t around for the last “heist” but those of us who know her realize that she ran outta jewels to be stolen a lonnnnnng time ago!
My patience with her has almost worn completely through. I can’t decide if I dread or look forward to the call I’m sure to get in the next few days.
Rachel Griffiths walking the red carpet at last night’s Golden Globes:
And one hit wonder from the 90′s, Jane Child:
Snow Covered Trees
Well, the weatherman actually got it right. Almost. He predicted six inches of snow, and we got around eight. I realize that’s a flurry for a lot of areas, but it hasn’t snowed this much here since 1988. I’ve heard stories about that 1988 snow since I moved here ten years ago.
Our snow covered house
The town has been paralized. The local news lists over 1000 cancellations and delays. Basically, every school, professional office, church, service station (seriously, did the news need to add that Jiffy Lube was closed to their list? Were people thinking, gee, snow day, guess I better get the Buick serviced?), and mall have been closed all week. Schools are already closed for tomorrow. The areas $180,000 winter road budget was long ago blown, so even main roads remain covered in ice.
Even the Main Roads Still Look Like This
So, what have I done with my two days of being trapped inside? Watched movies. Played Millionaire City and Farkle on Facebook. Read. Played Angry Birds. Blogged (what? you still aren’t following my DESIGN BLOG? ). Worked a little on a dollhouse I’ve been building for years. Napped. Cooked (yummy pot roast and a delicious breakfast casserole so far, chicken enchiladas on the menu for tonight). And took a walk through the neighborhood. I actually TRIED to go to my office around lunchtime today. I got about two miles before I realized that one of two things was going to happen: I was going to give myself some form of shaken-baby syndrome driving 20 miles per hour over deeply rutted, icy roads, or I was going to have a seizure induced by the flashing “traction control” warning light on my dashboard that blinks anytime the tires spin or the car loses it’s grip on the road. Finally, as I came to an easy stop at a red light, the car did a 90 degree slide into the (thankfully vacant) intersection. Since it was pointed home, I completed the u-turn and went back to the house.
Very Few Cars Have Left the Neighborhood
The weather folks are predicting snow here in my little southern town this weekend. The system is right to dump up to twelve inches on us. While much of the country would see that much snow as a flurry, it is a very big deal here. Two inches of snow will leave every school, church, and day care center closed for a week here. Twelve inches, we may as well evacuate.
There will be no bread or milk to be found by this time tomorrow. I always wondered why those two staples were so popular when snow comes. What do people do, bundle up with a nice milk sandwich? My own list of snowtime must-haves is much more practical.
Actual Photo of Milk Case During Two Inch "Blizzard"
Vodka. Time flies when you’re drunk. Plus, it will keep you warm.
Cigarettes. Yes, I’m supposed to be quitting again. So I won’t buy any this time, but who wants to be stuck inside the house without nicotine.
Condoms. You have to do something to pass the time, right?
A stack of books. Again, you have to have something to do to pass the time. And an erection lasting more than four hours is dangerous.
A full DVR. May as well get caught up on Judge Judy, right?
Swimming trunks. Once the vodka kicks in, sitting in the hot tub while the snow falls is kinda nice. And it could lead to using the condoms.
Frozen Pizzas. Pizza is the ultimate comfort food, isn’t it?
The Most Current Version of “Angry Birds” This app is absolutely addictive. If you have an iphone, ipad, or ipod touch, go get it NOW.
A folder of entertaining websites. Might I suggest: www.failbook.com, www.lamebook.com, or www.damnyouautocrrect.com (which had Darling and I laughing so hard last night that our stomach muscles are hurting this morning.
So, what’s on your “snowed in” essentials list??
Tomorrow night, Darling and I are going to see “9 to 5, The Musical” It is based, of course, on the classic movie starring Jane Fonda, Lilly Tomlin, and the heavy-bosomed Dolly Parton. Darling has never seen the movie, which I find unbelievable. (We will close this gap in Darling’s cultural literacy ASAP)
When the movie came out in 1980, I was a wee lad of three. Mom and I headed over to the two-plex cinema to see the film, and apparently a tall gentleman sat down in front of us. I politely tapped him on the shoulder and said “Sir, could you move so I can see Dolly Parton’s boobies?”
They are sort of mesmerizing, aren’t they?
To get your day going. But that’s exactly what awaited me after a rather depressing office meeting yesterday. It was news to me that my crazy mama was even taking her yearly vacation at the Nut House, but it didn’t come as a surprise. It WAS a pleasant surprise that one of her therapists actually wanted to talk to me. I’ve long suspected that mama is less than honest with the people charged with helping her. The conversation ended up focusing on my sister’s death. Mama is, understandably, more upset around holidays where my sister is concerned. The therapist asked me if I minded sharing with her the circumstances regarding her passing. I retold the story of how she was in a car accident, on a particularly curvy mountain road, hit some black ice, and slid off the hillside to a tree below.
“So she wasn’t murdered?”
“Oh, geez, is she back to that?”
“She relayed to me that your sister’s fiance had cut the brake lines to the car and was currently serving a life sentence for that crime.”
I set the doctor straight. This whole story, which I’d heard before, doesn’t even stand the test of common sense. Even if said fiance hadn’t had a rock solid alibi–he was in jail on a drug charge at the time!–the story isn’t at all plausible. The stretch of road the accident occurred on is notoriously bad in winter, and my sister had driven several hundred miles away to visit friends somewhat last minute. There’s no possible way the brakes worked fine on a four hour drive only to fail in a hairpin curve coated in ice.
The therapist, attempting to ascertain what sort of support system mom had, told me a few key things. First, that mom doesn’t like going to family functions because “everyone acts as if nothing ever happened.” Now, I’m not exactly sure what she expects here, perhaps that we should all adorn our Christmas trees with ornaments bearing my sister’s likeness? Or join hands in a circle every holiday and chant her name? What mom really means, to those of us who know her, is that at family functions she isn’t the center of attention so she would just as soon not come because she thinks it makes more of an impression if she doesn’t. (And she usually doesn’t–always faking an illness hours before any planned event, it’s a running joke whether she will come down with a mysterious migraine or pretend to have diahrea.) While all of the family has urged mom to get a grip on the condition of her house, even offered numerous times to help, mom translated this to the therapist as “no one understands, they want me to get rid of any sign she was ever around” I explained to the therapist that mom’s house was like something out of “Buried Alive”–that there are quite literally rooms you can’t even walk into, and that mom insists on clinging to things that have nothing at all to do with my sister (dozens upon dozens of angel figurines, bottles of shampoo, boxes of cereal).
The truth of the matter is, mom is an attention whore. She feels that the world in general owes her something and that she isn’t required to give it anything in return. And while I’ve no doubt that her grief is real (though I suspect a good bit of it is GUILT because she was a terrible mother to my sister), it’s really just her latest means of working the system, getting the pity she so desperately craves, and excusing her own behavior.
The therapist told me she was going to confront mom about the imaginary murder. She gave me her phone number and urged me to call her back if I could think of anything else. Boy did I. I took notes, even. But, my call went unanswered, and I suspect Mom, having been called out on her bullshit, simply checked herself out of the hospital.
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