Well, I really can't put it off anymore... I need to blog. It's not like blogging is such a hard thing to do... but lately all I've wanted to do is watch TV/Netflix/whatever. And my guilty pleasure app on facebook just added a new feature, too, so lots of time has been wasted. To be fair (and add another excuse), my mother's visit set me back, DVR-wise, nearly a week... I didn't get to watch the Emmys until this past Friday!... so now that I'm finally on top of things (and bored SILLY at work), here you go. The juicy entry you've all (all two of you) been waiting for. It's gonna be LONG.
So, maybe I had unrealistic expectations of my mother's visit. We'd been getting along SO well on the phone since my father turned into a total dick-sucking asswipe, but our in-person visits have ALWAYS been rocky. The first mistake was probably letting her stay for 5 full nights (4.5 days, ish)... the second mistake (which gets me "Um, DUHHHH" looks every time I mention it) was letting her sleep IN MY BED WITH ME. It's not like I could've made her sleep on the couch, though - that would only make her crankier. So we dove in head-first.
The first night she was in town was fine. She got in late, around 9:00, and we grabbed a really late dinner. Which means that between the 1am bedtime, the bank account-inspired insomnia I've had lately, and the early wake-up call for the job I had Friday morning, I had very little sleep. I also woke up a few times. I am NOT used to having someone sleep in my bed with me. It's happened twice in the last 2 or 3 years. Blerg. How does one get used to that?? But I woke up, all but injected myself with caffeine, and (having written down explicit instructions on how she could go visit the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island on her own) left my mother alone for the day. Big Fat Mistake #3. About halfway through the day, I called her to make sure she had made it to the SoL/EI alright. She had been nervous. She picked up the phone and immediately I knew something was wrong. She had spent the entire day in bed, which was something that I was fairly used to after she got really depressed when I was in high school. She wouldn't tell me why over the phone, but I figured it was something about my father. So, I left work and walked home (gorgeous day, ran into THE OFFICE CRUSH (!!!!!!!) on the way there), figuring I'd listen to her cry for a little bit then get on with our evening.
I walk in and she doesn't want to talk about whatever's going on, and she's ordering me around and telling me about the plans that she made and that we are going to enjoy. This is still fairly typical, so I move around a bit and start getting ready, until she starts picking fights. This is less typical. I swallow it for a bit and then finally, after the 3rd time she's thrown a fit, I tell her to cancel the goddamn reservations because she was going to tell me what the hell was the matter. Turns out... SHE FOUND MY DIARY. You know, the diary that I keep because there are certain things that I will not blog about? You know, like sex? So my mom found my sex diary, and read the first page, and concluded that I was a giant whore and had slept with 12-20 guys (which was the range she gave me). Seriously? There were two names on that first page, neither of which I had slept with at the time that said first page was written. But that was enough to send her into a tailspin, moaning about how she didn't want to live anymore (!!) because her husband left her and her son is a screwup and her daughter ISN'T A VIRGIN OMG. So we had to have the sex talk, AGAIN, and she finally seemed to calm down enough, so we got a late dinner and moved on with our lives.
The NEXT day (Saturday) was somewhat uneventful. We ran around doing stuff, typical touristy stuff, bickering as usual. Once again we had a big ol' fight right before the dinner reservations (you know, the ones that we transferred from the night before) so I just sent her by herself while I stayed at home and watched TV. I hate jazz anyway, I don't know why she thought a jazz show would be a good idea. She got back craving cheesecake, so we found this awesome place nearby... BUT when she was looking at the menu and asking me what I was going to eat, I said that I wasn't super hungry and had already had dessert, and was looking for something small. She then went down the list and suggested that I order everything on the menu that SHE wanted (she knows I hate tiramisu)... so I said "Mom, if you want something other than cheesecake too, then just order two desserts!" But she kept hissing/harping, so I got more specific: "Seriously! Why do I have to order everything that YOU want???" Then she screams at me, "BECAUSE I'M PAYING FOR IT!!!!!" in the middle of a full-to-capacity restaurant. Classy bitch, she is. A (cute! gay?) guy came up to us a few minutes later and tried to tell her that she was being a grade-A bitch, while I panicked and flailed trying to get him to go away before he made things worse. I'm sure I looked like a classic domestic-abuse victim.
SUNDAY was even worse, starting out. We went to church just fine, but then, on the HALF-MILE WALK to the brunch place, she started whining and griping about how faaaaar awaaaaaay it was and how I had been walking waaaay toooooo faaaaaast aaaaaalllllll weekennnnnnnnd. So finally, after she "asked" me to slow down, I got a little passive-aggressive and started walking grandma-shuffle-slow. She blew a gasket and started screaming at me (in the middle of the sidewalk. where people were eating their brunches al fresco.) about how I had "THE DEVIL IN [ME]!!!!!" etc etc, ad nauseam. We storm off in separate directions, and a couple hours (and a phonecall/vent session to my brother) later we call each other on the phone (she upstairs in my room, I downstairs on the front stoop) and manage to talk it out to where we can make the rest of her visit a little bit easier. I.E., she'll tell me when she's getting tired or frustrated instead of bottling it all up and exploding.
The rest of the weekend is actually pretty non-descript. We saw Next To Normal on Broadway, which was AMAZING, and did more sight-seeing on Monday, and I took her to the train station on Tuesday morning.
But seriously! What the hell? Welcome to life with my mother.
So now I'm picking up the pieces and trying to get my life back on track to make some money. I've come to the conclusion that as soon as my next day of not-working comes up (I'm still temping at an office, and I've got some creative ways to maybe extend it) I will be getting a waitressing job. I really, really wanted to avoid getting a second job until I had a stable first job, but I can't afford to do that anymore. So here we go.
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