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wow… what a Wednesday

Posted in Crazy Wisdom on Wednesday, March 5, 2003 at 11:57 am by flerly.

I think i just sent my mother an email that is going to make her cry.

See, I left my outlook on at home yesterday by mistake, and it managed to pull a few personal emails off the web server before I could get them with my outlook at work. One, of which, happened to be an email from my mother, subject line: “everything is falling apart”. So, I don’t find this email until after 10 pm last night, well past time to call her, especially since the contents of the email aren’t actually an emergency warranting a late night call.

In essence.. her VCR broke. She spent money (which she is tight on) on a new one, and now she can’t get it to work. Then, her printer broke. And now, in the panicked rush of this email she also vents that she is buried under wedding tasks and wants me to come up ASAP to help her. I’d love to.. problem is.. can’t get off work, ticket’s to Audioslave Sunday, can’t get off work next week, car show next weekend, can’t get off work the next week, so.. i can be there on the 22nd. MARCH 22nd, plenty of time to hammer out wedding issues in time for MAY 24th event. Meanwhile, i write her a few things to try about the printer and vcr and tell her i’ll call her the next evening and try to help her over the phone.

This morning, i’m greeted with an early morning reply from her, subject line: “sorry i bother you in your busy life”. She is offended at the simplistic suggestions I gave her about her printer (make sure all the cords are plugged in, for one) and says “it’s nice of you to think i’m so smart that i wouldn’t think to see if it the printer was out of paper or even plugged in” — oh we’re off to a good start. She proceeds to tell me she’ll just call someone up there to come look at it since i’m so busy, “dont give it another thought, and i will stop writing because this is getting long and you might not have time to read it all”. Her email is, of course, the usual 4-5 sentences long. To top it off, in stead of the usual “love you, mom” it is signed, “have a good day. evaj”

My gut reaction is to be pissed off at her for getting huffy with me. For assuming my suggestions about her printer were made because i think she’s stupid. For suggesting I should feel guilty at not being able to drop everything and make the 6 hour trip up to fix her VCR, turn around and drive home.

So anyway… my reply was a LENGTHY, hopefully well thought out, but harsh letter telling her that her isolation is self-imposed and i will not feel sorry for her or guilty that i can’t visit her more when she CHOOSES to stay so far away. She does not work. She doesn’t go anywhere. As we often say, “the road goes both ways”. She has YET to visit me in Atlanta in the going on three years I’ve been here. She should be glad I managed to get up there once already this year, and promised in my last email to come up again end of this month. Instead she got pissy about it, and I let her know that wasn’t going to do. In short, want to be pissy? Fine, stay home alone.

Thus.. she may cry.

But.. in other news, we arrived, last night, at casa de Skittles at about 7:05, which I thought was well before 7:30, but apparently signals were crossed and they actually wanted us to meet them at Fontaine’s instead of her house. So.. thus began adventures in nighttime rainy driving thru midtown Atlanta with half-blind girl and her shitty windshield wipers. Did I mention I can’t find shit in Atlanta? Yeah, good thing I don’t have a cell phone. So, ended up at a payphone at a grocery store calling home to find out the address of this Fontaine’s place, then setting out at random thinking Midtown’s not so big.. we’re bound to run into one of these streets… . Well, as Angle likes to say, Ho and Below, we did. Dangit, if we didn’t happen upon the place, find a parking spot, and manage to squeeze in. Even found Skittles in the crowd without too much trouble. Balconies and Beads at Fontaine’s Oyster Bar, Mardi Gras, 2003. Didn’t drink a drop. Unfortunately, didn’t eat dinner either, so we fled sort of early in search of food. Not our best planned night out, but a night out none-the-less.

So, I left the house this morning thinking.. if I can just make it through lunchtime, today won’t be so bad. Well, here it is.. nearly noon, and I haven’t done a lick of actual work today. Mind you, several productive work related conversations have happened, but mainly it’s been a lot of time, at my desk, composing emails, chatting Skittles, and now posting my trivial life details to LJ.

Not too bad. Now that it’s lunch, though… I just have to think… if I can just make it Angel tonight, this day will be over. Have to remember to call mom in there, though. At least I have going home to open all my Atkinscenter.com purchases to look forward to.

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5 Comments

  1. tiger66466 has made a Comment

    you know, I’ve lived here for over 4 years now and neither of my parents have yet to visit me here. my mom once prepared to come here ONLY if they had to evacuate due to a hurricane (they didn’t have to evacuate afterall) but I would have been out of town at any rate. And my mom only lives 5 hours away. No big deal. Yet when she lived 10+ hours away in some podunk town with nothing to do in Louisiana, she STILL expected me to drive out there. I never did. The road definitely goes both ways. And like your mom, mine doesn’t work. So if she were wanting to visit it would be no problem for her to leave early on a Friday and drive down to get here by the time I got off of work and leave Monday morning before I left for work, instead of the way we as working adults have to do – leave at 3- 5 on Friday and come back on Sunday. Urggh. Moms. They just haven’t learned to grow up yet, I think. 🙂

    March 5, 2003 @ 4:26 am

  2. schlemaggle has made a Comment

    you’re right about it going both ways. being in the same situation you’re in (the child your mom depends and/or will depend on for support of every kind, mainly because you’re her ‘favorite’ and the one with the least amount of drama), i can say it’s tough, even more so for you (dude, my mom LIVES for not being home alone. if she is, she’s got the phone attached to her face). it’s even tougher when everyone else is so far away from you, geographically speaking, that they don’t know about or see the million and one things you have going on in your life, no matter how much you talk about them. just because you don’t live 20 minutes away from your entire family anymore doesn’t mean your life isn’t full of other things. i know that i don’t call my family often, not because i don’t care about them, but because i just…have other things to do. i lose track of time. i forget. i have a different life that doesn’t include them at all, thanks to geography and the lack of available time-stopping technology. oh, and, the fact that i don’t go anywhere when i flap my arms like wings. just because you can’t take off at a moment’s notice to go hang out with her and keep her company doesn’t mean that you’re not worried about her at all, or that you don’t want to. but people so far away don’t usually see you living your life for what it is–yours; instead, they just point out what you could be doing to make *their* lives better, you selfish brat, you. they want to push the blame away from themselves, because it’s just easier that way. old/middle-aged dog. new tricks. you know that routine.

    it would be silly for you to drive all the way there to fix a VCR or a printer. she knows that. everyone knows that. it just sounds like she’s lonely, like she feels like she has to make excuses or has to need something for someone–anyone, not just you–to come visit her. like she’s so used to people not being around that she doesn’t know how to just say, “i miss you. please come visit me” like a normal person, sans thick layer of guilt. you just bear the brunt of it because you’re the favorite (which i am), or the one who will tell her when she’s being ridiculous, and she knows that. she is being ridiculous, and maybe she knows that. it sounds like she needs you to tell her exactly what you told her. if you make her cry, maybe it’s time that she did, because she’s only going to do something about being lonely and unhappy when she realizes that doing nothing at all isn’t going to make things better for her or for her relationship with you. in fact, making ridiculous demands to get your attention is going to do just the opposite. she probably doesn’t understand that her needing you so much for little things is stressful. she’s spent her entire life worrying about little things for everyone else, so it’s probably the only thing she thinks will work. locking herself up all alone in her house, not doing anything with other people…that just makes things harder for everyone, not just her.

    March 5, 2003 @ 7:58 am

  3. schlemaggle has made a Comment

    my mom doesn’t work, either. obviously. she forgets that other people have to actually ask for or plan to take days off to go do whatever they want, and that the number of those available days in the year are limited. she doesn’t understand the concept of having work-related obligations coming before other things, most of the time. but she has worked before, so every once in a while, there is a glimmer of understanding. your mom probably doesn’t understand that other people have a million things to do, everyday, half of which are work-related, that a stressful day involves more than just taking out the trash, going to the bank to deposit a check, or walking outside to get the paper.

    don’t beat yourself up for making her upset. it sounded like she was looking for someone to unload on, for whatever reason. i dunno, maybe i’m being presumptuous, but for most people, a non-functional VCR and printer don’t qualify for “everything is falling apart” status. she needs you, obviously. she wouldn’t come to you with the little things if she didn’t. but i think she really needs you for something else–namely, to push her; if she doesn’t like being isolated, she should do something about it instead of staying there, making herself miserable. but she’s probably scared to do that, knowing all of the changes it would involve. you’re right. she’s never come to visit you the whole time you’ve been here, but she has no problem getting huffy when you say you can’t drive the oh-so-convenient 5 hours to see her for another 3 weeks because you’re busy. you do other things besides sit at home watching tv, waiting for her to come see you. she needs to move somewhere near you or your sister, but it sounds like she’d rather one of you move to be near her. logical, because she’s lived there for so long and doesn’t want to change anything. but, maybe she needs to and maybe she knows that.

    anyhoo. my totally worthless 2 cents. for what it’s worth, you’re one of the most patient and sympathetic people i know. it would take you having a brain transplant (probably more) for anyone who knows you to say, “that kim, she’s so self-absorbed, and talk about selfish! she is so cold-hearted, she won’t even go help her mother, who is in dire need of attention, because she’d rather be doing other things”. if she were having actual emergency-type issues, i know you’d be up there in 5 minutes, even if it meant missing a concert that you would chew off your left arm to go see. don’t let her make you feel bad; she just doesn’t like anyone else enough to want them to visit her all the time.

    oh, and re: the printer-solutions. she gets mad, but she should know that people who should know better (like, for example, your friend jimmy) is guilty of pulling the “it’s not working I’M GOING TO KILL SOMETHING OH MY GOD!!–oh. heh. there’s the cord…not plugged into the wall” trick. don’t let her get you down, yo. but do let her know that she’s not allowed to be ridiculous anymore because it’s stressing you out.

    March 5, 2003 @ 7:58 am

  4. flerly has made a Comment

    Who’s a little monkey? Who’s a little trained monkey?
    Remind me to give you a banana for your good behavior. =)

    Girlie, your insight is… as usual.. insightful. I already sent the email to her, but I think i managed to hit all the points you mentioned, so i’m pleased.

    Looking forward to tonight’s phone call…

    and for your next trick… Give you another banana if you’ll invent a teleporter for me? Please? Just a little teleporter?

    March 5, 2003 @ 8:06 am

  5. schlemaggle has made a Comment

    my insight is…insightful only because i talk circles around myself. i think it would have been more effective had i heeded LJ’s advice and shortened the comment to fit into one.

    teleporters…hmm…hey…wait a second. have you been playing UO again?

    March 5, 2003 @ 9:15 am

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