Best Keep Your Mouth Shut

Uh yeah...so this week was absolute hell. Nothing I couldn’t handle though, although it was extremely unpleasant. It began with my coworker being out one day, and the one day changed to “until Monday”. Then the new employee in my lab quit. Oh she was going to stay until Friday, but she decided that she needed to be out immediately, so off she went. Add an immense workload for the week, and work was a blast.

Now, onto the personal. Oh this one is thrilling, I promise you. And beloved eavesdropping sisters, mention the following to Mum and I will extract unimaginable amounts of pain from you. Tack. Puss och Kram.

I mentioned previously that my mother spoke to me on the phone, that she was moving up the date of her wedding suddenly to “tomorrow” (Wednesday), and it was occuring in California.  Now, obviously that means I can’t attend it. And to be blatantly honest, I was going to go, but it is an extremely uncomfortable thing for me. It isn’t that I don’t like the guy, I truly do. Actually, him and I together are two peas in a pod. It is the fact that my mother is marrying someone else. My parents were together for 19 years. I went through three divorces and two marriages with my father. I even mailed his divorce papers for him with his last one. I did not go to his weddings, and part of me felt awkward that I would be going to my mother’s.  I actually remembering sobbing my eyes out the day he got remarried to the woman he cheated on my mother with. She was two years older than me I might add.

I am loyal to both of my parents, but it doesn’t mean I support their decisions. My mother will always be my mother, and my father my father. I can’t wake up one day and decide to call their new spouse “Mum” or “Dad”. My sisters are already calling my mother’s new husband “Dad,” which is uncomfortable to me, seeing as I live with my father. I haven’t the heart to mention it to him either, because I know how much it would hurt him to know. I respect the decision they made to do this, but it is something that I just cannot bring myself to do. I don’t feel that it makes me less of a person than them, but it’s made my mother a bit unnerved that I am not reacting to her marriage as they are. I’m stubborn, so shoot me. Irregardless, it is a “life-altering” event for me, and it is something I am compartmentalizing and dealing with gradually.

On that “brief” sidenote, I woke up Wednesday and was getting ready for work when I looked at my mobil and noticed that the bloke and rang me. As I headed out the door I rang him to see what he had needed. He told me that my mother and her now husband were seeing if he could dash on down to be their witness, as they needed someone who was a non-relative, and they left him a message on his phone stating this. When he had contacted them later on, they were able to do it with a relative, so I believe my middle sister was there. This of course was news to me, because my mother had stated to me the day before that they were “going to go before the justice and then be married at the base chapel in San Pedro.” I hung up with the bloke and rang my sister to see if she knew my mother was going to do this. She said that of course she did, and was surprised I didn’t, because my mother had spoken to me about it the day before. I said she failed to mention the Vegas portion. I then hung up and rang my mother. By this point I was miffed. My mother apologised that I had “misunderstood.” I informed her that if she had included words like “in Vegas” or “here” in the conversation, I wouldn’t of. I also informed her that I was just then going into work, which implied that I could’ve been there. I was pissed that I found out about this from my boyfriend and no one in my family, and they didn’t even try to contact me about it, that they jumped to him. 

The following morning I’m in the middle of my REM cycle when I am jolted awake by gran literally shaking my door down. I swear to god that when I find out who taught her to do this, I am going to strangle them. In true gran fashion she told me that “Uncle is here to take me to hospital to see a neurologist. I had another attack last night real bad. I am going to go into a home. Don’t worry about Baby (her dog), I have a place for him,. but you need a place immediately because as soon as I leave they are going to turn off the electricity.” I muttered an OK, used to her wigging out lately due to what I suspect to be her medication, and went back to sleep. When I got up to get ready for work, she was still not home, and I SMSed my father to let him know what she said. My plan was to follow up with her when I got home from work at 2am, which didn’t happen. I came home and neither she, nor her ugly rat (dog) were home. I then checked her answering machine to see if she left me a message, since there wasn’t a note. On it there were 7 messages, 6 of which were at 15-20 minute intervals from her friend of the same generation, stating the same thing, in a panic, “Hi, this is Eleanor. I am a friend of Gran’s, and I told her that if anything ever happened to her, that I would take her precious little dog. So someone please contact me so that I can come take care of that poor little dog. Please, please, call me.”

By this point, I am wondering what the Hell is going on. It is 2am so I can’t exactly contact gran’s friends, so I grabbed the phonebook and began calling every hospital in Las Vegas seeing if she was admitted. I also called rehab centers and the home she was looking at moving into. No one had any record of her. I then had a shitty night of sleep because I didn’t know where the Hell she was. When I woke up I rang her friend, who told me that gran was staying with my uncle. This relieved me a bit, only in the fact that I knew where she was. I knew my uncle well enough, to know that some more drama was soon to follow.

While I was on my way to work, I spoke with my Dad, who told me that Gran was going to be moving in with my Uncle, and that my uncle wanted us to pay a substantial amount of money rent and catch up all of my gran’s utility bills. I was amused at this because my uncle is already taking care of his mother in law, so her combined with my gran is making his house a convalescent home. I also know uncle has a huge prescription drug problem, which means gran can kiss her meds goodbye, as she’ll have a hard time hiding them from him while living in his house. I also know that he’ll get sick of gran living there soon enough. He hasn’t had anything to do with gran this year until recently.  On the bright side, in light of everything that is going on, it meant I had the entire house to myself until Tuesday night.

That night when I returned home from work, the bloke was already at the house, as I had posted him there to be on gran watch. He said she came in to get some things, tried shaking my bedroom door down, again, seeing if he was there. I asked him what she grabbed. He said he wasn’t too sure. He knew she got some clothes, this ugly rock lamp she has in her room, and light bulbs. I went to go check the phone for messages, and it was then that I saw gran had also taken the phones from the house. Why, I have no idea. It did crack me up a bit, but it was nice because it meant that when she did call the house to reach someone, because she would forget that she had all the phones, I wouldn’t have to even deal with it. Admittedly, I do have a phone in my bedroom, even though I hardly ever use the house phone. I checked the phone today, and sure enough she tried to call. It seems that I am not the only person who isn’t home during the day, except she seems to be on extended “leave”.

Right now, however, I am wondering if the shitstorm is over, or if I need to brace myself for something more. At least I’ve been through enough of these to keep a smile on my face. I need a holiday in Utopia for a week, and I’ll be good for another round.

Timeshare

I’m just sitting here, listening to a new CD purchase, and relaxing. I even have the candles lit, and it is amazing at how relaxed one feels after a hot shower. In truth I’ve felt under the weather the past few days, so having the ability to just relax is heaven to me. I plan on heading to bed anytime now, even sending the bloke home for his safety (puritan gran and well-armed father in spite of my age).  I’m just finding a little bit of time on my hands and I don’t know what to do with it. I wish I could deposit it in a trust for later on, but unfortunately I know that isn’t possible. I could sleep, but that seems like a waste of it. I am, however, relaxing. That is the right thing to do with it, I think. I already went into the lab on my day off and organised the hell out of it. I not only got paid overtime, but I feel a bit more sane knowing where everything is and that it has been purged. Purging is a good feeling. I like purging anything, aside from my food. Does that make me a cleaning bulimic, or would one term it something else? Do I have a cleaning disorder? Ah, who knows.

I allotted a bit of my day to eating at a nice restaurant, and am still feeling stuffed. The bloke and I also wandered about a pet store, playing with the animals. I petted a rabbit that tried to take my hand off and held hyperactive, black hamsters. They were trying to gnaw their way through glass to the other side of their partition to visit the neighbours. I was informed by the salespeople that one of them knew how to climb up the water bottle to the top of the partition and run around into whichever sector of their choice. This amazed me as they were about 10-15 cm tall, and the top of the partitions were, oh I don’t know, 2/3 of a metre high. It also meant I didn’t purchase one of them, and it wasn’t out of being squeamish. See, I’ve had experiences with rodents growing up. I had two black gerbils as a girl, and one somehow escaped from its cage. Our cats thought it was a round of cat and gerbil, and I came home to find my father covering my dying gerbil with an oxygen mask, trying to save it. Needless to say the cat won. I could just see this happening again with the hamsters if I brought one home, especially as Mav is bred to be a mouser. That is what Swedish farm cats are.  They see any member of Rodentata and something in their brain goes off. Next thing you know, you’re burying the rodent in a shoebox in the backyard. No thanks.

After awww-ing at the rodents, I walked back to the front of the pet store where I saw their baby african grey parrots were wandering about the top of their partition. I wandered over to see them, and next thing I knew I had one on my shoulder, tickling my ear, gnawing on my purse strap, and trying to remove my accessory from my hair.  I knew he was male with him trying to undress me. I could go with it being a lesbian, but he was trying to remove my purse, not take it for himself.

I tried to get him off by bending my shoulder down to the partition top. He took this as the cue to walk around to my other shoulder and begin cooing in my ear. I admit he was adorable, but not adorable enough for me to fork out $1700. After about ten minutes, he moved to where I could get my hand to his chest to get him off me and back into his area. I then purchased some treats for Ranger and left.

In retrospect, I spent my time rather lousily if you think about it. Of all the things to do in Vegas, I go to a pet store. In my defense, at least I didn’t walk out purchasing another addition to my Zoo. I don’t think people would appreciate the increase in admission to my home, which would of course occur due to the cost of maintaining a healthy critter. However, visiting hours would stay the same: I need my sleep after all.

Direct to You Via Mac-Jacking

Today at work reminded me just how much I have missed dear old Murphy and his laws. You know how you just get that “feeling” when you wake up that it is going to be one hell of a day? I wish I had heeded mine and called in sick. I walked in the door to find the lab manager and a co-worker of mine staring at a piece of equipment in the lab, one that is crucial to our daily tasks, tinkering with it. It turns out that we were out of a solution we use, and the shipment that was supposed to come in today, did not. Needless to say, he was trying to figure out the machine and figure out a new procedure: he was failing miserably. Of course, upon learning that I knew how to program the machine, he unceremoniously left me to deal with the mess. After multiple trips to the medical director’s office, and eventually dragging in my boss who was out ill having a major surgery, we fixed the issue. Well at least I hope we did seeing as I have no idea what the verdict is until I walk in the door to work tomorrow.

In addition to this mess, there are these cases we receive that only I know how to process, and I’ve been getting increasing amounts of them every week. Today I got the most I’ve ever had: it was a blast.

I am so happy to be home, sitting here after a long hot shower. My bed looks even more appealing than it has all week. I’m tempted to just get up and leave what I am doing here and crash for the night, but I’ve still got application stuff to complete. I finally settled on a career that I want, so now I’m trying to get into a degree programme for it. As for my current degree, it took a semester, but I got the courage up to see just how bad the damage having no transportation to lectures was on my GPA. It was painful, but at least I know. I honestly have never seen those marks on any of my courses in my life, talk about a hit to your confidence. Now I’m trying to troubleshoot that so it won’t hurt my chances of getting into the field I want to be in. Irregardless, it is a satisfying feeling to know what you want to do after spending so many years not knowing.

And now, time for bed!