Grandma is going down to TAFH's today. Thank the gods. She's been okay lately, but the idiot aunt of mine made sure she told Grandma before she left two weeks ago that she was coming down. So, Grandma's been asking every day, multiple times when we were leaving. ARGHH!! We had all agreed that Grandma wouldn't be told if she was going down, that it would be a surprise. So, of course my aunt the PhD can't remember this. *sigh*

I was going to go down with them, but when I got to work today and tried to clock in I realized I was four hours early. I'm going to get home after Mom and Grandma leave. Yeah, Mom's thrilled. I just hope it stops raining before I have to leave, because I'm going to be walking home.

I'm off tomorrow and closing Saturday. So, I'll be able to enjoy some of the block party and do mondo research at the library.

Now, if the caregiver could just get here, I may not be late after being four hours early. She's already half an hour late and was woken up by Mom's call fifteen minutes ago. She was supposed to be here at 6:30. I just hope she doesn't do the whole shower and major grooming thing. Just throw some clothes on and get here. I only have 25 minutes to catch the bus.

Happy Mother's Day

This has not been a good day, well, weekend. TAFH came in Friday night. Cool beans, right? I had to work and had a pretty good time, actually. Then, Saturday morning Mom and I took off for breakfast downtown. We had a nice meal. She left to work a bake sale and I went to the library to research. While there the author of I Heard You Paint Houses gave a talk on his book and the various mob connections in the area. After that I went to see Iron Man again. Sounds pretty good, right? It was. Friday night and Saturday morning were the best part of my weekend.

Right after the bus pulled out of downtown to go to the mall so I could get to work, I got a phone call. Mom was being driven to Mercy Hospital from Honesdale because her leg wasn't working right. I just stayed on the bus and rode it right back to where I'd gotten on, making a number of phone calls the whole trip. It's a damn good thing I finally put minutes on the silly cell phone Friday night! I had been down to 10 cents. My brother and I stayed at the hospital until it was clear she was being admitted. They ran the usual gamut of tests minus the MRI. That is scheduled for tomorrow. It turns out the neurologists believe she has complex migraines. She has a history of migraines, so this really isn't too much of a shocker. We found this out this morning.

Mom's Mother's Day hospital stay isn't really the bad part and as I'm typing this I'm calming down even more because the whole weekend could have been so much worse. The problem stems from TAFH's OCD anal-retentive fucking attitude. Obviously, I had a disagreement (to be polite) with the woman today.

It was all about the house. She insists on cleaning, or re-cleaning, the house every time she comes in because we don't do things to her exacting standards. She calls it "a pig-sty." I am "lazy" because I don't clean it from top to bottom, just the way she likes it, every day. I will freely admit I don't clean as much as I could or even should. I refuse to run the vaccuum and do the dishes only when I absolutely have no other choice. I'll do anything else, though. The house may not always be immaculate, but it's always at least neat.

Now, in her defense (sort of, since she was only using it as an excuse for her normal behavior), she kept insisting that the cleaning we had to do was all for Mom's benefit, because Mom shouldn't have to come home to it. Well, after an hour of being pecked at I decided to leave the house. Without doing what she wanted me to do. I did some of it, gathered my things and told Grandma I was going for a walk. She followed me out the door and tried to tell me off. I am proud of the fact that her face is all still in one piece. If I could have, she'd be sharing Mom's room due to extreme bodily trauma and I'd be sitting in jail right now, happy as a clam for finally tearing her smug, superior face and attitude to shreds.

My only regret right now is that I broke down and told Mom what happened. Mom's in the hospital with migraines brought on by stress and work and I had to add to it. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I'm sorry. My brother, who was told by TAFH what happened, asked me not to say anything a bit too late. He was surprisingly restrained in what he said to me. Other than telling me I have no common sense, as usual, the ass, he told me I had to control my emotions. I told him I control them a heck of a lot more than he thinks I do. I need to use better judgement, though in when to control them according to him. Usually he just comes solidly down on TAFH's side, so as annoying as his "advice" was I was proud of him for not just jumping on me totally.

I told Mom as I was walking to the crick. There's a spot there that I can sit and relax. Today I cried a bit with Mom on the phone and then by myself. Then a wind came up as I was sitting there with my eyes closed. It dried my tears and kept going until I felt some of the pain lift away. Between it and the sound of the water, I was able to calm down. I'm still upset. I will be for a while, but not nearly so much as I was. I may not be the most devout Pagan, but every once in a while They make Their presence known and I'm grateful for it.

I wrote a lot more than this while I was sitting at the hospital with Mom and my brother. I'm much calmer now, though and don't need it all written out.

TAFH is giving me the silent treatment and she and Grandma have gone to visit Mom. I warned Mom and told her to be nice. She said it'll be difficult, but the pain and drugs will mask any distant behavior, I think. She's more upset with TAFH than me. I just have to get through a few more hours and TAFH will be gone and all will be back to normal. Well, as normal as this household gets. I imagine Grandma will have words for me.

Rationality vs. Irrationality

Mom is expecting rational behavior from an irrational person again. TAFH told Grandma she'd call. She hasn't, therefore Grandma is angry and bitchy and taking it out on us. I want to just call TAFH, but Mom keeps saying Grandma "has to realize she can't take things out on us."

Hello! She's demented! That's what she does.

Mom's gone to work, so I'm going to disobey her and call TAFH anyway. I'll just lie and say she actually called here. It's either piss off Mom or keep dealing with a pissed off Grandma. Frankly, I deal with Grandma more often, so guess which option I'll choose.

*snort* I'm 31 years old and still worrying about pissing off my mother. I'm pathetic.

It's getting bad. TAFH was in this weekend for my cousin's baby shower. Before she left yesterday, Grandma was crying. Then she was extremely difficult when it came to taking her pills. It took until nearly midnight. I got so little sleep I was even a little late for work.

Today she wouldn't eat, so her blood sugar plummeted, of course. I got some spaghetti in her, but she must have eaten it too fast because she threw up a bit of it. So she had to screech at me when I asked her if she wanted anymore a couple hours after she'd recovered. She did eat a pear for me, since her sugar was only 81. Then argued about her pills tonight. She has taken them, but it took about an hour and her bugging at me.

It's just so frustrating. She obviously wants to go. What can I say to her when she says she wants to die? I gave her a kiss today and her comment was that that wouldn't help. In my mind I know she's ready to go and that it would be a blessing for everyone, most especially her, but I mourn her everyday already. My Grandma has been gone for a while. She just visits periodically and then is replaced again by Mrs. Hyde.

I know there's nothing I can do but try to take care of her and keep her happy. I just wish there was more I could do.

Grandma returns

Well, she's home and not too pleased with the new floor, even though she helped pick out the color and everything. Even though she says this one is "okay", she says the old floor wasn't bad. You couldn't get it clean! TAFH enthused over the floor, but even that didn't help. I know it's part of the disease. She hates anything we change of hers. She thinks we get rid of all of her stuff and seems to think we want to get rid of her or something.

When we talked about it last night she actually said the old floor wasn't that old. It was put in before I was born and I'm 31! The floor in the pantry has holes in it. We're not going to use the same laminate we did on the kitchen, though. We found a better, more waterproof one for the bathroom and pantry with the same colors as the kitchen laminate.

She's just not that happy right now. Of course, part of it is the fact that she's no longer with TAFH. I actually told my aunt once that if Grandma could replace Mom and I with her, she'd be on top of the world. My aunt only looked at me.

Mom and Grandma are watching the parade right now. Hillary's not there yet. Please, please, please let the drunks keep it low-key. All we need is for Scranton to be remembered forever as the Drunken City.

I'm going back to my stitching program now.

Family tree fun-time

TAFH is here, so I was able to go to the library yesterday for research. It was a good day. I found the one thing I needed to connect a family to mine, so I now have a new great-great-great aunt, as well as a new cousin in the form of a girl I played with all of the time when we were kids! I also spoke to my godmother and she's going to find out if any of the relatives know anything about a baseball team a great great uncle of mine played on.

I do have one gripe about genealogical research. It's that damned 1890 Census! If it hadn't burned to a crisp there are so many answers it could have provided me. Why, oh why, did Pennsylvania have to be one of the areas that burned? The southern states do me no good! *sigh*

I'm a little excited about next week. The plan is that on Friday Mom will drop Grandma off to stay with TAFH until the following Friday. So, if the plan goes right Mom and I will have a week off. Mom has taken the time off as vacation time and will be working on the kitchen floor. I will, of course, be unskilled, unpaid labor in between going to work at four every morning. Mom says I'll have time to do research. I'm not too sure about this, of course. However, Saturday morning I'm planning to be out of here before Mom can get me. Oh, and I'll try to tag one of the weekdays for research after work. How successful I'll be at my attempts to escape laying down flooring every day, I'm not sure. We'll see.

the house needs fixed... ;p

Mom is making plans again. Supposedly Grandma is going to be going to TAFH's house for a week in March. Mom has taken it off as a vacation week (she gets two, the *itch!) and is going to be working on the floor in the kitchen. Personally, I would wait until we were sure the skunk had moved out of the crawlspace under there, but that's just me and my wish to never be sprayed by one of the little stinkers. She says I can have some time to go to the library for research, but we'll see if that actually materializes. I have a feeling I'll be doing a ton of repair work instead.

To be fair, the floor needs to be replaced. It's old and looks it. The idea is to replace the kitchen flooring and at some point this summer, raise the floor in the bathroom, fixing the shitty remodel my uncle did years ago and give it a new floor as well. Thanks to the skunk we also have to dig up the foundation of the house, add 15 inches of galvanized steel around it (and out, like an L) so the little buggers don't crawl under next winter. Oh, and did I mention Mom's plan to use chicken wire instead of galvanized steel for the front half of the house that the skunk has never approached before? It'll be less expensive, so hopefully we can do that for a good bit. That $600 rebate is all spoken for.

If I listed all of the items that need to be repaired in this house, any reader would blanch. A partial list reads thusly:
1. replace floor in kitchen, bath, pantry
2. raise floor in bathroom and repair the bathtub/shower area so it stops leaking down the wall
3. finish the ceiling in bathroom
4. reinforce the porch which is being held up by crumbling bricks
5. replace porch steps
6. fix upstairs windows to block off the holes my uncle left that you can see through right to the outside

Should we just demolish the house and start all over?

Grandma and Little Brothers

I got sleep. I actually got pretty good sleep while Grandma was gone. And I was able to run errands and do things without watching the clock. There were a few moments of stress on the day of her non-return because TAFH and one of the cousins decided she'd come home today, but didn't bother to tell us until about 7pm Sunday night. I had given up and went out to play Settlers with friends when TAFH finally called and apologized for just forgetting. However, Grandma's now home and just ate ALL of her dinner! It was corn, ham and kartoffel-knodel. She ate it all and she's actually hunting for more on the plate.

Mom and I took the kids to Honesdale and the Alpine Inn on Saturday. She wanted the two of them to pick out fabric for quilts she wants to make them. My niece chose a pink, flowered print (shock and amazement) while my nephew chose an awesome dark blue and grey grass-like print. We have to see if we can find it somewhere else since there wasn't enough at Amy's. The shop is called Mountain Quiltworks and is quite cool. We got Lachschinken!

Anyway, I met my youngest brother for the first time today. I like him. I was so afraid I wouldn't or rather, that he wouldn't like me. He was pretty cool for an eleven year-old. He even wanted to meet Mom. He likes a computer game called Runescape and was at least vaguely interested in history and even the family history. I gave him my email and phone number and told him to use them if he wishes. I'll leave it in his hands. I hope he uses them.

She's back from Hell and I wish she'd return!

Well, The Aunt From Hell is officially back in action. I just got home about fifteen minutes ago. She and Grandma haven't left yet. I went downstairs after changing and she asked me about a bill. I replied that I wouldn't know because noone trusts me to do anything about them. She said, "Well, you never do anything so why should anyone trust you?"

I guess devoting practically all of my time to grandma's care is nothing. I guess making sure she's fed, dressed and her sugar is normal is nothing. I will admit I spend most of my time upstairs and not downstairs waiting on her hand and foot, like TAFH does when she's visiting or Grandma's visiting her. I control enough of her life, I'd prefer we have some illusion of freedom from each other. No, I don't clean the dishes unless forced. Nor do I run the vaccuum unless forced. But I clean. I pay or contribute to all the bills but her medicals. Obviously, it's nothing.

If it were nothing then I'd damn well go out every night and actually enjoy my so-called life. I'd have a date and maybe have the opportunity to meet some nice guy before they're all married and I'm old and grey (getting there on the grey front). I'm 31 non-fucking years old and for nearly all of the last five I have devoted myself to the care of my grandmother.

But I do nothing, so there's no reason to trust me. I wish it would do any good to yell at her, but it wouldn't. She's never wrong and any reaction other than "Yes, drill sergeant, how high?!" is you over-reacting and being unreasonable for not seeing the True Light of TAFH's Infinite Wisdom and Superiority. Gods, I wish they would just leave already.

I will not be telling Mom this one. She's already on a short rope and she's having a decent holiday now. Telling her this before she really gets her time off from Grandma would ruin it. It has for me. I was nervous enough for meeting my little brother for the first time in both of our lives. This has my stomach in knots. Sometimes I truly hate that woman.