![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am still here, and yes, my teeth still hurt. I'll get back to more regular posting once my mother packs up her smoke wagon and heads home this weekend, but she's still here, and now that she's upset my apple cart, she's merrily trampling their cargo underfoot. She calls it helping, naturally, and there's no disabusing her of the notion, so we've learned to nod and grunt noncommittally until she goes away.
After days of silence, she called yesterday, all in a dither because it was suddenly vitally important that she help us haul away clutter and arrange for a tree hauler to remove two enormous pines that are currently looming over our house and thrusting curious and insouciant fingers against the eaves, and take the car to get detailed, and of course all of this has to happen NOW NOW NOW before she goes home because no one can supervise such things as well as she. She's in a manic phase, can you tell? It is so exhausting, and I can't wait to be shut of her.
She's right about the trees; they've needed to go for years. I'm glad I won't have to worry about them crushing me during the next round of severe storms, but I'll miss their shade in the sweltering summer and the melancholy loveliness of their shadows on the wall in the early morning, and I'll rue the corresponding uptick in my cooling bill.
As for my mother, perhaps she truly means well, but our approaches to problem solving are diametrically opposed--at least when it comes to "helping" me solve a problem. When she's solving a problem or making a decision for herself, she'll take all the time she needs and research all options, but if it's something to do with me, it's all slapdash and haphazard and by the seat of her pants, and who cares if it's the best solution as long as it's the cheapest? Which is why everything needs to happen right goddamn now despite the fact that she's been here for three weeks and had huge swathes of time sitting in their borrowed vacation house. I am a planner, so much so that Roomie calls me Wile E., and her frenzied, flailing, just-get-it-done-on-the-cheap approach drives me to absolute, foaming-at-the-mouth distraction and makes me feel worthless, to boot, because I'm not even worth the barest of forethought or due care.
But there's nothing for it but to seethe and get through it. Come the weekend, the witch will bestride her broom and leave, trailing smoke behind her.
After days of silence, she called yesterday, all in a dither because it was suddenly vitally important that she help us haul away clutter and arrange for a tree hauler to remove two enormous pines that are currently looming over our house and thrusting curious and insouciant fingers against the eaves, and take the car to get detailed, and of course all of this has to happen NOW NOW NOW before she goes home because no one can supervise such things as well as she. She's in a manic phase, can you tell? It is so exhausting, and I can't wait to be shut of her.
She's right about the trees; they've needed to go for years. I'm glad I won't have to worry about them crushing me during the next round of severe storms, but I'll miss their shade in the sweltering summer and the melancholy loveliness of their shadows on the wall in the early morning, and I'll rue the corresponding uptick in my cooling bill.
As for my mother, perhaps she truly means well, but our approaches to problem solving are diametrically opposed--at least when it comes to "helping" me solve a problem. When she's solving a problem or making a decision for herself, she'll take all the time she needs and research all options, but if it's something to do with me, it's all slapdash and haphazard and by the seat of her pants, and who cares if it's the best solution as long as it's the cheapest? Which is why everything needs to happen right goddamn now despite the fact that she's been here for three weeks and had huge swathes of time sitting in their borrowed vacation house. I am a planner, so much so that Roomie calls me Wile E., and her frenzied, flailing, just-get-it-done-on-the-cheap approach drives me to absolute, foaming-at-the-mouth distraction and makes me feel worthless, to boot, because I'm not even worth the barest of forethought or due care.
But there's nothing for it but to seethe and get through it. Come the weekend, the witch will bestride her broom and leave, trailing smoke behind her.
Tags: