|
navigation
current
archives
links page
profile
|
|
mothering and othering
May 09, 2011
My friend T's mom died on Wednesday. How awful to lose your mom any time--at Mothers Day seems particularly harsh. She and W had to go up to Northern Wisconsin and deal with stuff this weekend, so I watched the dogs for them. And, since it is what it is, I took my new jeans money and made them a gift of it. I will get new pants some other time. Right now, they need cash to get themselves back and forth from here to there, and get stuff dealt with--money is always very tight for them. Goodness knows, $80 isn't all that much these days.
So yeah, spent a chunk of a quiet home weekend running back and forth to their house and taking care of their two chihuahuas. I couldn't have asked for an easier gig, really. They only live about 5 blocks from me, and their dogs are perfectly trained little scamps. And they have so few friends that they can really rely on--I'm happy to oblige. W came home last night and called to let me know she had arrived, and had left T up there with her family. And to talk her heart out for quite a while, which I think she really needed to do, away from T. And also, to let me know that she would be going back up there later this week, for the actual service and stuff.
Which means--more dog-sitting. And, to her credit, she came write out and told me that she was reluctant to ask; that she didn't want to burn through my good will. I reminded her that this wasn't a vacation we were talking about here. It's a family emergency. She just needs to let me know when she's heading back up there.
I'm fond enough of T--she is W's life partner and as such, she is family. But the thing is, W and I are the ones who are "sisters". And T can be a handful, to say the least. Here multitude of ailments, both real and imagined, put a huge burden on W's shoulders, and T is kind of spoiled and irresponsible as well. And she has a trait that particularly irks me...
I'm sorry, but you can't just decide that you have some kind of "social disorder" and then use that to opt out of handling shit. People who have these problems for real would do almost anything to be free of it, and be able to handle their lives well. It isn't fair to them to co-opt their disease and then become a horrible representation of it. Every moment that they struggle against their issues to try and lead a normal life is sabotaged by your selfish, lazy, and irresponsible choice to refuse to act like a grown-up and instead hide behind the excuse of someone else's disease. DAMN, that pisses me off.
Whew. End vent.
What else is going on? Oh, yeah. Mother's Day. Totally snuck up on me this year and I was scrambling on Friday morning to ensure that both Mom and Auntie would be getting a sign of appreciation from me and the Spouse. Went online first thing in the morning and hit my special florist websites I use for each. Mom got a gorgeous basket of pink and purple daisies and asters, Auntie got a vase of yellow roses and lilies, with Bells of Ireland. I figured that with as much mothering as she gives Spouse on the phone, she earned something. Plus, it was her birthday last week. And she'd had a rough week with Uncle. She deserves something pretty.
Went over big with the both of them, naturally. Obligatory phone calls had to follow, naturally. Auntie, I think, was the most pleased. I added a card which thanked her for being our "mom on the side", and she kind of flipped over that. And she has been carrying them around since she got them on Friday, so she can see them wherever she is. She likes to wake up to them, she says.
On, Saturday, I baked Spouse the cookies he'd requested. A homemade version of those nasty old iced oatmeal things granny used to buy. (Another sign your mate was raised by people who couldn't cook--he wants you to bake him store cookies.) I adapted the basic Scotchies recipe, but I can't say they were a huge success, since they didn't get crunchy enough, and the ones I didn't ice weren't sweet enough. Also, they needed more spice. If I do this again, I think I'll add more flour, and use Cinnamon Plus instead of plain cinnamon. And stir some raisins in the other half of the batch.
He seems to be eating them, though, so whatever. Maybe it was worth the hand pain I've been dealing with from wielding a pastry tube full of cookie icing to drizzle 3 dozen cookies. I actually broke out the old wrist brace today, it was bothering me so bad.
I have been having a major struggle with my weight thing for the last week. Voracious appetite, and gobs of bizarre, disordered thinking. My period was one of the culprits, of course--but I have to wonder it it isn't something more. After having a very steady and sane first week (and losing five pounds), I just had a constant fight to keep it within the realm of the sane, let alone the realm of weight reduction. What is with this stupid addiction brain of mine? I just went through the psychological tug-of-war with myself over the cigarettes when I quit smoking, and this is scarily similar. But without the one thing that made quitting smoking possible--the ability to stop completely. Can't really do that with food.
I used to come pretty close, in the old days. But an entire adulthood of screwing with my metabolism has left me with nothing but a busted thyroid and a BMI over 50, so I simply cannot do the "diet pills/severe calorie restriction/excercise till you drop thing" anymore. I'm TRYING to be sane and normal here, but I just have absolutely no experience with sane and normal. I was raised by a disordered eater, and I am a disordered eater. I don't know how to feel satisfied without either stuffing myself to overfulness with calorie-dense food, or resorting to killing my appetite with diet pills.
If it wasn't so pitiable, I would laugh at myself--I wander around feeling desolate and lost, not able to function, because my prime directive is "stuff your face", and if I can't do that, I don't know WHAT the fuck to do. Again, eerily like the smoking thing.
As hopeless as it seemed all week, though--I must have done something right. I did come down another two pounds at my Monday morning weigh-in today. And I am trying to get back on track today. Stick to around 1800 calories, lots of fruit, veggies, water, etc. The hardest part of that? I seem to need those two large mugs of strong coffee full of sugar and half& half in order to function. (Oh, not another addiction!)
Sigh. Thank goodness I figured out early on that becoming a drinker or a drug taker probably wasn't a good idea for me. I've enough to deal with, as it is.
Reading:Hobby--"Under the Lilacs" (1920), by Louisa May Alcott. Aimed at a bit younger set than I usually do, but at this point, a non-LWW (Little Women World) and unread LMA is not to be sneezed at.
Also reading: "The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story" (1911), by Burton Egbert Stevenson"
Listening: WXRT. Janis Joplin, Fleet Foxes, Viva la Vida, Goo Goo Dolls. Sensing a theme here. (What, no Manfred Mann?)
Surfing: .
At Random:
click
here
304
|
|