Why It’s Mother’s Day, and Not Mother-In-Law’s Day: The Disturbing Conclusion

May 1,2008

The final dinner went very appropriately, considering the whole mess of the last two months.

We decided we’d take MILfH to Montana Ale Works.  She has to drive separately because my car only fits two adults and the two carseats in back.  It must have been nice, back in the days before car seats, to actually fit everyone into one car.  Anyway, she followed us to the restaurant.  The problem was, the place was so packed that there wasn’t even a place to park.  We imagined it would be pretty loud inside and would take a long time to get service, two things that just don’t work with kiddos.  So Jesse said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

I turned to leave the restaurant.  For whatever reason, MILfH turned the opposite direction.  “What is she doing?” I said. 

“Who knows.  Let’s just call her.”

It would have been a real mess to have to find a way to turn around and get her in this narrow parking lot, and chase her with two kids just to have to tell her that we were going somewhere else.  So we instead hit the road and called her.  She has been attached to her cell phone from the moment she arrived, so we didn’t think that tonight would be the one night that she didn’t have her phone.

But she didn’t.  We called three times and she didn’t answer.  We headed for Old Chicago and waited.  We waited for her to check her messages, surely she would do that, she wouldn’t wait around for us at the place we had originally gone? 

But she did.  She waited there for an hour.  And we were waiting at Old Chicago, hoping that she would check her cell phone.  She has been strapped to that phone the entire time she has been here.  Of course she didn’t have it this time. 

So finally after an hour, she figured out “hey, they must have gone somewhere else” and went back to the house for her cell phone.  She showed up at Old Chicago and we had already given up and ordered.  She was very upset and I’m certain she thought we did this on purpose.  Like I said, it was an appropriate ending to the whole ordeal.

Unfortunately, it was not the end.

May 2, 2008

Friday.  She is leaving tomorrow. 

Joy.  Elation.  Life.  Happy.  Alone with my family at last.  Montana to ourselves.  Our house to ourselves.  Joy.  Greatness. 

Jesse was going out to take some pictures.  I was taking the kids to Butte for the weekend and spending Saturday out on the land. 

“Just so you know,” she said, “I’m coming out to visit tomorrow to say goodbye.”

“To the land?”

“Yes,” she said.  Deflation.  Shrinkage.  Ulcer. 

“Okay,” I said.  “Well you won’t make very good time,” I pointed out.  “Long way back to Colorado.”

She shrugged. “I’m in no hurry to get back,” she said.  “I don’t want to go back to him.”

“Well, I guess I will see you tomorrow,” I said.  Smothering.  Suffocation.

May 3, 2008 9 AM

I arrived out at the land.  My dad was in the cabin making coffee.

“MILfH show up yet?” I asked.  “I’d really like to get the visit over with.”

He gave me an annoyed look.  “Not yet.  Want me to call her?”

I was surprised.  “You have her number?!”

He nodded.  “Yeah, I think it’s in my phone.  She’s been calling her every night.”

Shock.  Anger.  Butt out.  “For WHAT?!”

“I don’t know.  She keeps showing up here too.”

“What!?”

“We usually talk about grandkids,” he said.  “We had a couple of beers and some good talks.”

He explained that she has been showing up to his place, uninvited, for the past several weekends.  

“It’s getting strange,” my dad said.  “I think she likes me or something.”

“WHAT?  How did that…”

Too late.  The car pulls up.  MILfH enters, carrying a box of donuts and a small cactus plant with a bow on it.  She enters the cabin and sets it down like she owns the place.  Obviously she’s been here before.  I am pissed.  All those weekends, she told Jesse and I she had been visiting Yellowstone.  So not only has she been lying to us, but she’s been visiting my dad.  I am immediately suspicious.  (Not of my dad…the last woman that spent time with him like this did it for years, she was a lot prettier and nicer than MILfH, and he told even her he’d already been married and he’d never do it again, thanks much.  I wasn’t worried about this nutjob who’d been around a week or two.)  

She really seemed to love the place.  “Heaven on earth,” she called it.  I think so too.  “Can’t you just sell me an acre?” she asked me.  “All I need is an acre.  I could have a garden, and a cabin.”

What I said:  “No way,” I said.  “What about your house in Colorado?  Besides, half of this land is my brothers, and neither of us would ever sell.”

What I thought:  Not for a million dollars, you dolt.  I would rather squeeze my eyeballs with tweezers than to sell a teaspoon of this dirt to you, much less have land next to you, you crazy, crazy demon woman from the ninth circle of hell.

Since she couldn’t have the land, she started in on asking for what was on it.  She’d point to something, say a pair of antlers.  “Can I have that?” she would ask.  If it wasn’t tied down and could fit in her car, she wanted it. 

“Sure,” my dad would say.  “See something you want, take it.”  He says this to everyone.  He’d give away anything if someone asked for it.  He’s like that.  She thought it was because she is special. 

“I like this chair,” she said, referring to the wooden chair she was sitting on.

“Uh, so do I,” I chimed in.  She gave me a dirty look. 

Later on she asked for the chair overtly.  “Can I bring it back with me?” she asked.  “Do you mind?  I really like it.”

“Actually I’m pretty sentimental about that chair,” I said.  “My dad made that when I was four.”

“Is that a yes?”

“No.”

We’ve seen this odd behavior once before.  When Jesse and I bought new furniture for our house in Divide, she showed up to see it.  She came under the guise of a visit to AJ who was only a couple of months old, but really she was there to scam for things.  She asked if we “really needed that bookshelf.”  She wanted the armoire we had just spent a grand on. 

No.  We.  Just.  Bought. It.  God.  Who does that?

She was genuinely annoyed when we said no, too.  She is just so entitled.  And for what?  Her contributions to the world?  She of the “I’m too good to work” ethic?  Alas, perhaps I am too hard on her.  All of this could very well be behavior caused by mixing all those unprescribed drugs she carries around with her. 

I digress…

She spent the entire day out there on the land.  What happened to the nice day I was going to celebrate with my family…celebrate her leaving the state?  Sigh.  The evening came, and I had to take the kids back to Butte.  MILfH stayed for a while past that.  I know this because my dad called me later, and said she “was worried about finding the hotel in Whitehall,” so he drove in front of her so she could follow him there. 

Now color me crazy, but if she managed to find that piece of land in the middle of nowhere several times over, would she really have a problem finding the ONE hotel in the only nearby town?  The town with one road?  Perhaps she thought she’d be able to manipulate my unassuming dad into a room in said hotel?  Instead, he politely showed her the way to town, then said that he was going to meet some friends in town and get drunk. 

He called to tell me all this.  “I told her I was meeting some friends…but really I just turned around and went home.”  Way to go.  Sad that you have to find elaborate ways to ditch an adult, but I understand.  She’s been sucking the life out of my household for two months now.

Then she called me.  Ulcer.  Anxiety.  I was still on my way back to Butte.  “I’m worried about your dad,” she said.  “He’s going out to town to drink with some friends.  What do I do?”  This phrase in itself perfectly illustrates just how little she knows any of us.

“Uh, okay?” I said.  “And?” 

“Well, I tried to get him to stop,” she said, taking ownership.  “I really tried to stop him.  He just wouldn’t listen.” 

“Yeah.  He’s a grownup,” I said.  “And you wouldn’t be the first to try and get him to do anything.  No one can get him to do anything.” It’s funny that he really wasn’t at a bar this time.  He was trying to ditch the crazy woman.  If he would have told her he was going back to the land, she would have just followed him there. 

What happened next pretty much wrecked the wreckage of the wrecky relationship we all had with MILfH.  This is mostly translated from my dad, who is now mentally traumatized from ever having meeting her.  I can relate. 

It all started during one of their “friendly conversations” when she asked him if he “ever thought about getting back with <MY MOM’S NAME>”  Like most men, he didn’t hear what she was really asking him.  He said from that moment, everything changed.  He started getting endless phone calls.  She brought him gifts.   That’s right, my mother in law from HELL started chasing my father. 

“I’ve heard of crazy women like her,” he said.  “But holy &#%…this has never happened to me in my entire life.”  It’s so very embarrassing that my husband’s mother is the one who he is talking about. 

Instead of leaving even the next day, going back home to her house, her mom, her dog and oh yeah, her husband, she came back to the land.  She asked my dad if she could stay for the summer “to help out with the garden.” 

“No way,” he said.  “If I need help out here, I’ll find me a Mexican gal.”

“But the other night you were practically begging me to stay here,” she told him.

“Bullshit,” my dad called it.  “I told you that if you had one more beer, I wasn’t going to let you leave,” he said.  “I wasn’t going to let you go get killed on the highway so that my kids blame me for giving you beer and letting you drive.  And I said you could sleep in the cabin, and I’d stay out in my truck.”

“But you practically begged me to stay,” she insisted.  (Desperation apparently leads people to hear what is not there.)

“That’s not the same thing,” my dad said.  “I wasn’t going to let you leave and drive drunk.”

She whined and pandered.

“I think you better leave,” he said. 

And she did.

But fifteen minutes later, she called him.  He didn’t answer the phone.  He didn’t answer when she called fifteen minutes after that, either.  In fact, he had to turn his phone off.

The next day he turned his phone back on. 

You have eight messages, it told him.  He had to listen to every single message in order to delete them.  She had called him eight times.  I’ll shorten the messages because they were long and dramatic, but here is a summary for your entertainment.  I wish I could tell you that I was exaggerating or better yet, completely inventing it all.  I am not:

1. Hey, I’ve decided to go up to Glacier Park instead of going home.  Should I stop and visit on my way back?
2. Why aren’t you answering?  I thought we were friends.  I’d like to come up and stay for the summer.  Seriously.  I could stay until September or something.
3. I really don’t understand this.  Why aren’t you answering?  Call me back.
4. Look, I’ve never met anyone like you.  I thought we had something really special.
5. I love you!  I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.  Please call me back so we can talk about this.
6. Never mind that last message.  I’m just confused as to why you aren’t calling me back.  Call me right now! 
7. Why aren’t you calling me? What is wrong with you?  What kind of person are you?  Apparently you are evil, for doing this to me.
8. I’m really disappointed in you.  I thought you were better than this.  Stop being so evil to me.  Call me back right now please.  Please.

Of course he didn’t call her back.  The whole time, he thought they were two friends with grandchildren in common. 

Over the next part of the day, she called four more times.  Now my dad is drinking down at the bar for real, because he is scared she is going to show up with her dog and try to move in.  He said he watched this week’s ‘Desparate Housewives,’ and the voice at the end of the show said: “Be careful who you invite into your life, because they may never leave.”  He said he laughed, because that was really happening. 

In the meantime, she called her son (Jesse) and was crying.  “I’m so confused.  Should I go home, or should I live at <The Land> for the summer?”  WTF?  No one invited you to live there.  Where do you get off?  Who do you think you are?  Why aren’t you spending all this energy on your husband…use that energy it to fix it or get a divorce, already! But…

What the hell was she thinking?  My dad is one of the friendliest, give-the-shirt-off-his-back sort of guys that you will ever meet.  She interpreted it all wrong.  All wrong.  Besides acting like a socially retarded teenager with a crush on the lifeguard, was she not thinking about who he was? 

I mean, in no way was there ever a chance that my dad would be seriously in to her, but let’s say in another plane and another dimension…was she not at all concerned about what her son would think?  Did she think that maybe her oldest son, my husband, might resent her a little bit for attempting to make him a step-sibling to his wife?  Why do I suddenly feel like an Appalachian cliché? 

My husband left a message for her (she wouldn’t answer the phone…she was probably on the other line) telling her to please get help if she ever wanted to see any of us again.  I’m almost certain she will tell this story quite differently to everyone else she “vents” to.  She is one big bag of crazy.  I never want her around my children again. 

So that’s how it all went down.  I feel icky.

Oh, by the way.  When I got home from Butte that Sunday, I tried to make a pot of coffee.  But there wasn’t any. 

She stole my coffee. 

I asked Jesse if he had touched the coffee, and he had made a pot that Saturday morning, but the bag had been full.  Jesse had bought me a brand new bag of coffee on Friday.  The bag was now empty with a few consolation grounds dusting the bottom. 

She won’t be invited back. 

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

The source of all my problems, and probably yours too…

Thanks to my friend Jill for sending me this most excellent link to a New York Times article on the perils of watching early Sesame Street videos.  According to the writer, the first couple of volumes come with an “adults-only” warning. 

I grew up on Sesame Street, well, I grew up watching Sesame Street.  I learned to count (sing with me: one two three FOUR five, six seven eight NINE ten, eleven twe-e-e-e-elve…), spell words, and developed a strong appreciation for pigeons and cookies.  I am disheartened to say that the article states that early Sesame Street contains a host of “no-no’s” for today’s preschoolers, such as:

• The “closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment” in a deteriorating brownstone
• Cookie Monster is on a fast track to diabetes.
• Oscar’s depression goes untreated
• “Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time”

Oh my goodness, for those of you who had fond memories of Sesame Street, you must read this article.  Now you, too, will realize the source of all your problems.  Clearly they were out to make us silly adults with silly ideas. 

Damn PBS. 

 

Another Net-Free Weekend

Lightning storms, 2. 

Modem, 0.

 

Weak Stream

I believe in the power of pharmaceuticals that have stood the test of time.  You know, like aspirin.  Ibuprofen.  Pepto-Bismol.  It’s been a long time since those concoctions have been around, and you know that even if the FDA or whatever was around at the time to approve such things (if any) rushed through their decision making process, that it’s okay.  You know a hundred people who take those kinds of drugs each day and they never ever, not even once, grow a third eyeball in the middle of their forehead.

I keep seeing this commercial for Flomax.  One of the raging epidemics that Flomax cures is that of the weak stream.  Now I have never heard of weak stream.  Presumably it’s a “male problem.”  First of all I say it’s about damn time there’s been a ”male problem” since for years men have casually referenced “female problems” as a euphemism for things they don’t understand. 

Secondly, it’s just thrilling that they have a pill for weak stream.  What don’t they have a pill for these days?  Oh, that’s right.  Real problems, like cancer.  If you have cancer, sorry.  All the R&D money has been spent already.  But at least we have five different solutions for seventy year old men who want a boner.  But back to weak stream…

Thing is, Flomax has a lengthy list-o-side effects.  Most drugs do.  Side effects are the “little inconvenieces” that the calm, deep voice on the TV commercial glazes over, quietly, as the picture on the screen displays a person leaping energetically through a green meadow.  In the Flomax commercial, the voice casually states that “a common side effect of Flomax is fainting upon standing up.”  That’s all.  A minor setback, really. 

Whatever weak stream is, I’m sure it’s a tragic, tragic problem.  But just from nomenclature alone, I am pretty sure I’d settle for “weak stream” rather than “random unconciousness whenever I get out of a chair”.  But hey, this is America, land of the fast-approved and minimally tested drugs, so people can do whatever they want. 

My question is, how is the dude leaping through a meadow without fainting?

 

Reply All

I’ve resisted for so very long.  But now I must, MUST vent about what is undoubtedly known within my organization as the “Re: Resume” e-mail.

A month and a half ago, someone accidentally sent out an e-mail to a list at work.   The e-mail was from someone with a friend, who we’ll call “Charles Pimpdaddy”, who wanted a job in our fine establishment.  The e-mail requested that so-and-so look over the resume and see if C. Pimpdaddy might be a good fit.   

The e-mail list contains 3500 people on it.  So that day, naturally, at least one of those people replied to the e-mail with a polite “Please take me off this list.”  They also chose to “Reply All” instead of just replying to the sender.  So the entire list was made aware that this individual did not want to be on the list.  I’m not talking about some ”Fans of Sci-Fi” list that they simply wanted to unsubscribe to.  I’m talking about THE list.  This is the list of everyone in the organization, that the powers that be use to send out very, very important mass messages. 

You really can’t be taken off this list, because if you are taken off the list it means you’ve probably been fired. 

Anyway, many people jumped on the “take me off this list” bandwagon and hit “Reply All” as well, not realizing that every time that someone hit “reply all,” 3,500 people got the message too.  I can promise you that 3,499 of those people really didn’t give a shit if the e-mailers didn’t want to be on The List.

The “Reply All” fiasco lasted several days.  It was compounded, and added to, and multiplied, and eventually took on a life of its own. 

People just can’t help Replying All.  The temptation to point out someone else’s mistake, especially a mistake that has been repeated multiple times, is too much for some folks to handle.  Over the past forty-five days or so, there have been random replies to the “Re: Resume” e-mail (probably as people come back from long vacations, medical leaves, etc.) and then the whole e-mail chain kicks back up again as people Reply All in anger.  This happened again today.  Again, people have replied en masse and cannot, cannot stop.  I understand this reaction, truly I do.  It isn’t that big of a deal to set up a rule, or simply delete, or even to be the Bigger Person and ignore the whole thing.  But it’s a lot more fun to bitch about it. 

Since I have gotten over my initial rage over having to constantly press delete, I now want the “Re: Resume” e-mail to live on in infamy in the Google caching system.  Here are some clips of the “Re: Resume” e-mail for your enjoyment.  I’ve selected just a few of my favorites from the past several weeks.  The mispellings, self-contradictions and hypocrisy are left intact for maximum effect:

Please remove me from this list.

Likewise. 

This has been going on for almost 4 months, can you please stop e-mailing me.  My inbox is full of e-mail that do not pertain to me.  Take me off the list. 

I am also on this list and need my name to be removed as well. 

Me as well.

Please remove me from this distribution.  No interest or involvement.

O.K. I’ve seriously HAD IT with all the “reply ALL’s”.  For God’s sake…..  How many e-mails does it take for (you) to figure out that when you hit “reply all”, the message in fact actually goes to everyone, most of whom don’t care that you want your name removed from the distribution list.  The appropriate response is to hit “reply”  AGAIN…. not “reply all” so you’re fascinating insights do not clog up the mailboxes of over  3,000 incredibly busy professionals.

PLEASE STOP HITTING REPLY ALLLLLLLLLLL

I’d like to propose that anyone sending “reply all” messages out in future, after this one of course, should be automatically disqualified from consideration for projects for the next six months as we can’t afford to have people working on engagements who are incapable of following simple instructions.

Please, PLEASE!  Folks, please recognize a few key issues here:

1.    That this message was sent to a broader group than it originally should have been

2.    That your name IS supposed to be on this list because you are attached in some manner (or were, when it was originally sent) to one of the administrative address groups listed

3.    That in the event you were addressed in error, you should simply disregard the message and delete it.  This grind we’re trapped in of sending everyone requests to delete your name from distribution is a poor reflection of the discretion that a firm of our maturity and capabilities possesses.  You do nobody - most of all yourself - any favor by continuing this loop.  My apologies if this comes across as harsh or critical, but let’s just end this practice today. 

So did this <Charles Pimpdaddy> ever get the job?

Please take me off of this list. 

 

Without it, you may as well die.

RESILIENCE

Economics:

The ability to retain function, employment and prosperity in the face of the perturbation caused by the shock of the loss of a particular type of industry or employer.

Networking:

The ability of the network to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of various faults and challenges to normal operation.

Physics:

The capacity of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically and then, upon unloading to have this energy recovered.

Ecology:

The rate at which a system returns to a single steady or cyclic state following a perturbation.

Psychology:

The capacity of people to cope with stress and catastrophe, as well as a characteristic of one’s resistance to future negative events.

 

A Sirius Dilemma

I can’t believe what I did yesterday.

A little bit of background:  I use a Sirius “Sportster” to listen to satellite radio.  Sirius has rendered my commute to work “fun”, and long road trips “adventurous.”  My one complaint about the portable receivers is that they come with a suction cup and need to be stuck to your windshield. 

In Colorado the ol’ suction cup method never lasts long.  Too much hot sun and cold weather eventually make the suction cup useless.  My suction cup gave out after I had to leave my car parked on the roof of the parking garage at Denver International Airport for a week.  The suction cup was pretty much melted when I returned.

Because of this, I went for months and months sticking the receiver into the passenger door “cubbyhold” - you know, the little door pocket where passengers stick gum wrappers, junk mail, and other trash.  This worked fine up until yesterday. 

I parked my car in the parking garage at work.  I am guessing that the receiver fell out of the car as I was removing my laptop from the passenger side.  It was early.  It was dark.  I didn’t notice that it fell out.  Hours later it was time to drive home.  I felt a little “bump” as I pulled out of the space.  What in the world?!  I got out to see if I had backed over a small animal; perhaps a pigeon or a kitten.  Nooo!  It was worse!  I backed over my own satellite radio! 

Noooooo!

I have to say that the receiver held up remarkably well.  In fact it didn’t crack at all.  The wires were ripped out, and the button pushed in a little. 

It was a long drive in to work this morning.  And, may I add, a staticky one.

 

101

I have a fever.  Actually, everyone here has a fever.  I wish it was Thursday.  If it was Thursday, a new episode of Grey’s Anatomy would be on, and I could lay around PMS’ing and being feverish and it would be awesome.

But no.  It’s Wednesday, and Lost is on, which is great but it might make the fever spike up. 

 

I could scream

Pardon the completely useless post, but I just have to say that I could really scream right now. 

No, I can’t elaborate. 

 

Olives and Limes

No posts for a week or so, because we did get brave and made the trip to Montana for Christmas!  It was really fun and a good surprise for AJ’s grandparents.  It was looking pretty iffy there, but Jesse got motivated and shoveled our very, very, very long driveway.  It took him 4 hours to carve a path big enough for a car to get from our garage to the road.  He also was very sore the next few days.  And I-25 had its share of surprises the Friday we left, such as lanes ending into a snowbank with no warning.  Wyoming highways were pretty bad.  It took 18 hours.  But we made it!

We also came home a day early because another storm warning was released.  I am really glad we did!  We would still be driving today, and it is now a Real Mess out there.  A thick sheet of ice is covering the roads underneath all that snow.  “They” have no idea how much snow we are supposed to be getting over the next few days…reports are ranging from 12 inches to….FIVE FEET.  Who knows. 

The grocery stores have been out of lots of things like dairy and produce ever since last week’s blizzard, we have come to discover.  So now there is a real run on all the food that was left.  Tiny Venture Foods here in our neighborhood is jam-packed with people grabbing the last cheese and bread.  As for us, we are pretty well stocked with enough to survive on for a few weeks.  Luckily I married a real outdoor gear-head and he has lots of winter survival gear for us, should it come to that.  We have plenty of staples such as bread and canned goods, things that don’t need heating should we lose power, and toilet paper.  Lots of toilet paper. 

We also have lots of olives and limes.  We are ready!  Bring on the five feet of snow.