If you haven’t already, you might want to stop by Eloi’s page and wish him a Happy Belated Birthday. He’s such a cool dude and I think it would make him very happy. Plus, I feel like a loser because I meant to send him an email on Saturday and I totally forgot. Sorry, Eloi!
So this weekend was wacked.
First off: Esteban is working on a cover story so he is virtually invisible. I don’t have such a huge issue with that, but sometimes the only way I know that I’m married is the fact that I wake up next to someone and there is additional laundry. I suppose some people would prefer an invisible spouse to the one.
Yesterday, I didn’t see Esteban even once. He left before I woke up and he came home after I went to bed. This morning, I left, as I always do, before he woke up. Yesterday morning, when I called him at work to see if he wanted to go out to lunch with me (he didn’t have time), I almost said ‘See you tomorrow night’, which I didn’t because it would make him feel bad but it is certainly true.
I attempted to do some Christmas shopping yesterday and managed to buy a white 350 thread count duvet cover, two white 290 thread count pillowcases (no freaking white fitted sheets at T.J.Maxx though, I was pissed), a new picture for my bedroom and a freaky jar of salsa for Esteban (it has the slogan ‘Pain is Good&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- I think he’ll like it). sigh Maybe next time I’ll find actual Christmas presents.
I went craft show hopping with Mafia Grandmother on Saturday. She was fine until we then picked up my Aunt (the other Aunt, not Aunt Brunhilda’ I really should think of a nick for her’ I’ll call her Aunt Drizella) and then suddenly, she took the opportunity to affect her Mafia attitude. We were discussing Alzheimer’s disease (which my great-grandmother suffered from) and I explained that it was all due to plaques that form between the brain’s synapses. Now, I realize that I was talking to an audience that consisted of a woman who did not get past the eighth grade and a woman who barely graduated high school and has worked in a paper mill for the last twenty years. Not to toot my own horn, but I have a freaking degree in Psychology and had entire classes devoted to the illnesses of the brain and one class which was entirely devoted to aging and Alzheimer’s Disease (toot toot). I think I know that of which I speak.
Aunt’s case was that there was no Alzheimer’s disease and it was just something that they made up to explain aging. Mafia Grandmother took on a look of superiority and then said that her doctor told her that there was no such thing as senility, it was ALL Alzheimer’s. I tried to explain that they were actually different, that the presence of the plaques indicate one diagnosis, and then there was common dementia with no plaque present and then there was organic brain disorder, which presents like Alzheimer’s but was actually due to drug and alcohol abuse during life. M.G. snooted and reiterated what her 76-year-old doctor had told her.
Keep in mind that this is the same woman who, during this same car ride, when discussing one of the craft shows, said, ‘Isn’t that at the place that had the scare with all the Amtrak?’
Yes, Grandma. They were afraid that a cross-country fucking train was going to jump the tracks in Chicago and make its way over hill and dale, across the state of Wisconsin, and then barrel into them. That’s it exactly.
I don’t know why I allow her to flummox me this way. This is the same woman who deliberately puts lemon seeds in her lemon meringue pie so people will know that she made it with real lemons. This is her logic. Better to have someone chip a tooth or choke to death on a damn seed than have them think I merely opened a box of Jell-o instant pudding.
Personally, if your pie tastes that close to Jell-o, perhaps you should either not go through the bother or change your recipe, huh? I’m just saying.
So I casually mentioned the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. We’ve had Thanksgiving dinner at M.G.’s for as long as I’ve been alive, and my mom confirms that it’s been that way as long as SHE has been alive too. It’s pretty much a given, but with the death of Betty this year, M.G. is alone and felt that she didn’t want to go through all the hassle of making dinner. Apparently, Aunt Brunhilda said, ‘Well, come over to my house and I’ll make dinner.’ So M.G. said yes.
But the thing is that the invitation did not extend to the rest of the family’ meaning my mom and her offspring, basically. Everyone else who can be there (i.e. Doesn’t have to work) will be there. ‘I don’t know what your mother and you people are doing, though.’ M.G. sniffed.
So basically, they’re having Thanksgiving and we’re not invited.
Maybe the Cornish game hen that Aunt Brunhilda inevitably will try to pass off as a turkey will not be enough to feed 11 people. Maybe she’s afraid that if she invites people who are not children nor elderly–people who are easily controlled–the gluttony fest will somehow affect her children and the shock of seeing people eat will make them balloon up like the Underdog float in the Macy’s parade.
Good lord.
So I called Mom and asked her if she was aware that our family was Thanksgiving-less this year and she didn’t. But this is so much the way our family puts the fun in Dysfunction. Another year, my mom got drunk and mentioned that good old granddaughter Weetabix’s lesbian friend Mary Kaye thought Aunt Drizella was possibly a lesbian. M.G. then told Aunt Brunhilda who told Aunt Drizella that she had heard something horrible about her but she needed to talk to Mafia Grandma. Then Mafia Grandma told her about the lesbian comment and Aunt Drizella shrugged it off. Mafia Grandma then countered and said that Drizella shouldn’t be so easy-going and she should be upset that her niece was spreading rumors about her (note: I never said a word! Mary Kaye said it, but apparently it was all guilt by association). After much riding by Mafia Grandmother, Aunt Drizella got worked into a snit.
Then the entire family was mad at my mom (for talking about the comment), myself (for making the comment, even though I didn’t) and Mo (because she’s my little sister and I obviously tell her what to think, so she must think that Aunt Drizella’s a lesbian too), but they all didn’t want to TELL us they were mad at us. Why, you might ask? Because if they did, they’d have to admit that my Mom told M.G. this while she was drunk and they don’t like to talk about that.
So, the Saturday night before our traditional Easter get-together, Mom called Mafia Grandma to see how she wanted her to make the ham she was bringing to the family dinner’ bake it before hand and bring it over hot or make it at M.G.’s house. Mafia Grandmother, using her best passive-aggressive tactics, informs my mother that she should make her own dinner for her family because we weren’t invited to the family gathering. Immediately afterwards, Mom left a frantic and apologetic message on our answering machine stating that she had screwed up big and we weren’t invited (never telling me what happened, however). Mo left a similar message, stating that Mom had repeated something I had said and now we were persona non grata with the rest of the family. Mo had tried to call M.G. to see why she was upset with all of us’ the reason had been that we had repeated this comment amongst ourselves. Mo pointed out that M.G. not only repeated the comment to Aunt Drizella but also to Aunt Brunhilda. This was of no matter, because Mafia Grandma is exempt from all violations of passive-aggressive dysfunctionality. She makes the rules therefore she cannot break them. What is more, they would have told us that we weren’t invited to the family gathering if we had CALLED THEM to ASK if we were invited to Easter brunch. So they were not to blame for the poor timing.
It just makes me a little grumpy that I have all these toxic people in my family.
I think someone dumped a case of Drano into my gene pool.
On a brighter note, I started out the day on a happy cheery sort of way, which is fairly rare for a Monday morning. I got to wear my Docs with new Doc Marten shoelaces, a present from Bfee, paired with black pants, black hooded vest and lime green turtleneck. I look tres’ cute. How cool is Bfee? She sent me a bunch of Doc Marten laces, some darned neato Dirty Girl lip stuff, a computer ‘goddess’ and one of the most bitchin refrigerator magnets I’ve seen in a long time. It has a 1950’s woman pictured and the caption ‘She could not decide if she should use her power for good or evil’. That’s pretty much me in a nutshell right there.
This morning, as I left for work, there was a fine layer of frost blanketing the world and the air had that sparkly misty quality you see when the first sunlight hits the frozen street. And I remember thinking, ‘How wonderful it is to be alive! I love my life’ and then a little hint of dread passed over me because the last time I remembered thinking this was the morning of September 11th. So now I feel terribly guilty about it all and I hope that this plane crash not another terrorist attack and just a coincidence that it’s almost exactly two months since that nightmare.
