The Holiday Clouds Have Lifted

Despite my stropping yesterday, Roomie cajoled me into visiting my mother this afternoon, and the visit went better than expected. I think that at sixty years old, she's tired of fighting, tired of trying to bend me to her will. She still comes up with elaborate real-estate schemes for me to undertake with magical money, and she still asks me how my bills are running, but she doesn't press as fiercely as she used to, and part of me dares to hope it's because she's finally come to see me as a quasi-competent, independent human being. Or, as she herself suggested, to give her credit, maybe distance from the rest of the family has allowed her to see how toxic and overweening our relationships are. As she noted, our grandmother tries to manipulate the family into doing what she thinks the various members ought by a ceaseless stream of hectoring and guilt, and if neither of those work, will try insults and belittlement. For those who have read through the archives of this blog or migrated here from its former iteration will no doubt spot a very familiar pattern.

Blinding ironies aside, we stayed about an hour and showered attention on her aging Chihuahua, who is one of the sweetest, wiggliest little souls alive. If you stop worshipping her before she's satisfied, she whimpers and grizzles and grumps until you relent and offer the proper tribute. We shared family gossip, and before we left, she gave us the leftover lasagna with which she had wooed us. I'm sure it was amazing because PC cooked it, but it went into the trash because we had no plans to go straight home, and her assurances that it would be fine if left in the car for hours notwithstanding, neither of us had any burning desire to run that particular gastronomic gauntlet(Frankly, I suspect something else would've burned a great deal had we ventured it, but such a subject is hardly fit for genteel company). So, to the trash it went.

I went on an Amazon spree today. Bear in mind that in my case, a spree is any purchase(s) more than fifty dollars. I bought:

-Murder, She Wrote S1

-Columbo S1

-Matlock S2

-It(2017)

-What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson for Roomie.

-Hangman(2017); a rental. I was going to buy the DVD version when it came out in February, but the reviews have been so abysmal that I thought this the more prudent option.

I considered pre-ordering The Foreigner because I want to see Jackie Chan kick ass with panache, but there's no rush, and my DVD backlog is already embarrassing.

Such was the state of me today, and now I'm home in comfy pants, listening to Keith Morrison on an episode of Dateline and looking forward to a few days at home.