Kick me while I'm down --Written on: Monday, Sept. 20, 2004 ~~ 11:47
Yesterday was an extremely emotionally exhausting day. I'm certainly not cut out for that sort of thing anymore. Mom decided sometime recently... Wait, no, I guess I should go back farther than that. I've reached a breaking point in the arguement, the ongoing argument since I was a teenager, about my mom and her smoking. While we were in NC and then on the way home especially, she decided she was going to get her "I've always done whatever I wanted to" attitude on about her smoking and you know... I'm just pretty pissed off about it all. After a certain point, it stops being about you, like, oh... say... when you have kids, ahem, 25 years ago. So I'm still not over her little attitude trip about the smoking, for starters, and I don't think she believes me that I won't be coming around so much once I get pregnant so long as it still smells like walking into an ashtray when I step through the door of the house. I should be able to spend an afternoon in my mom's house without walking out smelling like I spent all night in a bar. I grew up in it, wasn't crazy about it but was physically used to it. I moved away and now for the past 4 years the only time I'm ever in smoke for a long period of time is at Mom's. My body isn't okay with it anymore. I get sick. I don't like it and I think it's bullshit that she won't see anyway but her way on this one. If she doesn't want to have a 90th birthday for her grandchildren to celebrate, then fine, but I won't have any part in it. I'm so angry to always be fighting about this.So anyway, there was that, and then she decided that now is a good time to strip the wallpaper from the dining room. Wall paper from the 80's that never actually got finished, mind you. Well now, we have no plan as to what she's going to do with it instead, just that the wallpaper comes down. Then, before winter, she wants to prime the walls. Then sometime later she wants to get the final paint up. Her reasoning, I'm sure, is that "the wallpaper is old and looks like shit especially since it was never finished." Well for one thing, it looks the same as it always did and that was always good enough, along with the holes punched/kicked in the walls, the 2 burned out light bulbs in the chandelier, the broken glass of the china cabinet, the broken storm door and the one-time shattered car windshield. And besides, so long as there's no path forward on what comes next, it's still going to look like an unfinished project for however long. So anyway, she didn't like my take on things (not fully voiced to her at the time, so there really wasn't so much to be getting bent out of shape about), and went into a spasm of attitude about how no one was helping her. For Christ's sake.... If she gave me the plan and got the hell out of the way, I'd do the whole goddamn thing myself. As it is, I'm not going to take on her 3-phase, 6-month project on a job that could be done in under a week, probably in a weekend, and have her backseat driving over my shoulder. That's bullshit too. And then there's the Diet Coke-tax ($5)that she's imposed on my brother which I think takes the cake for this weekend's dose of bullshit. I told TJ he really ought to just buy his own pop and keep it in his room, if he's going to be paying for it anyway. For all the hassle, I think it'd be worth it to just choke down warm pop.
So then we went to my dad's to watch the second half of the football game yesterday. I can't really say that there are any highlights to report from that. Dad was just in one of his ultra-tense moods and freaked out a couple of times over "not being allowed to talk," which amounts to him not being allowed by the rest of us to make the same point over and over 12 times in the space of 20 minutes. Bottom line is that it didn't help my anxiety problem I was having from being at mom's house. Times like those remind me how much happier, calmer and probably healthier I am now that I'm on my own, living on my own terms.
So then by the end of the day, all there was to do was cry, just to release the pressure. I'm kind of glad mom's going out of town next weekend; it'll give me time to reset my switches.
And today... Today, as I try to return to my relaxed state, Jeff's car decided to take a dump. Stalling, vibrating (similar to when an ABS kicks in, but we don't have an ABS), backfiring. It really just barely is running. We're taking it in this afternoon and hopefully it won't take any longer than till Wednesday to fix. I've made arrangements to go into work late today and I think we can handle being a one-car family for a day or two.
The good times just keep on coming.
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Before And After
Would I get a discount if I birthed the baby in the store? - 5/16/05
The end is near? - 5/13/05
The progession of me - 5/10/05
Cleaning update - 5/7/05
Pre-nesting - 5/7/05
